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Abstract
State and local governments frequently look to flagship cultural projects to improve the city image and catalyze tourism but, in the process, often overlook their potential to foster local arts development. To better understand this role, the article examines if and how cultural institutions in Los Angeles and San Francisco attract and support arts-related activity. The analysis reveals that cultural flagships have mixed success in generating arts-based development and that their ability may be improved through attention to the local context, facility and institutional characteristics, and the approach of the sponsoring agencies. Such knowledge is useful for planners to enhance their revitalization efforts, particularly as the economic development potential of arts organizations and artists has become more apparent.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Ann Markusen and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Notes
1. At the same time, this cultural building boom is an extension of a longer trend rooted in projects such as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Centre Pompidou in Paris that were intended to catalyze localized redevelopment.
2. However, in the case of the Guggenheim Bilbao, many of these spaces, which feature Basque work and programs geared to young artists, only emerged because critics in the local arts community convincingly showed that the museum ignored this role (Baniotopoulou, Citation2001; Guasch, Citation2005). In response, rather than ensuring that the Guggenheim carried out these functions, state and local government funded numerous smaller, alternative art spaces that would carry them out (Holo, Citation1999).
3. A total of 12 galleries and cultural facilities responded to the survey, and the relevant information was gathered from the websites of five other art organizations. A copy of the survey is available upon request from the author.
4. Sources included online telephone directories, contact with the galleries and theaters themselves, websites that document and promote the local arts scenes, convention and visitor bureau websites, local business journals, and local news weeklies.
5. Following a $10 million donation to MOCA from media mogul David Geffen, the TC was officially rechristened the Geffen Contemporary. However, I will refer to it as the Temporary Contemporary (TC), as it is popularly known, throughout the rest of the article.
6. For a more detailed description of the planning process at both California Plaza and Yerba Buena Center, see Sagalyn (Citation1997).
7. Ayahlushim Hammond (Citation2005, interview), former Bunker Hill Project Administrator, states that, once the project finished construction, ‘There isn't really much for the [CRA] to do. MOCA is independently managed.’ Similarly, Don Spivack (Citation2005, interview) emphasizes that ‘We're not in the business of providing operating support for activities. Hopefully, you'd create enough development activity that there will be a market for what goes in there.’ In terms of location, although the Los Angeles County Music Center was already nearby, Bunker Hill was primarily defined by office towers and other corporate uses.
8. Although the addition of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall to the Music Center in 2003 has recently cast fresh attention on the area, this architectural spectacle has yet to alter this condition.
9. Foremost, however, was the unplanned availability of land that enabled the move. The site was initially slated by the CRA for an office tower but was abandoned during the 1980s recession and subsequent downturn in demand for office space (Murphy, Citation2005, interview; Spivack, Citation2005, interview; Wiant, Citation2005, interview). Colburn and the CRA later entered into an agreement for an $80 million expansion of the school that opened in 2008.
10. www.galleryrow.org/programs.html (accessed 1 July 2006).
11. However, each experienced difficulty in their own fundraising efforts. The Jewish Museum finally opened in June 2008 and the Mexican Museum has yet to break ground.
12. For example, when a rent increase forced Braunstein/Quay Gallery to move from their Union Square location in 1998, they sought out a site at YBC. The gallery initially paid just $0.50/square foot for their YBC-adjacent space (email correspondence with gallery, 15 June 2005; Togonon, Citation2005, interview).
13. According to Grubb and Ellis, during 2001, rents in the entire South of Market area declined roughly 50% to $15–25/square foot (Hamlin, Citation2001).
14. SFMOMA has an off-site venue for local collectors and corporate clients to rent the work of Bay Area artists, and holds a biennial exhibition that provides an opportunity for three or four regional artists to display their work at the museum.