Since its dedication 100 years ago, Los Angeles Central Library has survived demolition threats, major arson fires and earthquakes. This week, the historic site’s halls will come alive as it celebrates its centennial with an after-hours festival that is quintessentially L.A.
Dubbed Night at the Library, the four-hour extravaganza will feature more than 200 artists and 25 to 30 activations peppered throughout the library campus, plus DJ sets and local food truck fare. Highlighted performers include Bob Baker Marionette Theater and Los Angeles Master Chorale.
While last year’s inaugural event — hosted by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles (LFLA), the private nonprofit partner to the L.A. Public Library — drew a sold-out crowd of more than 3,000 attendees, this year’s edition, A Century of Light, will welcome even more guests as part of LFLA’s Centennial Celebration. The multi-year campaign, which has already raised $4 million of its $10 million goal, runs alongside the library’s own Central 100 Celebration, which kicked off in January.
As the foundation planned its centennial programming, President and Chief Executive Stacy Lieberman said, “our board and our staff just started to think about how we can really use this as a vehicle to remind people that libraries are bigger than buildings and more than books, but really a place that supports Angelenos, that provides incredible opportunities for transformation and also just [is] a place for community and connection.”
Lieberman, whose background is in cultural institutions, said that while price and proximity barriers keep many Angelenos from cultural and educational experiences, the library offers those things to everyone for free. Although Night at the Library is a paid, ticketed event, Lieberman said it too aims to make those experiences more accessible for attendees.
The executive added that she and her colleagues were stunned by last year’s turnout.
“For me, the magic was seeing people of all ages together in the building,” she said. “We had people in their 70s poring over pop-up books and children’s literature, and young 20-somethings enjoying BodyTraffic dance in the rotunda.”
Attendance was so high, Lieberman continued, that it caused congestion issues that will be remedied by a reservation system, in which the event lineup will serve as a menu for guests to choose from rather than an itinerary.
“It’s treated as a festival,” she said. “You’re given a map, and things are programmed several times throughout the night, so you can see most of it, but not everyone will get to do everything.”
LFLA’s senior director of programming and strategic engagement, Jessica Strand, said her curation method was to make the festival “as diverse as it could possibly be: high, low, everything.”
Bookstore pop-ups include the Ripped Bodice’s romance, erotica wonderland and Reparations Club’s highly curated arsenal; and performers range from the contemporary group Heidi Duckler Dance to a gospel choir. The idea is to evoke a “bountiful, exciting, robust feeling,” Strand said.
“I do believe culture is for all, and that everyone should have the opportunity to see an opera, to watch an experimental artist do something really interesting and oddball and sort of swing your head around,” she said.
The evening setting was inspired in part by the popular Nights at the Museum, Strand said.
“Going into a place that’s seen as sacred in so many ways to so many people, and seeing it come alive in a different way, it just makes everyone feel like a kid again,” the curator said.
With the exception of “Constructing a Los Angeles Icon,” L.A. Public Library’s Central 100 exhibitions will remain open during the festival, enabling guests to learn about the history and significance of the campus. One exhibition space features a rarely shown oil painting which Central Library architect Bertram Goodhue commissioned to convince the library administration and board of commissioners to approve his eclectic building design. Another gives examples of what people proposed to do with the library after it was slated for demolition.
For Christina Rice, senior librarian of the library’s photo collection, one highlight is an interactive installation based on an unadopted public art project proposal for a clock that would chime the Billboard top hits of the time, including Mariah Carey’s “Dreamlover.” Rice’s 15-year-old daughter arranged and recorded the songs.
“Doing the exhibitions, digging really deep, just made me appreciate that [the Central Library] got built to begin with,” Rice said. “So that’s something worth celebrating, that we have this incredible place that maybe shouldn’t have existed in the first place, maybe shouldn’t have stuck around, and yet it does.”
Rice said she hopes the exhibitions and the library foundation’s event ultimately “get people back in the building.”
“Our patronage definitely dropped because of the pandemic, and I don’t know that it’s ever completely recovered,” the librarian said, adding that “downtown, in general, hasn’t.”
“I’m hoping events like Night at the Library get people to realize they have an incredible resource at their fingertips that maybe they didn’t realize they had,” she said.
General admission for Night at the Library is currently sold out, but additional $40 tickets will be released Saturday at midnight, the night before the event. $150 VIP tickets, which include access to an hourlong open bar and behind-the-scenes sections, are also still available.
LFLA’s Centennial Celebration continues with an architecture program in May, and an attempt to build the world’s largest pop-up book at the library in July. The library’s grand Centennial Festival is July 11.
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