How the Los Angeles Fires Have Affected the Art World

Though the fires are still burning, we’re starting to get an understanding of just how devastating the damage is for Los Angeles. In the arts-and-culture community, dozens of people, if not hundreds, have lost their homes, and in some cases decades’ worth of artwork—artists lost their studios and personal holdings, while collectors lost their entire troves.

The artist Kathryn Andrews, who lost her home, has been on Instagram actively reporting on fellow artists who saw their houses or studios go up in flames in the different wildfires. In posts on Friday, she listed the following artists as having lost their homes or studios: Analia Saban, Kelly Akashi, Daniel Mendel-Black, Kate Mosher Hall, Amir Nikravan, Christina Quarles, John Knuth, Salomón Huerta, Adam Ross, Beatriz Cortez, Asher Hartman, Alice Könitz, Molly Tierney, Marwa Abdul-Rahman, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Mark Whalen, Jean Robison, Rebecca Baron, Rachelle Sawatsky, Grayson Revoir, Camilla Taylor, Tara Walters, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, and Andy Ouchi, as well as married couples Diana Thater and T. Kelly Mason and Jill Spector and Bret Nicely. These are just the ones Andrews was able to confirm—she added that she’s aware “of a few others but [is] awaiting official confirmation before posting.”

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The curator Paul Schimmel took to Instagram to announce that he had lost his home, and the dealer John Cheim did the same. On Friday, Blum & Poe cofounder Jeff Poe announced that his Malibu home had been destroyed. The artists Ross Simonini and Alec Egan told The New York Times that they’d lost their homes and studios—Egan had just completed a full show of work that was set to go on view at LA gallery Anat Ebgi later this month. The artist Paul McCarthy lost the Altadena home he’d lived in for decades, and his daughter, the dealer Mara McCarthy, told the Times that he would postpone his upcoming show with Hauser & Wirth in London. She also lost her home, as did her brother, Damon McCarthy.

The artist Ruby Neri and the artist Torbjørn Vejvi lost the home they’d shared with their daughter. Martine Syms posted on Instagram that her family’s home of 40 years was gone. Designer Alix Ross, formerly half of the brand Online Ceramics, lost his home. The artist Ariane Vielmetter lost the home that had been in her family for generations—it was once the home of her mother, the prominent Los Angeles dealer Susanne Vielmetter. The Altadena gallery Alto Beta, founded by the artist Brad Eberhard, burned to the ground. Certainly, there are so, so many other artists and members of the arts community who have lost homes. The damage is utterly incalculable right now, and maybe will be for a long time.

And galleries throughout the city, even those far from the fire sites, are currently closed. Opening receptions scheduled for this weekend, at galleries such as Gagosian, Karma, François Ghebaly, David Kordansky Gallery, and Regen Projects, have been postponed.

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And yet there is some reason to be hopeful, or at least grateful. The Getty Villa was surrounded by engulfing flames during the worst of the Palisades fire, but the J. Paul Getty Trust—which has the largest endowment of any museum on earth, with some $8 billion in the coffers—said that the museum was able to escape with minimal damage and that its thousands of artworks were safe. Key to its survival were constant mitigation through year-round brush-clearing, as the museum knew that fire could come at any minute, and a war room set up Tuesday morning to direct the 16 staffers on the ground at the Villa. The galleries also have double walls, which help protect the 44,000-plus objects at the Villa, some of which are Greek, Roman, and Etruscan ruins dating back to 6,500 BC. And when the fires did reach the pedestrian gate, fire extinguishers were used to put it out in just a few minutes. You can read the full tick-tock over at the Los Angeles Times.

And the restaurants and bars that have served the cultural community for years are stepping up to help in a variety of ways. Jon & Vinny’s, the Italian joint founded by collectors Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, is delivering pizzas to first responders, and Spago is offering free meals out of its Beverly Hills space. The art-stuffed wine bar El Prado has said it will donate all proceeds from sales of its house red wine and fully dressed foot-long hot dogs—both of which I highly recommend in any circumstance, but especially this one.

There are a number of other ways to help too. The organization LA Art World Fire Relief—spearheaded by Andrews, the artist Andrea Bowers, arts professional Julia V. Hendrickson, and LA gallery directors Ariel Pittman and Olivia Gauthier—has launched a GoFundMe to help the community, with the goal of raising $500,000. There are several other GoFundMe pages set up for individual artists. LA Fire Mutual Aid Support is seeking donations of household items for those who have lost their essentials. And this extensive spreadsheet is listing a variety of resources for victims of the fire.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated Torbjørn Vejvi’s last name.