Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department

It's been said that art can heal the soul, and that's just what Adolfo V. Nodal, the city's cultural czar, hopes will happen in the wake of last week's riots. As general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Nodal began planning for what he called "the re-Renaissance" of Los Angeles even while the riots were still in progress.

The slashing of Los Angeles' municipal arts offerings is underway, with seven layoffs to take effect April 1 and eight more expected when the fiscal year ends June 30, as City Hall tries to cope with a budget crisis. Olga Garay, executive director of the Department of Cultural Affairs, said Monday that she had to figure out how the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro and the William Grant Still Arts Center in West Adams will be staffed after the April 1 layoffs of their directors. And the City Council may get an earful at its meeting Wednesday from supporters of four neighborhood arts centers -- two in Barnsdall Park in Hollywood, two next to the Watts Towers -- that are among nine facilities City Hall wants to unload on private nonprofit operators, in hopes of cutting jobs.

Stand and Receive: Actor Edward James Olmos and Adolfo V. Nodal, general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department were announced the winners of awards from the Central American Refugee Center. At a dinner on April 25, Olmos will be honored for his community activities, which include speaking about 150 times per year in schools, juvenile halls, penal institutions and other sites.

Struggling to cope with a severe budget crisis, the Los Angeles City Council will consider a proposal Wednesday that would strip the municipal arts agency of the guaranteed funding it has enjoyed since 1989. The idea of cutting off a direct pipeline between hotel tax receipts and arts funding drew an immediate outcry from arts supporters, reminiscent of one in 2004 that stopped then-Mayor James K. Hahn from eliminating the Department of Cultural Affairs and putting arts operations under the Recreation and Parks Department instead.

The eight-month search for a new general manager for Los Angeles' Cultural Affairs Department was narrowed to a field of six finalists Wednesday, including the department's acting general manager and the head of San Francisco's Cultural Affairs Department. Officials are expected to choose the new manager in coming weeks. The administrator will replace former General Manager Fred Croton, who resigned last November after disclosures that he had lied on his resume.

When Alexander Andree lost his home to the recent Malibu fire, he thought about returning to his native Germany. His rented home had been destroyed along with 65 of his most recent paintings. But he decided to remain, rented another house and began to paint again. Nearly two months later, he will exhibit some of his works in "A Requiem for Malibu." The exhibition sponsored by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department will be at Galerie Cathedrale.

Budget Update: The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department fared relatively well in the $3-million grants pool and $1.7 million for a new Public Art Program left intact. But Bradley cut $477,205 from the budget requested by the department, which already reflected a 7% cut in the department's share of the city's general fund. The proposed budget, which will undergo lengthy City Council debate before reaching its final form in June, would give Cultural Affairs $10.

The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department has agreed to run a folk arts center at Banning Landing Community Center. For years, Wilmington residents asked the Port of Los Angeles to build a community center. Now that the $3-million facility is under construction, residents have been trying to figure out how the site should be managed. The Friends of Banning Landing recently accepted an offer from the Cultural Affairs Department to run the center.

The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department has scheduled a workshop today to provide information on a $17,000 grant that is available for art programs in the harbor area. The department issued $44,000 in grants for its regional arts program during the 1997-98 fiscal year, but the organization recently discovered that it had underfunded harbor-area programs.

A map of the world began taking shape on the pavement in front of Raymond Avenue Elementary School on Wednesday, the first phase of a partnership between the Pep Boys auto parts store and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. The program is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District's Facility Enhancement Program that Pep Boys is funding in three neighborhoods. In addition to South-Central Los Angeles, schools in Venice and Canoga Park will get an artistic overhaul.

The Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs is in the process of developing its first cultural master plan since 1991, and the agency wants your input. Along with holding community meetings throughout the city over the next few months, Cultural Affairs also invites the public to take an online survey detailing individual cultural activities, preferences and motivations. To take the survey, visit www.culturalplan.lacity.org. -- Diane Haithman

Pending the approval of the City Council, Mayor Villaraigosa has named Olga Garay to head the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. Most recently, Garay, 54, has been a New York-based independent producer and performing arts consultant. She is working with the Lincoln Center Festival in Manhattan to present Spanish-language theater. She is also involved in strategic planning for New York's Museo del Barrio and other arts groups.

City Hall may have dug itself a hole over an artwork on a shovel. Los Angeles artist John Outterbridge is unhappy that a piece the city commissioned for an exhibition four years ago was given as a going-away present last summer to Margie J. Reese, former general manager of the city's Cultural Affairs Department.

Margie J. Reese is leaving L.A. for Lagos, Nigeria, trading her job as the city government's top arts official for a position coordinating arts and cultural grant-making in West Africa for the Ford Foundation. Reese, 55, said Tuesday that the decision was not easy, even though she has been limited by lean budgets in her 5 1/2 years as general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department and had to fight off a proposed dissolution of the department in 2004.

What happens when you pay artists $10,000 each and invite them to spend it however they please? Ten years ago, local officials found out when the city of Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affairs began handing out so-called COLA grants to individual creative types. The only strings attached: In exchange for the money, each recipient would have to produce work the city could present in a public venue. The latest fruits of this annual experiment in nonbureaucratic arts funding are on view in "C.

Despite a 19.8% budget cut that sets L.A.'s arts funding back to where it stood eight years ago, the city's Cultural Affairs Department will try to preserve grants and after-school classes that its general manager, Margie J. Reese, considers inviolable. The department can "absolutely not" keep those core programs intact on its $9.5-million budget, down from $11.8 million in fiscal 2003-04, Reese says.

The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department is encouraging individuals and small or emerging arts organizations to apply for 55 grants ranging from $1,500 to $10,000. The goal of the 1999-2000 Regional Arts Grants is to support the creative arts through community participation. Dance, literary arts, photography, music, and the performing and visual arts are among the eligible disciplines.

Wanted: someone to operate Los Angeles Theatre Center. The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department has managed the city-owned downtown complex since the building's original operating company collapsed in 1991. But last week the department issued a request for proposals from any other interested parties who might like to take over. Applications are due June 17. The target date for the new operator to begin managing the building is Jan. 2.

During the 36th annual International Pow Wow -- a four-day travel industry trade show beginning today in Los Angeles -- the host city will be placing heavy emphasis on selling its art and culture to the world. Among the efforts to encourage Los Angeles tourism is a film project commissioned from CalArts by LA Inc., the city's convention and visitors bureau, that promotes Los Angeles as, in the words of LA Inc., "a vibrant cultural epicenter and edgy arts maverick."