LeRonn: I think the intention of public art is to give a sense of belonging, and it's part of what makes Los Angeles Los Angeles.

Maya: There are over a hundred and thirty stations in the Metro system, and there are artworks integrated into each of them.

Cecily: The problem with the Triforium from its inception, it was ahead of its time.

Annette: I think it's like core to our democracy.

So it's like saying, "Who are we?

What's our story?"

Leslie: And you'd think it did make a difference in people's lives.

I mean, that's what art is for.

Man: This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Eamon: So, we are at Wilshire and La Brea, at the Metro Station, and what you're seeing is a piece that speaks about architecture using color and using forced perspective to kind of invite the user.

Maya: It's like a love letter.

I haven't talked to him about that, but I feel like it's a love letter that he's made to Los Angeles.

Eamon: The whole project is done on a computer screen or on a notebook or on a, you know, something small.

And then, all of a sudden, you actually have to walk through the space.

And then you're like, "Oh, it actually worked."

And when I first imagined the project, I wanted to think about, like, the way the train tracks have, like, that zero-point perspective.

And so I thought to bring that up into the street level is, like, a way to pull the people in.

It's, like, pulling you down into it.

I think when we look at paintings and we look at artwork, we're not just doing it with our eyes, we're also doing it with our bodies as well, and I think when it comes to public art, that's where that really comes into play.

The title of the piece is "Infinite Landscape: Los Angeles Para Siempre."

Maya: Which literal translation is Los Angeles Forever, is something that I know Eamon thought very thoughtfully about because this really is a forever piece.

This is part of the architecture of the station.

Eamon: Growing up in Tucson, I always was like, "God, I wanna live in a city where there's a train."

Like, I'm skateboarding, like, in some hot asphalt.

It was like, "Oh, man, I wish I lived in a city that had public transportation."

I think the work started to change in scale when my interest became, like, more rooted in ideas of the ways in which art functions in culture in, like, a civic language.

And I think looking at artists like Roberto Burle Marx, who was a Brazilian artist, and he did the tile for Ipanema, the famous, kind of, tile pattern there, and he was very interested in art functioning as, like, a part of urban design.

Like, that's when I started thinking of, like, art being this, like, broader language and less specific about my experience and maybe potentially about, like, everybody's experience.

The piece is at the Wilshire/La Brea station.

That is an area that has gone through a lot of transformations, and I was very intrigued by the early architecture of that area, the Deco era.

When I was looking at a lot of the buildings and reading about that history and thinking about art movements that were very into the idea of, like, internationality and, like, looking at ancient architecture that was coming about in this modernization, but they were looking in the past, you know, which is, kind of, you know, in some ways, like, contradictory, but it ended up creating this beautiful synthesis in a lot of ways, you know, that had a lot of humanistic characteristics to it.

A lot of that architecture was in an era when that whole area was developed to be experienced looking out the window of a car.

And I thought that is so interesting that here we are now, and it's, like, actually more about, like, being able to traverse that space underground.

Maya: Oftentimes, people think about transit as being something about getting from A to B, and that's the focus.

But really a lot of transit is waiting for a train, waiting for a bus, riding a train, riding a bus.

And those experiences are the ones in which we added an art element.

LeRonn: The idea of traveling through spaces and actually communing with public art makes it even more an intimate experience.

Annette: Different from, like, galleries and museums, these are ones you're gonna brush up against on a daily basis, and it's, like, etching and grating into your consciousness.

Maya: The Metro Art Program began in the early 1980s, and the first actual work that was visible to the public was a work by Tom Etherton in one of our rail tunnels, and that was 35 years ago this year.

There are over a hundred and thirty stations in the Metro system, and there are artworks integrated into each of them.

So our most recent projects on the D Line, for example, those artists were commissioned over nine years ago, so they worked on those projects for nine years, and it's not a-- not a museum or a gallery where someone is going with intention to look at art.

It's something that's, kind of, just along the journey.

LeRonn: You know, as a transplant, you land in a place, and sometimes you really don't know where you are.

And the, you know, public art is often a foothold.

That mural, that sculpture, that one thing that you recognize that, "Okay, now I need to turn left or right," but then it becomes even more intimate, more familiar because, you know, sometimes you may need to cry under one.

Sometimes, you know, you may just sit because you're tired.

You know, so they become partners.

They become neighbors.

Annette: They're sort of like their guideposts to belonging in Los Angeles.

You know, a lot of times people think art is just, like, decorative.

It's just a add-on at the end, but I think it's a core to our democracy.

So I think, you know, we talk about it as a different kind of infrastructure.

So, it's, like, saying, "Who are we?

Who is included?

What's our story?"

Maya: LA Metro is not unique, but very committed to engaging arts professionals in the selection of the artists, and that was something that was instituted at the very, very beginning of the program by one of the initial board members of the agency who was George Takei, who said, "I wanna make sure that all artists for the Metro system are selected by arts professionals."

Our early commissions, we maybe would have a hundred artists that applied.

We're now getting thousands of artists.

Mark: So, we didn't conspire.

Eamon: No.

No conspiring.

Mark: Because this was nine years ago.

When we just started on this.

So, this work is called "Miracle of La Brea."

And it's referencing, uh, the tar and the Art Deco history, and what was here before all of the Miracle Mile was the barley fields.

So, I've taken an element from the Wilshire Tower.

So, my idea was to make it as if the tar had somehow magically created this composition.

And what we're looking through that out onto the agricultural past showing the barley fields.

[Train tooting] LeRonn: Some of the priorities for placing public art in a specific area, let's say a train station, is we're in that train station.

What work has the artist done before, right, that can actually, uh, signify, uh, an area or a certain kind of public?

And what are their ideas?

Do they have concepts that are generous just in terms of understood to be larger than necessarily an individual understanding of a specific place or time, but something that can be, uh, unpacked that everyday people can actually look and sort of be curious about.

Eamon: In the center, I wanted to kind of create the feeling of, like, an animated sequence of planetary shapes, kind of, emphasizing that movement down into the station.

And then you've also got these rays that are coming up.

And I like this idea of, like, kind of, if you're-- if you see the people coming up on the escalator, it's like this kind of burst, almost like a sunburst.

Maya: It is very much an immersive work.

You see it from the street.

It beckons you in.

It literally draws you in with the lines.

And it--you're just then surrounded in this golden hue, and it's different at different times of day.

And then you walk down into the station, and you turn the corner, and it's still there, and it's just enveloping you.

Eamon: I love the idea, too, of, like, being able to see people walking through those shapes and seeing the building as you're going up through the escalator.

And so you, kind of-- you're following these circles that are, kind of, starting to animate your way through the station.

A Metro piece, to me, in some ways, a lot of the motifs in it are about kind of, like, objects passing through.

LeRonn: In any particular city, you have artists who signify what it means to be human in this particular time, in this particular landscape, in this particular area.

And having that open to the public just passing by with your kids, passing by with friends, or just on your way to work, it really brings you outside of yourself.

Eamon: After that entrance kind of pulls you in, you have this moment of, like, the sequence kind of starts again.

So, there's echoes in the motifs.

Like, the piece here, right here, is an echo of what's happening above in the overhang.

So, there's almost, like, repetition and rhythm within the piece, which is something that I also wanted people to kind of-- whether they consciously absorb it or subconsciously, there's a rhythm to the city.

There's a rhythm to the way that you move through the city.

There's a lot of influence of abstraction from the Americas that I don't think people are super aware of.

Josef Albers went to Mexico and was highly influenced by a lot of the abstraction that he saw in Monte Alban in Oaxaca.

Frank Lloyd Wright, his Hollyhock House, a lot of elements, motifs in the Hollyhock House are rooted in Chichen Itza and--which is the Mayan, um, architecture.

And that body of work that I created is in that relationship to the ideas of, like, an architecture that is rooted in abstraction in the Americas, but also-- very influenced also by, like, an international language.

Annette: To get chosen for public art that's permanent and installed at scale is amazing.

It's like you're leaving something there for humanity, like, your legacy.

Eamon: Then this last section was kind of like the section to, like, take you home.

You know, you have these kind of rays that are still kind of pulling you into the station, and then it starts to even out with these horizontal lines.

I'm always trying to kind of like allude to the idea of symmetry, but not quite have it be equal.

And so there is--it's always slightly off symmetrical.

And so, like, on the left side here, you have the same angles, you have the same parts of the motif, but then the right side, it starts to reveal what was up at the top.

It's like this one cut hole, like, kind of keyhole with, like, one of those blue shapes going through it.

And that's what takes you in.

[Chuckles] LeRonn: I think the intention of public art is to give a sense of belonging.

As an aspect of intentional placement, I think that is part of the civic realm and is part of what makes Los Angeles, Los Angeles.

You are part of something larger than yourself.

And so as an artist, you may make, uh, a work of art and then have it being seen by, uh, a public, uh, makes it more intimate because it's a conversation.

Claire: I haven't been down here in so long.

Tom: I think that's the main... Claire: Oh, they covered it.

Tom: Oh, no.

Jona: Oh.

Claire: You're only here if you're, like, trying to argue a parking ticket or doing jury duty.

It's kind of haunted vibes, to be honest.

It's very liminal.

This is the ancient control room for a long-dead interactive light and sound musical instrument that once lit up downtown Los Angeles, the Triforium.

Man: Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York the Statue of Liberty, and now Los Angeles has its Triforium?

Maya: The Triforium is an iconic LA artwork.

The world's first polyphonoptic sculpture.

Tom: May be the only polyphonoptic sculpture.

Claire: It's over 60 feet high.

It has the multicolored glass.

Bill: Joseph had this image, I think, of having lasers pointed up into the sky.

Claire: It was incredibly full of all sorts of new technology.

Cecily: The problem with the Triforium from its inception... Leslie: Uh-hmm.

Cecily: it was ahead of its time.

Leslie: It was ahead of its time.

Annette: It was really, uh, ahead of its time and controversial when it was installed.

Man: We asked to see the Triforium in action so you can judge if it's worth a million dollars.

Annette: And then, like, decades have passed, and they've let it become inoperable.

Cecily: It was derided at the time.

Three wishbones in search of a turkey.

Man: It looks like a burned-out part of the, uh, spaceship.

Cecily: But it was a beautiful design, actually.

Three reinforced concrete pylons.

Leslie: Very Jetsons.

Cecily: It was meant to evoke a happy and positive outlook on the future.

Claire: It's not quite the future the '70s dreamed of, but it is a future that has a lot of the capacities that Joseph Young, the artist--architect of the Triforium, dreamed could someday be possible.

Joseph: I'm a very optimistic person.

Claire: Triforium Project was a informal association of enthusiastic artists, documentarians, Angelenos, who were very invested in the success and the future of the Triforium.

Together as a coalition, we managed to raise some funds, do some programming, make an appeal to the city to bring the Triforium back to life and connect with the family, and just kind of hold the candle for the Triforium for another decade because I think every ten or so years, someone comes along and is like, "What's going on with this thing?"

Jamie: The Triforium came to be through, actually, the Los Angeles Mall project, which was something the architect Stockwell oversaw.

It was Stockwell who was the one to select and commission the artist, Dr.

Joseph Young, to not only create a focal point for the Los Angeles Mall, but also something that would be seen as a symbol for the whole of Los Angeles.

Tom: So, Joseph Young was a ceramicist, worked a lot in tile, mosaic work.

Cecily: I think he went to study fresco.

And having gone around, he saw that frescoes do not retain their vibrancy.

When you look at mosaics, they could be 2,000 years old, and they are as vibrant as the day they were made.

He realized, I think, on that trip that mosaics was the medium that would allow his art to last into another millennia.

Claire: A lot of his work previous to this were these kind of mosaic tile works that depicted historical events or cultural communities within Los Angeles.

Leslie: One of the first ones, of course, was the Los Angeles Police Building mural.

And then there was also the Los Angeles Hall of Records for the building that was designed by Richard Neutra.

Tom: He was tasked with the architect of the Los Angeles Mall, wanted a reason to attract folks to this pedestrian mall.

He was spending time in Europe and was really inspired by these pedestrian plazas where people could sort of hang out.

Claire: Yeah.

I mean, he was operating in a moment in the mid-1970s where there's a lot of enthusiasm for art and technology together.

Joseph Young was sort of excited about the prospect of branching out from mosaic and his more traditional sculpture work and doing something that was dynamic, activated electronically, involved this sort of fusion of light, art, science, and music.

And so he designed a computer-controlled instrument.

Ultimately, the goal was to kind of use science to activate space and draw people into a part of downtown which, at the time and probably still now, wasn't getting a lot of foot traffic at night.

Jamie: It was something that really was the first of its kind in a lot of ways, especially it being municipally owned and operated office and shopping complex.

There really was no work or just the scale of that kind of public art commission was something that the city had never done at that time.

Man: The Triforium is what its Latin name suggests, a three-sided work of art designed as the crowning glory to the new multimillion-dollar downtown mall.

LeRonn: The Triforium, being placed next to a mall, basically it's an attraction for foot traffic, right?

It's something that people go into, to shop at a mall, to just use the public square, could look at and see a symbol of something larger than themselves that was thought about by the city, right, to really have passersby engage the space differently than just a commercial space, but an idea space.

Jamie: One of the main purposes of the whole Los Angeles Mall project was to create a space that would really reflect the democratic activities that were happening through the government, just to really celebrate that.

Cecily: He took a mission statement or a program.

He expanded it.

He took it beyond what they thought they wanted, which is what the essence of all that futurism is, right?

You propose something that people don't even know is possible.

Jona: So, the Triforium has 1,494 hand-blown glass prisms, each of which contains an incandescent bulb and was activated and controlled by the computer downstairs underground.

Claire: They were hand-blown in Murano glass in Italy.

They run through the pediment of this, like, 60-ton concrete sculpture into a computer control room downstairs that had an original, also custom-built, glass bell carillon instrument that could be played both live and also, I think, it was able to run sequences of prerecorded bell tones.

[Bell tones playing] Leslie: In fact, his design included having laser beams to the heavens above.

It had the most beautiful reflecting pool.

He really had imagined this was going to be a beacon for all other cities around the world.

He had these very grand plans in his mind for what LA could represent.

It was discovered what the budget of--for this was, which at the time seemed like a lot of money, $300,000.

Nobody could wrap their heads around the fact that this was going to be a centerpiece for downtown life.

It was just how much money it was.

The construction of it was delayed due to the earthquake and some other delays, and the costs sort of skyrocketed and basically tripled the cost.

Then the journalists, the media whipped up the frenzy of the public to go on the warpath.

Zev: The Triforium will be a different kind of a landmark.

It'll be the landmark which people will come to and say, "What the hell is this?"

They don't know what it is and they don't know why the people of Los Angeles went along with the $1 million expenditure.

Bill: Well, as far as the opening is concerned, that was before me.

But what I hear, it was chaos.

Nobody knew what to do with it, really.

Apparently, they had a lot of VIPs sitting out here, and that didn't work.

That's what I hear.

Leslie: Our father was very proud, finally, that this had come to pass.

And it was not until probably a year or so in where he started to feel just besieged because he worked so hard, and then to find that the city council-- well, basically it was the media, they misunderstood it, really.

And nobody really wanted his version of things for the record.

Tom: You can also look at this as an object of Mayor Tom Bradley's tenure.

He really fought for this.

When the city council pushed against it, Mayor Tom Bradley really wanted it.

And in this one particular piece, the reporter follows Mayor Bradley to an elementary school in the valley, he's just chatting with the students, and one of the students asks, like, "What's up with the Triforium?

Like I've heard my parents talking about it."

And the quote is-- Mayor Bradley said back, "Well, it's ours now.

We're gonna have to learn to live with it."

Jamie: You know, a lot of what we have in our archive records really points to it being something that city workers who would use the LA Mall during their breaks and other visitors would enjoy.

There was programming that happened during the week during lunchtime hours.

And then there was also dedicated weekend programming.

During the summer, there were events that would happen at night and at dusk.

Tom: My mom was on jury duty in the early '80s, and she remembers coming across on her lunch break and listening to the bells, and so there are a lot of memories, especially from people serving on juries coming here in the '70s, '80s, and '90s when it was still sort of bumping along the bottom of the seafloor.

Bill: Talking about what's downstairs as far as the musical instrument is concerned, which was a quartz carillon, invented by Benjamin Franklin and called a Franklin bell or glass harmonia.

[Dinging] Cecily: Over the years, things happened like the judges' offices may have faced in that direction and they felt it was distracting to have the carillon of bells or the music coming out of there, and so that just quieted the Triforium.

Annette: What I think is interesting about the Triforium is, again, like how much debate there was when it was installed.

And then it really brings questions about, are we gonna keep it?

Like decades of maintenance?

All art needs to be taken care of.

Technology has changed, so our understanding of what that art is is going to change as well, and that could be exciting as we reconsider our old murals, our old public art.

Leslie: Our father had a vision for a very vibrant Los Angeles, and I think if he was alive today, he would want to see the Triforium utilized in that way to bring people downtown and really create a center that never truly existed in LA.

Claire: Yeah, we were able to briefly reactivate it and do exactly what Joseph Young had wanted, which is to take live musical input, translate it through a very specific algorithm, and turn it into polyphonoptic... Tom: It was so cool.

Claire: visual compositions.

It was the most beautiful night of my life--beautiful three nights of my life.

Jona: Yeah.

Leslie: If I could leave anybody who's going to watch this with anything, I think it would be to believe that the future is still possible.

Cecily: And you'd think it did make a difference in people's lives, and that can be so again, and that's what art is for.

Claire: Public art can often be quite divisive, right?

I mean, people complain about how much it costs.

They don't like it.

They think it's not avant-garde enough or it's too conservative or whatever.

What was amazing about the Triforium and is a real missed opportunity is that it was public art that was designed to be interactive with the actual public, which is quite rare, you know, to have something that actually responds to footfall, to music, to the presence of a community around it.

It was a rare instance of public art that was making a real effort to integrate itself into a community.

LeRonn: Everything that we feel inside is reflected in art that reflects us.

Every belonging to public art is a sort of watcher.

It is a sort of window by which one could imagine oneself through, and it reflects cultures that make the city.

It reflects communities that make this city.

It allows us an imaginary foothold that reminds us, like family, that we belong to this larger idea of our communal selves.

[Gentle music playing] Man: This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.