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Life & Times Transcript

08/23/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's a renowned work of art by an acclaimed artist. How did it turn into a blank wall?

Nathan Zakheim>> This is like, you know, chopping down Mount Rushmore or something large like that.

Kent Twitchell>> I'd never expected it because I knew it was a well-loved piece and it had become a landmark in Los Angeles.

Val Zavala>> And then, it's a natural treasure, but is it all that it can be? The debate over a makeover for Griffith Park.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> Take a look at this big blank wall on an old building in downtown Los Angeles. There's not a mark on it, right? And that's precisely the point. This big blank wall is nevertheless making a mark on art history.

Drive down Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles and, on the side of a government building, you'll see this. But only a short time ago, you would have seen this. This is, or was, a mural by one of Los Angeles's most accomplished and respected muralists, Kent Twitchell. He is also the artist who painted the giant portraits of musicians alongside the 110 Freeway and this mural in Torrance and this one at Viola University in La Mirada.

But these days, it's the mural he finished back in 1987 that is demanding his attention. That's because, whether by accident or intention, the mural is no more. It was painted over in June by a private contractor hired to repair the building.

I met Twitchell at his studio in Culver City. The news was especially painful, considering it took him nine years to paint the mural. He remembers back in the mid-1970s when he was a student at Otis College of Art and Design. He wanted to create a mural depicting a quintessential Los Angeles artist. He chose as his subject painter Ed Ruscha.

Kent Twitchell>> From that, I had to find a wall. The wall came to me suddenly from Cartwright, who was the director of Job Corps. I went and looked at the wall and I thought, "My God, this is the wall I've been lusting after for two years. This is perfect."

Val Zavala>> So how did the Ruscha mural get painted over? For that story, we turn to Nathan Zakheim. Zakheim conserves and restores works of art and he shares studio space with Twitchell. In fact, he was beginning the process of restoring the Ruscha mural earlier this summer when he noticed something happening.

Nathan Zakheim>> And guess what I saw was holes all over it, but were being patched. They had been knocked into it. There were twenty-five holes on the main figure and a total of forty-seven on the entire mural.

Val Zavala>> The holes were part of earthquake retrofitting. The contractor was Southern California Contractors.

Nathan Zakheim>> I came down there to tell them, oh, slow down. You're treading on dangerous cobras and snakes and whatnot. By that time, they'd painted it out. They started with the figure and started towards the background. If they'd started with the background, there would have been some point in stopping.

Val Zavala>> When Zakheim saw the workers about to paint over the mural, he tried to stop them.

Nathan Zakheim>> I went down on Friday. I got down there at eight o'clock in the morning and talked with the supervisor at the job site. He gave me his card. I told him that this was a disaster, you know. You're running your car right toward the brick wall. He said, "Oh, we got authorization. The federal government's paying. Orders to do it. We have no choice."

I said, "Give yourself a choice because at this point you're heading towards a brick wall." I said, "This is a protected mural. It's one of the great works of art. It's published in hundreds of books." I mean, it's not as though it's an unknown piece that won't be noticed if it's gone. This is like, you know, chopping down Mount Rushmore or something large like that.

Val Zavala>> The painters gave Zakheim their boss's phone number. He called and the secretary answered.

Nathan Zakheim>> The boss's secretary gave me his cell phone number (laughter), which she wasn't supposed to. I called him on his cell phone, which surprised him. I told him, "Look what you're doing. You'd better stop." He got really upset and hung up on me.

Kent Twitchell>> I'd never expected it because I knew it was a well-loved piece and it had become a landmark in Los Angeles.

Nathan Zakheim>> Started at eight, called him at ten and they didn't finish painting it out until probably six or seven at night, so they had plenty of warning.

Val Zavala>> Did you hear anything at all about the plans to paint over the mural?

Kent Twitchell>> I had no idea that there were any plans whatsoever to paint over the mural.

Val Zavala>> A federal law called the Visual Artists Right Act says that artists must be given ninety days notice before their work can be painted over.

Kent Twitchell>> Ninety days and, you know, I was against that law. I'm kind of a libertarian. I have a libertarian side to me, so I was against that law for a long time. Finally, Amy Neiman who was on the board of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles got me down one time and explained to me what that law really was. She read the law to me and I thought, oh, okay. In other words, the law says I can destroy your work, but I have to give you ninety days notice. So I thought, oh, gee, okay.

Val Zavala>> The owner of a building or whatever does have the right to paint over murals, but they have to --

Kent Twitchell>> -- that all it is. It isn't any kind of tyrannical thing at all. It's very reasonable. It's just like any other law. It's enforced good manners. That's all it is.

Val Zavala>> A couple of weeks later, Twitchell filed a five and one half million dollar lawsuit against eight parties connected to the mural, including Southern California Contractors. Life and Times contacted the company, but they declined to comment on the case which is in litigation. We also contacted the Department of Labor, who owns the building, and the YWCA, who runs the Job Corps program here. All declined to comment, given the pending lawsuit.

And this is not the first time that Kent Twitchell has had to sue over the loss of one of his murals. In 1986, another of his murals called "Our Woman of the Freeway" was painted over by a billboard company. Twitchell sued and won.

Kent Twitchell>> The property owner had to pay, but it was not possible to restore it. We were restoring it and then graffiti vandals hit.

Val Zavala>> Twitchell admits that protecting murals in Los Angeles is no easy task, but it's rare that contractors are at fault. The most common threat to Los Angeles's two thousand murals is graffiti vandals.

Kent Twitchell>> The graffiti vandals have just literally taken over Los Angeles and the mural movement is all but dead as a result of that.

Val Zavala>> The saddest part of the story is that it all could have been avoided.

Nathan Zakheim>> Oh, it would have been a total happy ending to the story. Actually, Kent would have been enhanced by them taking so much care to do the work that had to be done on the building legally and preserving the mural and bringing it up to speed also, for which we already had a contract.

Val Zavala>> Even if Twitchell wins his lawsuit, it can't replace the effort he invested in the sixty foot Ruscha portrait. He worked over nine years without a commission in stops and starts, scraping together a little money here and a small grant there. And what does Twitchell hope to gain from a lawsuit?

Kent Twitchell>> There are two things that I want. I want the mural restored.

Val Zavala>> How about repainting it?

Kent Twitchell>> Repainting it would be the second. Luckily, I have all the original photographs that I'd taken of Ed Ruscha. I don't throw anything away. I think, even more than that is the notion that people can come in to a city and just have their way with what we hold dear.

I think if I didn't -- you know, with all the feedback I've gotten, if I didn't fight, I would be ridden out of town on a rail by people in the art conservancy because I've been thrown into a situation where I represent all the artists of Los Angeles and certainly all the public artists.

Val Zavala>> But for the time being, Los Angeles has one fewer Kent Twitchell mural and one more freshly painted building.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> It's settled. Students in California will have to pass an exit exam if they want a high school diploma, but that decision came after several years of lawsuits and wrangling of groups that claimed the exit exam was not fair to students who were in poor or inferior schools. But a State Appeals Court rejected that argument and upheld exit exams.

We brought three opinionated people together in the kitchen of CommUnity Advocates president, David Lehrer. Joining Lehrer are Virgil Roberts, education advisor to Mayor Villaraigosa, and John Rogers from UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.

David Lehrer>> Virgil, as someone who's been in the civil rights business and education reform for thirty years, why do you favor the high school exit exam?

Virgil Roberts>> Well, I favor the high school exit exam because I think it really is an easy way to spotlight schools that are working and schools that are not. America is drawn to action by crisis and what the exam does is that it's really demonstrated in a very clear way the failure of a whole K-12 system of education. I think it's that failure that will mobilize people to really begin to take action and make the schools accountable. If we take away the exam, then how do we know the schools aren't working?

David Lehrer>> So you look at it as a measure or as a wakeup call to say something is wrong and let's deal with the problem.

Virgil Roberts>> That's right.

David Lehrer>> And the problem is not the exam, but the underlying deficiencies?

Virgil Roberts>> That's correct.

David Lehrer>> So why, as someone who's committed to civil rights and equity, why don't you buy that argument?

John Rogers>> Well, I buy it in part. I think it's more appropriate for the adults in the system who have not yet done well by the students to be held accountable first before we put that pressure on the students.

David Lehrer>> Does it bother you that you're giving kids high school diplomas to say they've accomplished something for thirteen years in school and they can't even pass an eighth and ninth grade test?

John Rogers>> I think the most unfair thing to those kids is to provide them with an inadequate education for years and years, which we've done. So at this point, for a young person who's seventeen or eighteen who's stuck it out under very difficult conditions for all those years, who's gone to school, done what their teachers have told them to do, I think the most appropriate thing is to give them a graduation certificate and then encourage them strongly to move on to higher education and to get those skills. I don't want young people without the skills to be successful.

David Lehrer>> Yeah, but isn't it an argument that maybe it acts as a kind of prod, the way Virgil suggested? I mean, I looked at the data. African-American students increased by almost a third their passage rates between the tenth and twelfth grade, so maybe they realize, you know, they're under the gun and maybe I really ought to crack down and figure out how to pass these exams.

Virgil Roberts>> That's what I think. You know, an interesting sort of microcosm with the story is what happened with NC2A. When NC2A began to say that you can't admit kids to Division One to participate in athletics unless they have a 2.0, guess what happened? All of a sudden, athletes start getting 2.0s because there was pressure to perform. I mean, the problem is not a lack of intelligence in kids.

In some cases, the schools are not accountable, the kids are not accountable, and I think this first year which really counts has been an eye-opener for students and an eye-opener for parents. I think this exam is bringing it home and I think you'll see kids starting to buckle down and realize, you know, I really need to study because I want my diploma.

John Rogers>> When we've gone out in the schools, there certainly is more focus on graduation and I think that's the really good thing. But I think the first step is to provide decent conditions. There's an interesting school down in San Diego that was started by a colleague of mine, Bud Meehan, at the University of California San Diego. It's a charter school called the Troy School.

In that school, the school was created to serve first generation college-going students, young people who were coming from working class or poor families. Students entered the school early on and had a lot of support. By tenth grade, almost all the students passed. By eleventh grade, all the students had passed the exit exam.

David Lehrer>> Doesn't legislation provide for remedial courses and I think now, after you leave high school, you can take courses at junior colleges? So if a kid is motivated and they felt that they were short-changed, there are avenues for them to compensate and to get the diploma.

John Rogers>> The legislation and the governor have put in money for some remediations, but it's coming in way too late. And to have remediation on top of a program that's fundamentally broken, this is not the right way to go about education reform. You want to ensure that there are decent conditions in elementary schools and middle schools so young people can enter high school ready to pass the exam.

Virgil Roberts>> See, remediation is sort of like giving somebody Vicodin for cancer. What it does is, it makes you feel better, but you're dying. What we have is a school system that basically is dying. It's failing us as a public utility. We're not producing the kinds of educated youngsters that we need for a civil society, for democracy, that can compete in a global economy.

To continue to put a few band-aids on without really fundamentally changing the system is not going to help us as a society. You know, the analogy might be that we're in a war to try and make things better. I hate to say it, but in wars, you sometimes have casualties. What we have right now is thirty years of casualties.

I got involved with the Los Angeles school desegregation case in 1978 when it was remanded back to try and implement the segregation plan. From then until now, the performance of kids in the system has gotten progressively worse and there's been no clarion call to action.

You know, we've had things in our community, you know, the LEARN school reform effort and others. We've had marches and we've had protests, but we simply have not been able to penetrate the public's understanding that we have a crisis that we have to address. I think these exams help to do that.

John Rogers>> And I think that the inequalities that have been around over the last thirty years have gotten worse because, over that period, the climate of scarcity within California schools and Los Angeles schools has grown. In 1978, we had Proposition 13 and the bottom fell out of our funding system. California moved from being in the top tier of funding to now where we're at forty-third.

As a consequence, we have forty percent more students in every high school classroom than the national average. We are not providing decent conditions to all of our students and then they get redistributed in ways that are unfair.

David Lehrer>> But I think Virgil's argument is fairly compelling. I mean, you're testing for lower level skills. You can have six times to take the exam and sometimes you only have to get half the answers right. I mean, that's kind of like a baseline and if suddenly the headlines are that, you know, eighty-five percent are passing and fifty percent aren't passing that kind of diminutive test, that something really needs to be done.

One would assume that parents would start saying, "What do we do to make these schools right?" Kids will be yelling and screaming and saying, "I didn't get a proper education." But if you didn't have the exam, let's say, you're wish was granted and didn't have the exam, what would be the catalyst for this kind of change? Virgil's been in the business for thirty years.

Virgil Roberts>> We wouldn't have this program. We wouldn't talk about the failure of the system like it's brand new. This is not a brand new problem. This is a long-standing problem, but the exam has really brought it to the headlines of the public and made people focus on it.

John Rogers>> But I think the question is not whether or not you have an exam and report on those results. The question is, who should be held accountable for the failure? I would argue that --

David Lehrer>> -- I will be held accountable for the end of this segment. Thank you very much, John. Thank you, Virgil. I think we're going to help keep this in the news and maybe we'll one day solve this problem.

Virgil Roberts>> Keep it in the news.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> It's been called both majestic and shabby. It is Los Angeles's forty-two hundred acre Griffith Park and it's in need of a makeover. So the question is, can hikers, golfers, bikers, tourists, kids, wildlife, equestrians and pedestrians all get along? As Toni Guinyard tells us, the debate over Griffith Park's future has already begun.

Joseph Drabinski>> It's very unusual to have this large of an untouched natural area in the middle of urban sprawl.

Bernadette Soder>> This kind of environment we're in now can never be reproduced and, once it's gone, it's gone.

Joseph Drabinski>> People realize that this is a park. This is a great urban wilderness, emphasis on the wilderness. People think Central Park is big. We dwarf Central Park.

Toni Guinyard>> Griffith Park is the largest urban park in the United States. While it may not look as if it's under attack, some people believe it's in danger and needs to be saved, and this is what they want to save the park from. It's a Draft Master Plan, a guide filled with proposals on ways to improve and manage the park for the next twenty-five or so years. It was put together for the City Recreation and Parks Department by a consulting firm at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars.

Bernadette Soder>> When they opened the plan, we were surprised to see that more than two-thirds of it dealt with new developments and commercialization in the park.

Toni Guinyard>> Bernadette Soder chairs the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council's Parks, River and Open Space Committee. It's one of several community groups that expected the draft to reflect residents' demands for preservation and sustainability. She and others complained the one hundred ninety-four page document focuses too much on development.

Bernadette Soder>> Well, they're planning to make the park a lot more commercial, many more places where, if you're coming to Griffith Park, you will need to bring your wallet and you will need to spend money to be here.

Toni Guinyard>> And in Soder's opinion, the thought of widening some streets, building aerial tramways, parking structures and a culinary school is a far cry from what the park's namesake had in mind and far from what park visitors can imagine.

Mateo Gadioli>> I visit so many other cities, European and South American and Asian, but to have such an amazing park ten minutes from downtown is something that, to me, is wonderful.

Toni Guinyard>> The land that is Griffith Park was donated to the city by Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith. The Welsh immigrant earned his riches investing in mining and, with this gift of land and the money to build the Griffith Observatory and Greek Theatre, he left his mark on southern California.

In 1896, Colonel Griffith gave the people of Los Angeles three thousand fifteen acres of his estate. He wanted it to be used as park land. Now over the years, different attractions have been added and more land has been donated. Now the city of Los Angeles is evaluating how best to utilize Griffith Park in the years to come.

Tom Labonge>> You know, it's like when you go to your doctor and you get a physical, he goes through everything. So what we're doing is going through and getting maybe a physical for Griffith Park to see what needs to be done to strengthen the park, to protect the park, to enhance the park, but not to damage the park at all.

Toni Guinyard>> The physical that Los Angeles City Councilman Tom Labonge refers to is the Draft Master Plan. A long-time park user, Labonge pushed for the 1978 Griffith Park Master Plan to be updated. Although he now finds himself at odds with some of his constituents who have sounded a rallying cry to save Griffith Park --

Tom Labonge>> I would like to see more sports fields.

Toni Guinyard>> -- he agrees with some of their criticisms.

Tom Labonge>> I was disappointed about the length of this process. I was disappointed about how the draft was written in a lot of ways, some of those issues, because I saw an original idea that said a tram from the Toyon Canyon to the zoo. That's unacceptable. It doesn't work and it should not have been in the draft at all. It should have been erased. A culinary school or a hotel should not have been in there. A thing called the "Pleasure Pier" over the river should not have been in there. But it was in there and it's caused this discussion.

Toni Guinyard>> It's a discussion that so angered so many that the councilman asked the City Recreation and Parks Department to form a working group with community members.

Bernadette Soder>> We're trying once and for all to resolve the question of what is the purpose and function of Griffith Park so that every thirty-five or forty years the community won't have to rally and fight to preserve Griffith Park.

Gerry Hans>> I'm afraid of the privatization, of making connections with outside corporations to run various vending opportunities, the "Disneyfication" of Griffith Park. Once that gets going, who knows where it could go?

Toni Guinyard>> Gerry Hans and his wife, Mary Button, are runners. They own a business, RaceReady, a short distance away from the park. When they are here, they're often there training.

Mary Button>> There's not enough green land. There's too much, as they say, paving of paradise and putting up parking lots. I just want to try and protect, you know, the beautiful, natural area that we have.

Toni Guinyard>> What are you afraid of?

Mary Button>> I'm afraid of having it get developed.

Toni Guinyard>> The couple points out that L.A. Sports and Fitness magazine named Griffith Park a top spot for its running trails. They want the Draft Master Plan to reflect the interest of runners, but they say it does not.

Gerry Hans>> The public is basically demanding that the Master Plan be rewritten the way the people of Los Angeles would like it to read.

Toni Guinyard>> Joseph Drabinski first visited Griffith Park when he was in the fifth grade. Now he's a Senior Park Ranger. He's been with the Recreation and Parks Department for seventeen years, seven stationed here at Griffith Park.

Joseph Drabinski>> Some people tell me I have the best job in the world and I'd have to agree with them. There's a lot of interest in this park. Just like Los Angeles is a melting pot, Griffith Park is a melting pot of interest. Equestrian, tennis playing, golfing, concert goers, hikers.

Toni Guinyard>> He knows, perhaps more than most, that this park represents more than simply a place to escape. He also understands the conflict over the Draft Master Plan as simply an attempt by everyone who has a stake in the park to protect what they consider to be their own.

Joseph Drabinski>> You name it, we have it, and everyone has their own interests. It's human nature to protect what you have. It's human nature to be, you know, a little bit wary of change. So when they see change coming along, they obviously think something is going to be taken away from them.

Toni Guinyard>> But pleasing all of the interested parties is already proving to be tough. Critics believe the draft is being driven by efforts to make money.

Bernadette Soder>> That was one of the complaints about the Master Plan, that the existing user groups in the park were not having their needs addressed in that plan, because the plan seemed to be chasing other users, new users, users who have money.

Tom Labonge>> When they talk about commercialization, I think that's when confusion with the working group is that there has to be some reality that the city needs to have a certain amount of revenue to run the park.

Toni Guinyard>> The working group is now rewriting portions of the Draft Master Plan to emphasize preservation and, despite the differing visions of what Griffith Park should be in the future, all sides seem to agree on one thing: this is a very special place.

Joseph Drabinski>> It's essentially our back yard.

Toni Guinyard>> A park blanketing more than forty-two hundred acres surrounded by cement, bordered by streets and freeways, homes and businesses, an oasis in the heart of the city. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

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