by Jennifer Medina

November 5, 2016

 

LOS ANGELES — The message on the steel roll-up gate of Mihai Nicodim’s gallery could not have been clearer: With obscene language, the spray-painted words condemned what they labeled “white art.”

It was not the first time Mr. Nicodim had been targeted by activists in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood long seen as the heart of Los Angeles’s Mexican-American community. Just days before, two cars pulled in front of his gallery during an opening and the passengers, their faces covered in bandannas, hurled potatoes, hitting one woman in the leg. At the opening of another gallery, protesters threw beer bottles through the windows.

Earlier this fall, activists placed mock eviction notices in front of galleries. Marching down the street, they shouted “fuera!” — “out!” — and carried signs declaring “Keep Beverly Hills Out of Boyle Heights.”

The protests come at a time when the city has gained a reputation as a contemporary art capital that some critics say eclipses New York. Over the past decade, the Los Angeles art scene has grown tremendously, with the opening of the popular Broad museum, large flagship spaces created by local galleries, and outposts set up by a string of prominent New York and European dealers, including Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s 100,000-square-foot complex, all of which have helped transform downtown.

Few neighborhoods have seen the change as much as Boyle Heights, just east of downtown, where at least a dozen galleries, both local and from out of town, have opened in the past three years.

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