The Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition has raised a total of $2,660,000 following catalyzing grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Teiger Foundation. The coalition serves 34 diverse neighborhoods across the city by representing 33 contemporary visual arts organizations, including Downtown destinations like the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Self Help Graphics, NAVEL, LA Artcore, JOAN, GYOPO and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
LAVA will now provide each member organization with $50,000 in unrestricted funds to support general operations, giving executive directors the freedom to determine how best to use the funds. The coalition will then issue a report to funders on the specific ways each organization used the deposits to expand their work and impact.
“It cannot be underestimated how impactful this coalition is not only for the immediate partner organizations but also for the larger cultural landscape of Los Angeles,” said Yoon Ju Ellie Lee, executive director at GYOPO, who is using the deposits to fund full-time positions, a first for the organization. “Small groups like ours struggle with the ability to employ staff due to the scarcity of funding opportunities for core operating support and unrestricted investment to grow and scale. LAVA’s trust in coalition members is trust in the potential of our evolving cultural landscape.”
LAVA was founded in 2020 to restructure the city’s ecosystem of artists, institutions and philanthropy by building a fundraising model that distributes resources across a collective. In 2022, the coalition’s membership body presented over 100 exhibitions and 1,240 public programs and welcomed over 350,000 visitors.
“What began as casual conversations during an unprecedented moment has transformed into a sustainable, scalable and nourishing coalition of mutual support and care,” said Anne Ellegood, executive director at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. “This is an opportunity for our entire chain, from arts workers to philanthropists, to redefine how we think about the Los Angeles arts and culture community.
“The existing models of fundraising often put us in competition with one another and can unwittingly create an atmosphere of scarcity. We are arguing for the value of all our organizations with the belief that there is ample capacity among a range of advocates and patrons to enable all of us to thrive. With LAVA, we are offering funders an unprecedented opportunity to work with us to create a new model and make their impact felt across Los Angeles, impacting diverse communities that truly represent the demographics of the county.”
Alongside the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Teiger Foundation, LAVA contributors include the Jerry and Terri Kohl Family Foundation, Krupp Family Foundation, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, Metabolic Studios and Betsy Greenberg.
As LA continues to endure the financial impacts of the pandemic and wanders through an uncertain economic environment, LAVA’s mutually supportive ecosystem stands as a financial safeguard helping to ensure the health of the city’s visual arts sector.
“At the heart of LAVA is the shared feeling that by elevating the value of mutual aid and deep collaboration, we can work together to create a transformative, radically transparent and intergenerational economic model that benefits us all,” said Laura Hyatt, executive director at Los Angeles Nomadic Division. “It really shifts the thinking away from organizations as competitive entities and supports efforts to change the field.”
In the past two years, the number of public program collaborations and cross-pollination of audiences among LAVA organizations has more than tripled. The coalition has also engaged in dialogues with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Arts for LA and Contemporary Art League to learn more about the contemporary art environment in LA County and build equity.
LAVA’s goal for the future is to provide health insurance to all 180 full-time and part-time employees working for the 33 member organizations by the end of 2023.
“We are proud to support a group that took matters into their own hands and saw how together was better for tackling the issues — exacerbated by but definitely predating COVID — shared by practically all small visual art nonprofits,” said Larissa Harris, executive director at the Teiger Foundation. “May the LAVA model spread far and wide!”
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