County Arts Commission gets new president

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Araceli Ruano, a player in the problem-plagued bid to launch a $242-million arts high school in downtown Los Angeles, has taken on an additional leadership role in the local arts scene as president of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

Ruano chairs Discovering the Arts, a citizens group formed in 2005 to advise the Los Angeles Unified School District on establishing the architecturally splendid but organizationally adrift academy on Grand Avenue. Scheduled to open in the fall, the high school has yet to recruit a director and a faculty or to adopt an arts curriculum. Discovering the Arts is expected to raise private donations to augment public funding for the school; Ruano and arts philanthropist Eli Broad, a proponent of the school, have called for a one-year delay so its issues can be less hurriedly addressed – including whether it should be under district control or be run, as Broad prefers, as a charter school managed by a separate nonprofit organization.

The county arts commission typically meets monthly; the 15 commissioners earn $20 each per meeting to advise the Board of Supervisors and oversee a $4.5-million arts grant program.

Ruano was appointed in 2005 by Supervisor Gloria Molina. She will serve a one-year term as president under a rotation plan in which members from each of the five districts take turns.

In a statement announcing the move, Broad vouched for Ruano as someone who ‘has proven to me and many others that she is a fighter for the arts,’ and Molina said she would be particularly effective in guiding the county government’s arts education initiatives.

Ruano has worked as an attorney – although she stopped practicing law in 2008, according to state bar association records -- and as a political and policy advisor to Al Gore and Tipper Gore during Gore’s vice presidency. She also is a past chief executive of the Panama-based ALAS Foundation, which enlists artists and business leaders in promoting early childhood development programs in Latin America and the Caribbean.

-- Mike Boehm

Ildiko Laszlo