‘An ode to Altadena': LA arts community bands together to support fire-ravaged neighborhood

The Guardian

23-02-2025

A charred baby Slinky, a handful of book ash, blackened cowrie shells from a necklace made in Ghana. These are some of the remnants of precious things the artist Kenturah Davis has salvaged from what is left of her Altadena home.
Nearby, there is virtually nothing left of her parents' home of 40 years. Gone are her mother's intricately stitched quilts and a trove of paintings and sketches Davis's father made of Hollywood backlots during his decades of working on television and movie sets.
In the face of such enormous personal loss, the artist and her parents are taking part in efforts to preserve the legacy of Altadena, recording their stories for an audio project organised by the Black Trustee Alliance in collaboration with Frieze Art Fair. 'The more I talk to people, the more important it feels to find ways to uplift and sustain the special quality that Altadena has,' Davis says. The artist grew up in the neighbourhood, moving back in 2022 to raise her son there. 'It meant everything to give my child the same environment I had growing up,' she says.
Land Memories, as the project is called, is intended as 'an ode to Altadena', says Diane Jean-Mary, the executive director of the Black Trustee Alliance. It will focus on the history of the town as a place where a diverse, creative community has blossomed since the 1960s and 70s when Black families, prevented from buying homes elsewhere in the state, put down roots in the town. As the artist Dominique Moody says in her recording for the archive, it 'was one of the few places where African Americans could actually buy a home … These people were really visionaries and made Altadena this rich, vibrant place.'
Black families have also been disproportionately affected by the deadly Eaton fire. But, as Jean-Mary points out, in California, no one is immune. 'Everyone here is affected by some of the implications for climate change on the arts,' she adds. 'And, in Los Angeles, arts and entertainment power the entire city. The cultural sector is the economy.'
There is now a sense of urgency in protecting Altadena's legacy – the question for many residents is whether to stay and rebuild the community or leave. Within days of the fire, one burned-out plot reportedly sold for $100,000 over the asking price and concerns are growing that developers may move in quickly and price people out. 'Oftentimes following these events, people move, and they move quickly,' says Christine Messineo, the director of Americas at Frieze, the celebrated contemporary art fair taking place in four cities worldwide each year. 'How the neighbourhood might look in the coming months and years is unpredictable.'
A collaborative spirit informs most of the community-based projects unfolding across Los Angeles as Frieze opens this week – many of them concerned with supporting those affected by the wildfires. Outside the entrance to the fair, Lauren Halsey has created an 'art booth' in collaboration with her fellow Angeleno artist Alake Shilling and students from Bret Harte preparatory middle school in South Central Los Angeles and the Rosebud academy in Altadena, which is among several schools severely damaged or destroyed in the fires.
The booth also flags Halsey's non-profit organisation Summaeverythang, which provides free, organic produce to residents in her South Central neighbourhood. Next year, she aims to open a $3m community centre on her street designed by the Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor. It will be 'a safe haven, a paradise', as Halsey calls it, for local students.
Los Angeles' artists are at the heart of several initiatives to aid the cultural recovery of the city. Three top museums – the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles – are establishing a joint acquisition fund of $75,000 to support local artists showing at Frieze. 'It's unprecedented for three museums in the same city to come together like this,' Messineo says. The initiative has been spearheaded by the local venture capital investor and collector Jarl Mohn.
This and the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund are testament to the 'strikingly collaborative community' in Los Angeles, says Katherine E Fleming, the president and chief executive of the J Paul Getty Trust, which operates LA's Getty Center and Getty Villa museums. The trust launched the emergency fund in the days after the fire to support artists and art workers who lost their homes and studios. With the help of donors including the Gagosian gallery, Frieze, East West Bank – which is headquartered in Pasadena – and some of Hollywood's biggest names, including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, that fund has reached $14m, surpassing its initial $12m target.
The scale of devastation on artists' lives and careers is still largely unknown. Many are simply trying to survive. The artist Christina Quarles, whose home burned down in Altadena, along with a second that she and her partner owned next door, says they are currently being turned down from every Airbnb they apply for. 'I think the ones that are left are kind of shady and when they find out that we have a toddler, they reject us,' she says. Quarles has already had to postpone a major exhibition with her gallery Hauser & Wirth because of an earlier fire at her property last year. 'It's hard to think about working when we don't know where we will be living next month,' she adds.
The Getty Villa, located in Pacific Palisades and where Frieze Los Angeles usually hosts its opening gala, narrowly avoided damage when flames crept up to just six feet from its walls. Staff battled the fire using handheld extinguishers. 'I wasn't fearful for our collection, but I was fearful for the people who were hellbent on remaining on site,' Fleming says. The Palisades fire ultimately spared the villa and its 44,000-item collection, though its grounds are charred.
'It's surreal how pristine the collections are. I went in the day after the worst of it, and you could run a white glove over the surfaces and nothing would have come off on it,' Fleming says. 'But the gardens are in a pretty severe state. Until we know what the chemical composition of all the detritus is, we're going to move cautiously.' She estimates the villa will remain shut for another two to three months.
Far more pressing is the fate of the Getty Villa's neighbours. 'It is going to take several years for some version of the neighbourhood to come back, so we are figuring out what is an appropriate way of continuing without it feeling like it's business as usual. On the other hand, the city needs support and life more than ever – it's really a question of how we might offer our museum as a resource and space of refuge,' Fleming says.
Frieze grappled with similar questions when deciding to go ahead with the fair. Messineo says the executive team 'very much took cues' from their peers in Los Angeles. 'There was a rallying cry across cultural institutions and organisations who said, 'LA needs you.' It felt more urgent to gather and galvanise and Frieze has always been a moment for that kind for gathering,' she says.
A gathering point it may be, but in the lead-up to the fair some galleries voiced concerns that few collectors would be in the mood to buy. Faced with financial uncertainty and shipping issues, a handful of dealers pulled out ahead of the opening. Nonetheless, sales rolled in at a brisk pace during the first day, with dealers including Hauser & Wirth, David Kordansky and Mariane Ibrahim reporting to have sold out their booths. The London dealer Victoria Miro has given over her stand to a group of galleries that are selling works in aid of the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund; on Friday, it reported tens of thousands of dollars in sales.
The wildfires have caused others to take drastic action with their business models. Two weeks after the disaster, the Los Angeles gallery Various Small Fires, which went 100% solar 10 years ago, announced it would not take part in any art fairs in 2025 in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint. 'There has been too much talk and too little action in the art world. We've had a total disregard for our planet in building this ecosystem, and that must stop,' says the gallery's founder, Esther Kim Varet, adding that the profitability of fairs is also an issue.
Varet now intends to run as a Democrat in California's 40th congressional district with the aim of unseating the Republican representative, Young Kim, in 2026. It is a 'necessary move' in a 'crucial moment in American history', the dealer says.
It is a critical moment for Los Angeles too. And, amid the mourning, there are pockets of hope. Quarles says the 'optimistic part' of her can see a road ahead for Altadena where rebuilding on a mass scale could incorporate affordable housing, a commitment to diversity and equality, and, crucially, the ability to withstand more fires. 'Because, of course, climate change means this is just going to keep happening,' she says.
If there is one possible positive outcome, Quarles adds: 'It's for us to become an example for communities around the world in how to rebuild in a way that upholds the ethos of Altadena.'