‘Soul Shadows’ Exhibition: $19,000 Well Spent? : Art: Critics say Cultural Affairs Department squandered funds on a show by a non-L.A. artist that presents negative stereotypes of blacks.

The sound of Dawn Dedeaux’s exhibition “Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths,” at the Los Angeles Photography Center, begins with a voice broadcast into the center’s parking lot. Inside the gallery, the decibel level rises sharply as 10 video monitors installed in cell-like cubicles play interviews with New Orleans prison inmates. Walking through the cubicles and down a central corridor to a roomful of life-size photographic images of young black men, visitors are bombarded with testimonials about lives that have been shaped by poverty, crime, gangs, drugs and incarceration.

But the noise emanating from the city-run art center in the MacArthur Park neighborhood doesn’t compare to the commotion that has erupted over the exhibition itself. During the six-week run of the show, which ends Sunday, members of the art community have charged that the $19,000 spent on the show, from the Cultural Affairs Department’s $842,000 exhibitions budget, is out of line with the department’s program--particularly because the money was spent to display work by an artist from out of town. Some African-Americans also have complained that the exhibition presents negative stereotypes of black people.

Adolfo V. Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, who brought the show to Los Angeles, has been accused of squandering city money on a non-local artist who happens to be an old friend.

Nodal acknowledged that Dedeaux is a friend, whom he met in 1988 when he served as executive director of the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center, where the show was seen earlier this year. But he defended the exhibition as an important contribution to L.A.’s cultural life. “I just felt that the content of the show is so powerful and so fitting that it was important to have it here,” Nodal said. “There has been a lot of strong reaction to it, but it’s important to have programs that engender debate about community issues.”

Nodal said his proposal to stage the show at the Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park was turned down more than a year ago because the artist is not from Los Angeles. (The Muni’s exhibitions focus on local artists except in the case of exchange programs with other cities or countries.)

When the show was finally booked into the photo center, the exhibition budget became a hot topic of speculation in art circles.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw that bloated installation, with all that expensive, rented equipment in that poor little neighborhood art center,” said one critic who requested anonymity.

“It’s who you know,” sniffed a city worker who declined to be identified.

The ambitious exhibition is unprecedented at the center, which offers photographic darkroom facilities to the community and runs on an annual budget of $135,725--about half of which pays salaries. Exhibitions at the center generally cost about $1,500 to $2,000 and feature photographs by local artists. Indeed, money for exhibitions has been so tight in the past that artists have been asked to furnish invitations to their own shows.

Nodal said “Soul Shadows” is “at the high end” of city-sponsored exhibitions but he contended that it is not overpriced. Individual exhibition budgets at city facilities range from a few thousand dollars to about $85,000, but most of the expensive shows--generally presented at the Municipal Gallery--are funded privately.

The $19,000 allotted to bring Dedeaux’s show to Los Angeles paid for the installation, rented equipment and a $6,000 fee to the artist. Dedeaux used the fee to pay for shipping the massive artwork and for her travel and hotel expenses, Nodal said.

Complaints about the exhibition’s racial content came to a head when Dedeaux talked about her work at the center, shortly after the show opened, according to Joe Lewis, a black artist and critic who wrote an essay about “Soul Shadows” for Artspace magazine.

“I don’t see how the show presents stereotypes,” said Lewis, who has known Dedeaux for 12 years, teaches at CalArts and is also administrator for public art projects at the Cultural Affairs Department. “These are real people telling real stories.”

Dedeaux could not be reached for comment, but Lewis contended that much of the resentment in the African-American community has stemmed from the fact that she is white. “If she can’t do that, does that mean Spike Lee can’t do ‘Malcolm X’ because he’s not Muslim? If there’s a mural in Watts, does it have to be painted by an African-American? That’s ridiculous,” he said.

Controversy about the content of the show has died down and attendance has fallen to a couple of visitors a day, according to gallery staffers. But questions about the exhibition continue.

The show is powerful, according to Glenna Avila, who directed the center before becoming coordinator of CalArts’ Community Arts Partnership. But recalling that she had provided 10 weeks of summer art classes for neighborhood children at a total cost of $4,000 when she worked there, Avila asked: “What does the community need, a six-week exhibition or an arts program for the youth?”