“Frank Lloyd Wright may be a brilliant designer but he couldn’t build a roof that didn’t leak,” says Gordy Grundy, a founding board member of the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation. “Form must follow function in this public facility.”
Wright built Hollyhock House, his first L.A. project, in 1921 for eccentric oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. The concrete-and-stucco, Mayanesque structure with a recurring geometric motif representing Barnsdall’s favorite flower is considered one of the architect’s masterpieces. Barnsdall deeded the property to the city in 1927 to maintain in perpetuity as an art park. The adult Barnsdall Art Center had been housed in a Wright-designed guesthouse on the property. Other buildings were added in the 1960s and ‘80s for the Junior Arts Center, which provides children’s studio art classes, the Municipal Gallery and the Gallery Theater.
Park structures had been deteriorating for years, but after further damage from the Northridge earthquake and nearby Metro Rail construction, funding finally was produced for restoration. The city decided it would be too expensive to bring the Wright-designed adult Art Center up to code. Money was found, however, to replace the one-way circular drive around the park with a two-way road and traffic turnaround, to make drop-offs for the kids’ art classes more convenient. Some activists question whether saving parents a short walk is worth sacrificing the adult art center.
“They’re certainly not using any money for adult art classes,” says Aviva Weiner, treasurer of the Barnsdall Art Center Student Advisory Committee. “We don’t want to be tossed out with nowhere else to go. We’re too valuable to be lost in the bath water.”
The adult Arts Center is being housed temporarily at a nearby church, but organizers say they have no idea where or how they will survive for the long haul. Artist Jackie Dreager has made six photo collages memorializing 380 Barnsdall trees she says will be chopped down. Dreager’s work is showing at Coagula Projects gallery in downtown L.A. Hollyhock House was closed last June; the restoration was estimated to last about a year.
“There is still time for the artist and the concerned Angeleno, arm in arm, to throw some rationality and accountability into the real plan before this rusty new shovel breaks the ground,” Grundy says. —Dave Perera
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