L.A. Gets First For-Profit Museum of AI
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| Frank Gehry, The Grand Los Angeles, with Disney Hall at right. (Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio) |
This week it was announced that Grand Avenue is to have another cultural attraction: Dataland, billed as the first artificial intelligence art museum. To open in 2025, it's helmed by L.A.-based AI artist Refik Anadol. One unusual aspect of the project has been mentioned only in passing. Dataland will be a for-profit museum, financed by real estate developer Related California.
Los Angeles has a tradition of artists starting DIY museums. Think Noah Davis' Underground Museum, Alice Könitz's Los Angeles Museum of Art, and David and Diana Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology. Operating from a storefront (less, in Könitz's case), these are indie museums.
In comparison Anadol's Dataland will be a blockbuster. It will occupy 20,000 square feet in Related California's Frank Gehry-designed Grand L.A. mixed-use development. To put that in perspective, MOCA Grand Ave. has only about 25,000 square feet of exhibition space.
Anadol might be called the Dale Chihuly of AI. His art has been embraced by gatekeepers and a broad public while being dismissed by some of the more rigorous critics. Yet it seems unlikely that Anadol's pop appeal could sustain a museum long-term. Save for the wax celebrities and believe-it-or-not types, museums are not self-supporting. The Guardian reports that Anadol "is open to moving in a non-profit direction if the new venture can secure the patrons who would make that possible."
The backstory is that Grand Avenue has succeeded as a freeway-commutable cultural district while failing at building a walkable street life—something not much associated with Los Angeles, and certainly not with Downtown. Though Grand L.A.'s residential towers are close to fully leased, street life remains elusive. As one index of that, the Broad museum has outperformed attendance expectations and is planning an expansion just nine years after its opening. But its acclaimed restaurant, Otium, closed this month.
My reading is that Related California did not want the embarrassment of vacant retail spaces and thus offered to sponsor Anadol's project. I guess there are worse ways for corporations to support the arts. It does however raise the question of what happens when the corporate money runs out.
Comments
> with Los Angeles, and certainly not
> with Downtown
I once theorized that the different street life and city scene of San Francisco fostered a better cultural life while doing just the opposite to LA. I still think that's partly true, but the two major urban areas of Calif over the past 80 years haven't evolved in exactly the way I'd have predicted were I alive in, say, 1950 or 1970.
However, I do believe the cultural scene in Paris (including its museums) is greatly helped because more locals and tourists alike do want to interact with a physically attractive, remarkable environment. Or a lesson not quite as important through the decades to people in LA and the US, now made worse by issues of crime and grime.
Recommended for those curious about Bunker Hill, which was not a slum: go to the Children's section at Central Library and look at the two newly installed galleries of Leo Politi's neighborhood protest paintings. They are magnificent and enraging.
> Bunker Hill, which was not a slum:
If it wasn't a slum (eg, Calcutta or Tijuana), it also wasn't a great-looking place either. By the standards of cities with the bones of a Paris or Amsterdam, etc, LA hasn't been running on all pistons. Although that's long been a characteristic of other American cities too.
> ...‘They’re going to be so surprised,
> because we’re a little bit written off in
> that sense,’ but when you see [LACMA]
> it might be the latest, greatest thing,
> but really what it is, is what’s
> accumulated from SoFi stadium …
> to the Lucas Museum opening, the
> Academy Museum that’s already
> open and Metro is going to be open.
> Casey [Wasserman] always says
> that it’s just going to be a revelation
> and we’re going be a key part of it
> [as] one of the biggest and, I would
> say, most ambitious.”