Oil On Concrete
The Los Angeles County Garage of Art
by SHELLEY LEOPOLD
(Photos by Shelley Leopold)
In the next month or so, Los Angeles will lose perhaps it greatest (sanctioned) ode to public art: LACMAs parking garage, which is to be torn down to make room for the Eli Broad collections new home. If youve never paid close attention or the money to park inside nows the time to check out the celebration of street art it has become since October 2000, when husband and wife team Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen were commissioned to bomb the second floor of the structure in commemoration of the show Made in California.
Over the last five years, Kilgallens smoking, trudging, scowling women and McGees signature sad-sack faces and meticulously drawn messages have inspired uncoerced homages from several locally and internationally known artists: N.Y.-based graffiti trio FAILEs collage stencils; Spanish tagger PEZs bubbly alien figures, and Obey Giant guru Shepard Faireys looming wheat-paste policeman.
Others have left their marks, and their marks have left the building, thanks apparently to a new kind of art thief: a panel by Meta disappeared, and rumor has it that a mosaic by the French phenom Space Invader was chipped away.
And now the real chipping begins. Although LACMA officials say that all of the garage art has been photographed for the archives, no plans have been made to preserve any part of the actual structure.
On November 27, to acknowledge change at the museum, the top level of the parking structure will be opened to the public for a chalk-in celebration, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. People will be encouraged to contribute chalk drawings inspired by wall-projections of pieces from the museums collection. A DJ will add mood music. Its free.
Most graffiti fans and the artists themselves will likely argue that the beauty of street art is in its impermanence; that the destruction of the art left to LACMAs garage is a fitting end. But one can only hope that the energy and spirit used to create that art can live on in the new Eli Broad building or on it.
lucky klover 
funny – I was there this summer to see Tut exhibit (cool, although funky Tut himself wasn’t there)- Didn’t even know that stuff was on the walls – and I walked right through the garage- never saw it. Bummed.
exactly, who knew? no one ever told me, and i’ve never even been inside the parking deck cuz the times i’ve gone no one wants to pay for parking. and on my first visit to lacma, i didn’t even know the la brea tarpits were there. doh!