The USC Atelier, the satellite gallery of the School of Fine Arts and a presence in the avant-garde art world of Los Angeles, has closed.
Fine arts dean Lynn Matteson says the school, plagued by financial problems, simply does not have the money to maintain its educational mission and the Atelier at the same time.
The gallery, located in the Santa Monica Place shopping mall, operated on about $60,000 a year. Almost the entire amount has been provided annually by the school.
Since its inception in 1982, the USC Atelier had steadily gained attention from both the wealthy and impassioned art patrons of the Westside — which was the hope expressed at the time by then dean of fine arts John Gordon — as well as art journalists.
By 1984, for example, the Los Angeles Times and the West Coast-based Art Week Review were sending reviewers to its exhibits.
Atelier director Noel Korten, a 1977 M.F.A. graduate from USC, redefined the Atelier as “an alternative space,” which in his view meant exhibiting installations, non-permanent artworks created specifically for a given environment.
Tom Waldman