NEW PRESIDENT FOR LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION

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, reports the Los Angeles Times. 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. 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 fifteen commissioners earn twenty dollars each per meeting to advise the Board of Supervisors and oversee a $4.5 million arts grant program. Ruano 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.