00:07My grandmother really felt that art should be a democratic thing and she
00:12wanted to demythologize art being an institutional concept and really put it
00:18into environments where communities and everyday people could experience and
00:23appreciate it. So that was the intention behind this museum was to make it
00:27tactile, available, inclusive, and reflective of Los Angeles' population.
00:35This place is amazing.
00:55We are in the California Craft Contemporary Museum, which is where my grandmother, back in 1965,
01:03founded an art gallery salon called The Egg in the Eye, and then that later became the
01:09Crafted Folk Art Museum of Los Angeles. So I spent most of my childhood in this building.
01:14It's extremely sentimental, both to me as Edith Wiley's grandson, but also it's sort of got cultural
01:20significance to the city of Los Angeles. My grandmother was a classically trained artist,
01:24and she was a protégé to a well-known painter named Rico Lebrun. And because of her Russian-Jewish
01:31upbringing and the sort of almost anarchistic political views of our family, they were really
01:38unconventional people.
01:42It's really a lovely thing to drive down Wilshire Boulevard and see the plaque that's
01:47elevated that says, this is Edith Wiley Square. It means a lot not just to me, but I have a
01:5210-year-old daughter who was doing a class project last year on Los Angeles landmarks, and she saw that
01:57the California Crafted Contemporary was one of the choices, so she chose it. She got to research her own
02:01family and our family's contributions to the city. It's now become a perennial trip for her school. I think that's
02:08one of the
02:08other things that I just love about this place. It's constantly trying to figure out ways of making itself more
02:13relevant and more accessible to the community, whether that's bringing in school groups or having classes here
02:19for adults or children or doing these exhibits that reflect either old messaging, new messaging, new
02:25cultures, new artists mixed with old influences. It feels extremely active again, and that's very exciting.
02:34I couldn't be more pleased at the administration that's here now because they have a real
02:40appreciation for the museum's history and the intentionality behind its founding.
02:50Hello, I'm Freda Cano. I'm the senior curator at Crafted Contemporary. Welcome.
02:54Part of what we do here is listening to the architecture, and based on that, we curate and we design
03:02the flow
03:03and the intention of what we do. So on this side, we have our egg and the eye at Crafted
03:08Contemporary shop.
03:10So you'll see a curated selection of handmade objects from different parts of the world.
03:16On this side of the window, we have a very beautiful display. It has eggs and an eye.
03:22That is referencing the original name that Edith Wiley used, a very playful one by the way.
03:28The egg because it was a restaurant, an omelette restaurant, and of course the eye because it enchanted the eye
03:34with the objects in the gallery.
03:36By the way, if you're looking for a last-minute gift idea, the gift shop, you will always find the
03:42perfect thing.
03:43It will be unlike any other gift that's given at that party and will be incredibly unique.
03:47I worked in that gift shop when I was a teenager. We all worked in that gift shop when we
03:51were teenagers.
03:56California-based artist Shrine designed and painted the facade of our building.
04:01He took all the elements that are featured in this Neo-Georgian style and incorporated those into his designs.
04:09This is like a shrine, basically, dedicated to the contemporary art.
04:13So it's very much in synchronicity, his work and what we do here at Craft Contemporary.
04:19My grandmother's office was just over here and those dormer windows that you can see from the facade.
04:25The middle one was her office window and I remember sitting in that dormer window and staring out across the
04:30La Brea Tar Pits,
04:31which are directly across the street at those huge mastodons that are stuck in tar.
04:35She would give me art supplies to draw and while away the hours while shooting.
04:39Patrick Yela worked and those are some of my fondest memories.
04:49My grandparents are gone. Their home is gone.
04:52Pretty much everything's been changed.
04:54The fact that this is still here and I can still touch this floor and look at these beams
04:58and remember my grandmother's office and remember the time we slid down the banister,
05:02remember the time my grandfather put the strong arm to me when I got on the ER and said,
05:05you should put an elevator in the museum, Noah. You should really put the elevator in the museum, Noah.
05:10You should pay for that. So I did. That's my elevator.
05:14Occasionally it breaks, but right now it's functioning.
05:17My wife teases me that every time I drive around with her I go,
05:20oh, you know what that used to be? Oh, you know what that was? Oh, that was, you know what
05:23that was?
05:24I used to go with that over there. And we watch iconic landmarks get bulldozed over to build high rises
05:30constantly.
05:31And then during the fires we lose, you know, significant pieces of history like the Will Rogers house
05:36and how closely we almost lost the Getty, for example.
05:40This city's fragile, so to have this building be here still means a lot to me.
05:45Its original design was for a bakery.
05:47And this is where my grandmother used to come to buy the birthday cakes for her children,
05:51my father and his two sisters.
05:53And then after the bakery closed, this was Arthur Murray's dance studio.
05:57And then my grandmother took it over in 1965 with the egg in the eye.
06:02And that lasted until she opened the Crafted Folk Art Museum.
06:05And it's just been going ever since.
06:14So from the second floor, you will find a very beautiful thing.
06:19There are some cracks.
06:20And we had a show based on Kintsugi.
06:24Inspired by the exhibition, we actually fixed the cracks on our staircase.
06:29We wanted to make sure that the cracks are part of the whole history of the museum.
06:34We are telling a story with it.
06:41This effort that we have here that we co-create at Craft Contemporary are actually like love letters
06:47to the people who live here in Los Angeles, but also beyond.
06:52It's like love letters from Los Angeles to the world.
06:56I think Los Angeles has always been, you know, it's funny.
07:00The La Brea Tar Pits are sort of want to talk about early, early, early Los Angeles history.
07:06It sort of begins here anciently and is being exhumed all the time across the street.
07:11I always thought it was ironic that the Screen Actors Guild is also right across the street,
07:15also beckoning people to this Shangri-La, only to find out that it's really a tar pit that sucks you
07:23in.
07:23This is such a transplant city.
07:25You know, everybody comes here from someplace else to do something very specific,
07:30but it's very rare when you come across somebody who's actually born and bred here.
07:33I think Angelenos by nature are as cool as they come and as temperate as the climate
07:39and extremely broad-minded in terms of embracing other cultures, other ideas.
07:47It is. This is a melting pot and always has been.
07:50And the fact that we pull off this miracle of the city every day as well as we do
07:54is a testament to the character of its inhabitants.
07:56So I'm really proud to be an Angelenos.
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