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Fires are a seasonal recurrence in the dry chaparral region of Los Angeles. Often fanned by the Santa Anas, gales known as the “devil winds,” they spark easily in the long, hot months of summer and autumn. But on 7 January, when those winds blew at 85 mph through areas parched from winter drought, a hurricane of fire swept into lower-lying – and densely populated – areas that had never seen such blazes before. The flames incinerated thousands of homes and priceless cultural heritage, marking the worst natural disaster in LA history. The second largest city in the US and a global cultural capital – home to the Hollywood film industry and a rich contemporary art scene – may never be the same again.
More than a week on, with the Eaton fire 81% contained and the massive Palisades fire only 52% contained, the LA arts community is still taking stock of the losses. Altadena, a middle-class residential neighbourhood that is home to many artists, was particularly devastated by the Eaton Fire. According to artist Andrea Bowers, 190 artists have lost or suffered significant damage to their homes, studios, and work. That figure comes from Grief and Hope, a survey and relief fund Bowers launched on 9 January with several other arts professionals, including fellow artist Kathryn Andrews, who lost her home to the Palisades fire. The tally continues to rise.
Leafy, suburban landscapes now resemble bomb sites, with little more than chimneys still standing among the smouldering wreckage. Photographs from the Altadena home, studio, and archive of Paul McCarthy show two of the artist’s bronze sculptures scorched but otherwise intact, sentries for a house that is no longer there. McCarthy built the house in 1989 for his family, and in recent years, his daughter, gallerist Mara McCarthy, and son, artist Damon McCarthy, bought their own homes around the corner. All three are now gone.
McCarthy has since postponed his upcoming show at Hauser & Wirth in London. Many other artists have reported the loss of work slated for exhibitions. Painter Alec Egan lost two years of work that was scheduled to debut at LA’s Anat Ebgi Gallery in February.
Kelly Akashi was busy preparing an exhibition for Lisson Gallery on 5 January when she received a notice from Southern California Edison that they would shut off the power in Altadena to prevent the spread of fires. She says she took her cat and a backpack crammed with family albums and a few personal items to the home of a friend, where the lights were still on, not knowing that it was the last time she would see her house and studio. “On top of everything, I lost almost the whole show,” she said.
Last April, a fire damaged painter Christina Quarles’s Altadena home. Now that home, along with a second that she and her partner owned next door and the Airbnb they had been living in while restorations were completed, have all been destroyed. “Our daughter’s preschool burned down, our entire neighbourhood, all our friends’ houses, our restaurants, our parks,” she said.
On the morning of 7 January, the vast personal library of writer Gary Indiana, who died last October, arrived in Altadena from New York. According to a report by novelist Colm Tóibín in the LRB, Indiana’s rare art books and editions were to form the core collection of an artist residency. Hours later, they were reduced to ash.
In the Pacific Palisades, a hilly, affluent neighbourhood that stretches between the world-famous enclaves of Malibu and Santa Monica, residents fleeing the inferno were forced to abandon their cars as traffic choked the Pacific Coast Highway. Gallerist Ron Rivlin reported that the fire consumed more than 200 works of high-value art in his Palisades home, including 30 by Andy Warhol.
Hundreds of musical scores by modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg, stored at the Palisades home of his son Larry, went up in smoke. The area was also home to numerous architectural landmarks that are now destroyed, including modernist icons by Ray Kappe, Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler and the 359-acre estate that once belonged to Will Rogers, the highest paid Hollywood actor of the 1930s. Bequeathed to the State of California in 1944, the Rogers ranch had served as a much-loved house museum and park for generations of Angelenos.
The scale of destruction has thrown a few surviving structures into stark relief. The early modernist home of novelist Thomas Mann so far remains unscathed, according to the German Ministry of Culture, who maintain it as an artist residency. At time of writing, the home of architects Charles and Ray Eames has also avoided significant damage. At the Getty Villa, one of the world’s largest collections of antiquities, an emergency team of staff have been battling blazes on the museum’s hilltop campus with hand-held fire extinguishers. On 11 January, the same fire reached the vicinity of the Getty Center 10 miles away, though according to the Getty Trust both institutions remain “safe and stable”.
But it may be in Altadena where the road to recovery is most uncertain. The area has a rate of Black home ownership more than double the national average, and many homes have been owned by the same families for decades. Amir Nikravan grew up in the neighbourhood and describes it as “a very open, very warm, incredibly diverse community”. It was a relatively central neighbourhood that still had a laidback, rural feel. “Our whole block is gone, and my parents’ block is gone,” he said. “My parents are wondering, do they even want to rebuild in their 70s?” Nikravan teaches at ArtCenter College of Design, where he says half his department – including artists Diana Thater and Kelly Akashi – lost homes.
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According to Nikravan, the worst losses were from his personal art collection, which comprises the majority of his assets and is not covered by insurance. “Most artists are collectors, and often have collections that are pretty fantastic, but unlike real collectors we can’t necessarily afford $2,000 a month to insure the work,” he says.
Many households are also underinsured. Since 2019, the rate at which fire insurance policies were not renewed in California jumped by 30%, and in 2023, the state’s largest insurers, State Farm and Allstate, announced that they would stop writing new policies for California properties. To make matters worse, artists paying mortgages for destroyed homes have had their livelihoods jeopardised in the middle of an industry-wide sales slump, notes Ariel Pittman, senior director at Various Small Fires gallery. “Several of us are workers in the art world and have been intimately aware of our colleagues quietly being let go, or in the case of freelancers, just not having enough work over the last year due to the market downturn,” she says.
In recent years, Frieze art fair has emerged as a critical moment for local galleries and artists to make sales. Its organisers announced that it will open as scheduled on 20 February at Santa Monica airport, less than four miles from the Palisades fire. “Our hearts are with everyone affected by the devastating fires in Los Angeles,” they said in a statement. “Since the fair’s founding six years ago, Frieze has been proud to support and be part of this vibrant community. The challenges the city is currently facing only strengthen our commitment to work alongside the community to rebuild and recover together.”
Donations have been pouring into GoFundMe pages and initiatives like Grief and Hope, which banked $544,955 as of 20 January. On 16 January, a coalition of cultural organisations including the J Paul Getty Trust, Lacma, and the Hammer Museum launched a $12m LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund.
Those in need “include young artists just out of school with no careers and massive student loan debt, artists young and old who lost all their archives and artwork; gallery and museum staff who make working-class wages and can hardly afford housing,” says Bowers. “They have lost everything and yet some are donating to each other. If they can do that, we can give more.”
