BY MIKE BOEHM from the LA Times
Danielle Brazell, whose job over the past eight years has included regularly prodding City Hall to spend more money and pay more attention to L.A.’s nonprofit arts scene, has been nominated by Mayor Eric Garcetti to take charge of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the agency that receives the relatively limited financial support the city does allocate.
Brazell has been executive director of the Arts for L.A. advocacy group since 2006. As the department’s general manager, she would preside over a staff of 38 full-time and 80 part-time employees.
With a current core budget of about $9 million from local taxes, the department oversees the city’s grants to artists, arts groups and cultural festivals, and operates such landmark sites as the Watts Towers, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House and the neighboring Municipal Art Gallery.
It also oversees the commissions of public artworks funded by real estate development fees and an array of city-owned arts centers and theaters, including the downtown Los Angeles Theatre Center, whose operations are often contracted to nonprofit operators. The budgeted salary for the general manager is $208,737.
If the City Council confirms her, Brazell would become the fifth general manager the Department of Cultural Affairs has had since it was created in the 1980s, and the first to have grown up and pursued her entire arts career in L.A.
“Danielle has the experience and passion to lead the department into a new era that showcases our talent, inspires our youth, and supports our creative economy,” Garcetti said in a written statement Thursday announcing Brazell’s nomination. “Arts shouldn’t be an afterthought
“I’m thrilled to catalyze this vision, ” Brazell said in the statement.
Garcetti’s first budget proposal as mayor calls for allocating $9.5 million from tax coffers for salaries, grants and supplies in the coming 2014-15 fiscal year, up 6.3% from current levels.
Brazell said in an interview that she has been impressed by Garcetti’s emphasis on having all city departments take into account how arts and creativity can tie in with their work.
As head of Arts for L.A., Brazell has sometimes helped to mobilize arts backers against government proposals that threatened arts funding. In 2010, when City Hall was facing a large post-recession budget deficit, the group helped parry a series of initiatives that would have threatened arts funding or privatized operations at a number of city-run venues.
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Photo above by Dietmar Quistorf: Danielle Brazell of Arts for LA, a nonprofit that has office space in the AT&T Center, the home of Classical KUSC.
