First Thursdays in DTLA might possibly be the liveliest night in all of L.A. It’s when galleries, vendors, exhibitions and street performers pop up throughout the Historic Core.

“It’s creativity. It’s community. It’s culture,” said Diana Barillas, the director of operations and creative strategy of DTLA ArtNight. “We highlight the creatives downtown and also the businesses. The more people we can bring down here through art, the more our community as a whole can expand and get better.”

The only exceptions are Fourth of July and New Year’s: “We will switch it out depending on how close it gets to the date,” she said.

DTLA ArtNight is entering its 3rd year, having soft launched in April 2023. Barillas started volunteering at the second DTLA ArtNight in May 2023.

“They needed somebody who was a little bit more on the art side so that’s how I came on board,” said Barillas, who soon moved up to full-time employee after a couple months and then became director.

Dino Buiatti, Dana Hathaitham and Blair Besten of the Historic Core Business Improvement District put the plans in motion for DTLA ArtNight — not to be confused with Art Walk, which ended before the pandemic.

“When I started, we were about 10 galleries,” she shared. “Obviously, nobody knew who we were, and it was a small map in which you could just literally point arrows to where the galleries were on the map. We’ve expanded to about 55 or 60 now; the number varies because people aren’t open every month. I’ve consistently seen about three to four galleries get added every single month or requests from galleries to open.”

According to Barillas, galleries can mean anything from a business, for example bars that highlight and support artists, to pop-ups.

“I think the beauty of it is that if you were to really walk it, to the 50 to 60 locations, you will find a really big spread of what art is,” she said.

In 2020, Barillas relocated from San Francisco to Los Angeles with the intention of starting an art community.

“Obviously in 2020, you couldn’t really open anything,” she said. “I made my rounds in farmers markets and makers markets, met great people, and had the luck of meeting Milena Mortati, who had an organization called CRE8. She wanted to do pop-ups, and so we started doing pop-up events in LA. We eventually found a home on 15th and Los Angeles where Mortati and Kalise Wallace still are.”

It was when she left her business partners to search for other opportunities that she heard talk of ArtNight and met Buiatti.

DTLA ArtNight operates Emerging Gallery, which Barillas curates. It serves as a starting point for the now long list of participating galleries.

“I have a collective of about 20 artists that rotate every single month,” she said. “They’re mostly newer artists. Gabba Gallery was in Echo Park for a really long time, and they have international artists. We’re starting to work with Superchief, which is a well-known gallery downtown. We also have different relationships with local artists. Last year, we had a relationship with Adidas, so that brought in a different genre of exhibits and styles. We have music, vendors, performative arts in some spaces. If you really walk the space, you will find a gambit of different styles of art.”

About a year ago, Barillas moved to Downtown to be closer to her work and has discovered a strong community.

“All the business owners I’ve met are fighting really hard to make this a positive place,” she said.

The first ArtNight of 2026 jumped off on January 8, and it was the busiest Barillas has ever seen. The streets were filled. She tracked 1,000 people coming through the Emerging Gallery.

Barillas has found a place to call home at ArtNight, in DTLA and in LA.

“We’re definitely seeing people wanting to be a part of this,” she said. “For me, what I discovered about L.A. is everyone has a side passion. I really love that it is a city that honors creativity. People light up about what they care about. I try to be somebody that engages in community and creates community and tries to meet people and see what sparks them.”

For more information, visit dtlaartnight.com.