Transformation is Driven By Art … and Transportation
Cole Schiffer’s grandfather founded the 99Cent company which closed its doors in 2024 and sold its 350 store locations. But they held on to a block of property on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles which had been unused for a long time and Cole was given the keys and asked to see what he could do with it.
But who wants to move into neglected but cheap property? Artists of course. The office is now called Wilshire Online and is home to art and new media companies (including YACHT), the 99Cent store was the location of a show for a group of local artists that drew 30,000 visitors, the adjacent Johnie’s Diner was most recently used as Bernie Sanders’ LA campaign headquarters and may yet reopen as a restaurant.
It will certainly have to be preserved as an iconic example of Googie architecture - a term I had not heard before this week - a 50s to 70s futurist style with neon and bold shapes to attract motorists.
This corner of Wilshire and Fairfax is the heart of the area once known as Miracle Mile when developer A.W.Ross turned it into a car-centric shopping area in 1929 to challenge downtown LA. Everyone said he was crazy but the idea succeeded; hence the “miracle”.
Now it is called Museum Row with the Peterson Automotive Museum, the Academy Museum, LACMA (LA County Museum of Art), an oddball collection of galleries large and small, and the La Brea Tar Pits which have of course been here since Woolly Mammoths roamed the Earth and certainly before Henry Gaylord Wilshire donated land in 1895 to create his eponymous boulevard.
LACMA will soon open a completely new $750 million extension that snakes its concrete and glass bridge across Wilshire with more than its fair share of controversy - over budget, inexperienced architect, and hostile environment for art preservation - you can see a huge Matisse behind a southwest facing plate glass window that would become a curator’s nightmare
The huge plant-covered animal head by Jeff Koonz is internally irrigated and we’ll see how it fares in the Southern California summer heat.
There is a section from the Berlin Wall - some panels are untouched from the fall but others are a rotating works managed by the Wende Museum that focuses on “art and artifacts from the Cokd War era.”
We popped into the small Anat Egbi gallery and met artist Marc Dennis setting up a new show. I recognised him from a reflection of himself he’d added to one picture and we struck up an animated conversation. His works are exquisite reproductions of Ingres and Caravaggio with cheeky modern hyper-realistic additions - food, pets, love letters. Purchase here … https://www.artsy.net/artist/marc-dennis
This corner of LA will soon be more easily accessible with the opening of a station on the extended D-line metro west from Koreatown that will eventually reach the beach in Santa Monica. When Mr. Wilshire, then described as “an eccentric millionaire socialist”, donated this land he specified that it should bear his name and have a “park like character” but he banned railways or commercial trucking.
Hopefully he would not have objected to an underground railway that will bring people to his property.
