I just found out the city of Lancaster has an art museum and it has existed for 20 years. The museum has 5,000 square feet for art exhibits and is supported by city funds. My goodness, what a surprise to learn a community not far from Santa Clarita has an Art Museum and exists because the City of Lancaster created the museum for the residents.
In the Signal a few days ago there was a letter to the editor about the martial arts museum will say “Goodbye “ to Santa Clarita, wow! The Martial Arts Museum opened in Newhall in June 2007 and was designed as an educational center to teach children about Asian art forms and how they are connected with the martial arts. It was not planned to be a punch and kick museum, but the goal was to enlighten children on how Asian history became part of American history through Asian martial arts. The opening of this museum was to attract new visitors to the downtown Newhall area and visitors did come from Australia, New York, Mexico, England, Hawaii and Italy. This was the world’s first martial arts museum and people came out of their way to visit the museum. The goal of the city is to find new ways to attract visitors to Newhall and that is exactly what the museum did. Thousands of visitors came to see the museum during the seven months it was open. People came to see the museum who would have never come to Newhall if it wasn’t for the museum. It brought business to the local restaurants and worked with the school districts in providing field trips to the museum. How sad that we have lost this martial arts museum. We do not in fact have an opportunity to learn about any of the cultures that are represented in paintings, sculpture, prints, photography, fabric art, jewelry, weaving, digital art and all other forms of visual art that are represented by artists of different culture in art exhibits because there is no art museum in Santa Clarita.
Many of our children have never visited an art museum and do not know what this experience is like. It would be great to see the city sponsor trips to the museums in Los Angeles , Santa Monica and Santa Barbara as a way to give exposure to families who are unable to visit these museum and learn what a visual art museum looks like and contributes to us.
A city owned Art Museum would create great attraction and cultural importance for Santa Clarita. When a city offers major performing arts events of theatre, dance and traveling musical performances, art films and public art they provide the city with creative values to appreciate. Why? Because community members need broad events to be offered to enjoy and not just “sports” events. When the appreciation of the arts are offered to the community it will be recognized by everyone as a very valuable gift.
For more information contact Jaylene Armstrong, retired art educator from Madison Wisconsin, at 661-255-3050.