LA Plaza Opens Its Doors to LA's Mexican History
Eric Richardson / blogdowntown
LA Plaza's innaugural exhibit, LA Starts Here!, speaks to the role Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles from its founding in 1781 to the present.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — If their walls could talk, Main Street's Vickrey-Brunswig Building and Plaza House could tell quite the tale of Los Angeles' evolution. Two of the city's oldest structures, the structures have stood since 1888 and 1883, respectively.
They make an appropriate home for LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, a cultural center dedicated to Los Angeles' Mexican American heritage. After a decade in development, the center's doors finally open to the public on Saturday.
Intentionally named a "cultural center" and not a "museum," the story the center sets out to tell is an ongoing one, stretching from the city's founding in 1781 to the present-day. That range is encompassed in inaugural exhbition LA Starts Here!, which occupies the ground floor of the two buildings.
Upstairs, Calle Principal offers children an interactive view of life in early L.A., with aspects such as fashion and medicine the focus of "shops" along the recreated Main Street.
It is the center's garden that has been in the news in recent months as Native American groups protested the excavation of bones from what had been one of the city's earliest cemeteries. The conflict continues, but tight security made sure no protesters would get near a Friday morning ribbon cutting.
The morning's featured speaker was County Supervisor Gloria Molina, the woman who has championed the LA Plaza project for the last ten years. Speaking in Spanish, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa praised Molina as a "luchadora" who didn't know the meaning of the word no.
Tickets for Saturday's opening day festivities are sold out, but Sunday tickets are still available. The center will be open noon to 7pm, Wednesday through Monday. Admission is $9 for adults and $5 for children five and over.
downtown vibe on April 15, 2011, at 09:02PM – #1
It's always nice to see physical improvements downtown, but this project should have been included in a larger "Los Angeles History Museum."
Claiming Olvera Street for latinos, when the area was also an important cultural center for American Indians, Italians, and Chinese, is insulting in modern day Los Angeles. It smells like voter pandering.
We need politicians that will work to unify the diverse cultures of LA.
It's time for a paradigm shift...and new leadership.
William Crandell on April 16, 2011, at 07:58PM – #2
What of the French and the now forgotten French Quarter? In the third decade of the city's 19th Century experience, Louis Vignes wrought a veritable Gaullic invasion, long before any Chinese or Japanese arrived.
downtown vibe on April 19, 2011, at 04:26PM – #3
Thats exactly what I'm talking about!
The building of a cultural center at Olvera Street, that focuses only on the Latino contributions to Los Angeles, is rewriting history by a process of omission.
The message is...
"We were here first, Our political power as a voting block should be expanded, and this must be true, because we have a museum at Olvera St."
This project was more about politics than history.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo on July 09, 2011, at 10:13AM – #4
What's wrong with having culturally focused centers? It's important for different Los Angeles communities to have a place where they can learn about their history and contributions.
I don't hear anyone having a problem with the Japanese National Museum in Little Tokyo. I'm not Japanese, but I love that museum. Their exhibit on interment is fantastic! Plus, JANM along with Self-help Graphics have both done exhibits on Boyle Heights including the Jewish, Japanese and Latino communities that have come through the area. So no one is pretending like these other cultures don't exist or had a hand in building the city.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating our individual contributions because the mainstream isn't going to do it.
William Crandell on July 09, 2011, at 01:46PM – #5
"It's always nice to see physical improvements downtown, but this project should have been included in a larger "Los Angeles History Museum."
YES!
Simply consider the County Museum of Natural History in Expo Park and how its history department is hidden away in the basement and how so much of its history collection isn't able to be displayed, given the limited gallery space. This is particularly true in the case of the Coronel Collection. Patt Morrison has written that we need a separate building to be dedicated to the city's and the region's history and why not the Julia Morgan designed Herald Examiner Building on Broadway? It's not too ironic that the entrance lobby was inspired by the Baroque era - for the baroque mind of quite a baroque citizen named William Randolph Hearst.
If the interior of the building (its mind, so to speak) were to be gutted (leaving the lobby intact), including the walls and roof and also remove the back or west wall of the building, what could Thom Mayne's group or Frank Gehry's outfit do for us for a new museum? Or a collaboration between Frank and James Turrell? I think that one of the present owners of the building was the developer who renovated the Oviatt, Fine Arts and Wiltern Buildings. I'm not sure; who owns this building? As we look way into the city's future, we should ask why should there be housing or office space within or adjacent to this building when the possibility of memory is considered? Particularly in a city where memory has been so low on the radar, thanks in part to James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler and Robert Towne.
The W.P.A. scale model of depression era downtown in particular needs to be given prominence and if that baroque lobby is large enough, then put old Downtown on display right in there in 3-D. And hang a few evocative, haunting works by James Doolin on the walls, too. L.A. needs to fall in love with the idea of itself.
How about another new museum - in addition to a new convention center and stadium? Lead the charge, Patt; i'm only a landscape architect
BobbyD on July 23, 2011, at 06:03PM – #6
La Plaza De Cultura y Artes is using the building to (falsly) teach mexicans than Spain was never here and that all of Los Angeles is due to mexicans, nobody else. A museum for them should be called Los Angeles Liars Museum.