Paris, a city of art, welcomed the most recent Olympic Games in 2024 with a sweep of cultural offerings that paid homage to the association the games have had with aesthetics since the days of the ancient Greeks.
The city’s “Cultural Olympiad” lasted three years, included more than 2,500 official projects and took place in more than 5,000 locations across France and French territories.
The hip-hop choreographer Mourad Merzouki created an official dance of the games. A “theatrical blockbuster” at le Theatre du Chatelet explored the dramatic implications of soccer. Major exhibitions at the Musee de l’Immigration and the Panthéon monument examined Olympic and Paraolympic history.
“It’s how you make the case for arts and culture as something that is important for your city and communities,” said Beatriz Garcia, who prepared a report about the arts programming associated with the 2024 Olympics. “There is a lot of evidence of the legacy this leaves. It uses the Olympics to go much further and tell a story about who we are.”
But arts leaders in Los Angeles say that, three years out, their city’s Olympics committee — LA28 — hasn’t adequately taken up that torch, with no cultural plan yet announced, just two people assigned to the effort (one of whom is a volunteer); and no dedicated fund-raising for ambitious arts programming.
“Things should be further along,” said Laura Zucker, who for 25 years served as executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. “There is concern about that throughout the cultural community.”
To be sure, Los Angeles has been preoccupied by other things: a pandemic, Hollywood strikes, wildfires and immigration protests. The city is also dealing with a budget crisis as well as persistent homelessness and a delayed high-speed rail system.
“Between the fires and the ICE raids and the budget, it has been a complicated last six months,” said Daniel Tarica, the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Culture Affairs. He said he remained “wholeheartedly optimistic” about getting the cultural program back on track.
There is also the question of money. While Olympics in other countries benefit from government funding, the U.S. Olympics are privately financed and have a budget of $7.1 billion. The city and state will be responsible for shortfalls.
“We have to pay for these games ourselves,” said Casey Wasserman, the sports agent who serves as chairman of the Olympics organizing committee. “My job above everything else is to make sure there are zero financial losses.
“We have been working on a plan that aligns with everything else we’re doing,” he added of the cultural programming to come. “And it’s going to be something that we know we can deliver and can pay for.”
Wasserman said a cultural plan would be announced sometime in the last three months of this year.
“There may be things we don’t do or have to scale back,” he said. “My job — full stop — is to make sure we don’t lose a penny. It is the singular driving force for everything we’re doing.”
The tradition of an arts festival associated with the Olympics dates back to the turn of the century and has included emphasizing folklore for the 1968 Mexico Games and choral singing throughout China for the 2008 Beijing Games. The Olympiad programming is separate from the performances and special effects that are traditionally part of the opening and closing ceremonies.
Some Los Angeles arts executives speak wistfully of the 1984 Cultural Olympiad in Los Angeles, which opened with the dancer Pina Bausch; featured three full productions from the London Royal Opera; and helped lead to the founding of the Los Angeles Opera.
“Its importance cannot be overstated in the cultural maturation of L.A.,” Zucker said, “which is why so many people in Los Angeles care so passionately.”
Arts leaders say a robust Olympiad would greatly help cement the status of Los Angeles as a cultural capital and to highlight major new projects, such as the architect Peter Zumthor’s addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the expansion of the Broad museum.
Other Los Angeles arts institutions could benefit as well from an Olympics boost — such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, which has struggled financially and recently cycled through its fifth director since 2008.
“There is a huge opportunity for the L.A. arts scene to have international visibility,” said Snehal Desai, the artistic director of the Center Theater Group, which runs three downtown stages. “And we want to be in the best position for that, which means planning and commissioning new works now so that we can be ready in 2028.”
Several arts groups worry that LA28 plans to do the minimum — slapping the Olympics name on previously scheduled events, rather than initiating special endeavors and raising money for them.
“If they plan on commissioning any new works, they’re already behind the eight ball,” said Raymond T. Grant, who was the artistic director of the Olympic Arts Festival in Salt Lake City in 2002. “You can’t do this without getting behind it in a significant way. It’s definitely not enough to do regularly scheduled programming.”
The Olympics’ current charter says part of its mission is “to encourage and support initiatives blending sport with culture and education.”
The host city’s contract states that “the Cultural Olympiad provides an opportunity to engage a wide cross-section of the Host Country’s population in the spirit of the Games and the Olympic values.” Key success factors, the contract says, include “effective partnerships with a variety of stakeholders, including cultural institutions, artists, performers,” as well as “a strong spirit of co-production with the I.O.C. and its entities.”
Arts leaders in Los Angeles say that “spirit of co-production” has been notably absent. “We’re all waiting for leadership,” said Danny Feldman, the producing artistic director of Pasadena Playhouse. “How are we showing the world we are a center of culture? All the pieces are here, but we’re running out of time. We deserve better and we can still make it happen if we’re given the opportunity.”
Some cultural leaders in Los Angeles County have taken matters into their own hands, independently planning special programming designed to showcase new efforts tied to the games.
West Hollywood’s Creative Triennium, for example, is designed “to create an immersive experience-cultural activity everywhere, all the time,” its website says, “and center the City of West Hollywood as a cultural hub during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
In July, Thor Steingraber, the executive director of the Soraya performing arts center in Northridge, sent a white paper to about 30 Los Angeles arts organizations calling for coordinated investment and shared infrastructure “that amplifies existing 2028 programs, launches new signature programs, engages Angelenos broadly, and creates regionwide activations.”
“The LA28 Games represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rally around a unifying cultural vision,” Steingraber wrote. “But that opportunity is slipping away.”
Others say there is still enough time to develop a cohesive cultural strategy and that the city’s energies should be concentrated on implementing that vision.
“The best thing is to focus on where we are now,” said Kristin Sakoda, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. “Looking back isn’t going to do us much good.”
For the 2028 games, Los Angeles won the bid in 2017, “which gave us an eight-year ramp, which was extraordinary,” Zucker said, adding that the original concept for the Cultural Olympiad was focused on generating projects expressly for the games.
“Commissioning new work takes a long time,” she said. “As the years ticked by, that original concept was not only no longer feasible but it seemed like it had just been forgotten. There was this sense that everyone was starting from scratch all over again all the time, and there were no real resources behind it.”
Wasserman said it is a mistake to assume that his effort at cost control means that he doesn’t care about the cultural aspect of the games. “I will put my record up against anybody’s,” he said. He pointed to his family’s longtime support of the arts (he is the grandson of the late Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman) as well as his continuing service on the board of LACMA.
He also said that culture includes food as well as fashion and that the Olympics must showcase all of the city’s strengths, not just the arts. “Fifteen million people will come here to go to the Olympics. Part of our job will be to tell them the other things they can do here. But culture is just one of them,” Wasserman said. “If you’re coming here to go to the Olympics, you can go to the beach, you can go to the Hollywood sign. Most people will want to go to Disneyland.”
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for 30 years, covers arts and culture.
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