Downtown Art Walk shut down until January

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Updated Monday morning: Confusion reigns over fate of Downtown Art Walk

The Downtown Art Walk, a monthly event that drew hundreds of art lovers to Gallery Row in downtown L.A., has been suspended until January, organizers announced Friday. They also said that starting in 2011, the art walk will be scaled back from a monthly event to a quarterly event.

An announcement posted Friday on the art walk’s website said the event ‘has grown so large that it has become too costly to manage in its current form’ and as a result, the art walk has been placed on hiatus effectively immediately until January.

Organizers said the art walk will be resume in January as ‘a quarterly, weekend, daytime, gallery-focused event which will appeal to both patrons of the arts as well as the general public.’

The Downtown Art Walk took place on the second Thursday of each month. The free event, which began in 2004, included a self-guided tour of gallery shows located primarily along Spring and Main streets in the downtown area designated as Gallery Row.

For close to two years, various groups have been angling for control of the art walk, which became a nonprofit entity in 2009.

‘The downtown community deserves better than this. Art Walk belongs to everyone who participates and cares about the life of the city,’ said Richard Schave, a former director of the art walk, in a statement sent out Friday.

Read more about the art walk’s hiatus at the L.A. Now blog.

-- David Ng

[Updated: a previous version of this post had the incorrect title for Richard Schave.]