"I like having my art in a public space because you never know who you're going to help." —Dora De Larios On February 7 the Rowland Heights Library re-opened featuring a work from the county collection by the late artist Dora De Larios. The work is a plaster veneer bas relief which was originally created in 1978 when the library first opened.

The Department of Arts and Culture's Civic Art Program is pleased to present the 2016/17 Annual Report. In FY 2016/17, a total of 62 civic art projects were actively managed and covered 60 communities reaching over 8,500 community members throughout the County. Read The Report

Read our report on the 2016-17 Research and Evaluation Plan: what we did and why, and some key lessons we learned along the way.

In December, members of Americans for the Arts elected Clare Haggarty as a member of their advisory council for the Public Art Network Council. Haggarty will advise Americans for the Arts’ staff on developing programs and services that will build a deeper connection to the field and the network membership.

The LA County Arts Commission announces an addition to the County’s Civic Art Collection, a sculpture donated by renowned Mexican artist José Sacal. The artwork, which was originally created in 2012, honors two important women with roots in LA County, civil rights icon Dolores Huerta and LA County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis. Read the Full Release

Artist Sandy Rodriguez was placed as an artist in residence at the Recuperative Care Center at the Martin Luther King Medical Campus in Willowbrook, CA, in 2016/17. This residency was part of a $1.6 million investment in Civic Art funded through the LA County Percent for Art policy. A final evaluation report on the residency is available now.

LA County Board of Supervisors Appoints Arts Leader Kristin Sakoda as Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission releases findings from a 18-month survey of arts education in K-12 public schools.

The LA County Arts Education Profile survey was administered to all 2,277 public schools in LA County to learn about the quantity, quality and equity of arts education. We found that nearly every school offers at least some arts instruction, and most schools offer at least two disciplines. At the same time, we found troubling inequities that reflect disparities in the wider society. 

On Saturday, April 22, 2017, nearly 150 participants, speakers, volunteers, and observers assembled in downtown LA to spend the day exploring how data can be used to improve access to the arts for all ten million residents of Los Angeles County. This report tells the story of what we did, and provides a toolkit for others who want to do their own datathon.

Five recommendations included in the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative (CEII) report released by the Arts Commission in April 2017 have received funding by the LA County Board of Supervisors as part of the approved budget for Fiscal Year 2017-18.

Longtime Arts Innovator and Thought Leader Will Leave Current Role in July

Report includes 13 Actionable Strategies

This report outlines the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative, an 18-month public process that led to the development of 13 recommendations to the LA County Board of Supervisors to ensure that everyone in LA County has equitable access to arts and culture, and to improve inclusion in the wider arts ecology for all residents in every community. 

This study analyzes the demographics of the arts and cultural workforce in Los Angeles County—specifically, staff members, board, volunteers, and independent contractors associated with 386 cultural nonprofits, most of which receive funding from Arts and Culture, and/or seven other municipal funders in the County. The findings presented in this report are based on 3,307 unique responses to the DataArts Workforce Demographics survey, conducted from May 2016 - July 2016. Among the key findings: