{"id":251497,"date":"2026-04-04T10:52:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T10:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/251497\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T10:52:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T10:52:22","slug":"inside-los-angeles-unifieds-hidden-world-of-art-archives-and-artifacts-the-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/251497\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Los Angeles Unified\u2019s Hidden World of Art, Archives and Artifacts \u2013 The 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

Embarking on a treasure hunt for the art and artifacts held by the Los Angeles Unified School District is no small feat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s second-largest school district is home to 389,000 students and roughly 100,000 pieces of art, including paintings, sculptures, maps and murals.<\/p>\n

The art can be found in schools and district buildings across the district\u2019s over 700-square-mile terrain. It is part of its Art & Artifact Collection, which began sometime in the 1850s and morphed into a multi-million-dollar collection today.<\/p>\n

Sure, the collection holds school records \u2014 classroom materials, photos,\u00a0yearbooks. But it also has ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets dating back to 2100 BCE. Sculptures of \u201cDon Quixote\u201d by Salvador Dal\u00ed from 1979. A 1931 \u201cBugs Bunny & Friends\u201d by the animator Chuck Jones shows Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and The Road Runner reading a book entitled \u201cHistory of the 9th St. School.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collection predates the official formation of LAUSD in 1961. The city was served by the Los Angeles City School District and the Los Angeles City High School District, which later\u00a0merged<\/a>. Most of LAUSD\u2019s notable pieces are donations from alumni, former administrators and members of the larger Los Angeles community. A 2008 appraisal estimated the value was more than $12 million, according to a 2022 district document obtained by EdSource.<\/p>\n

\u201cLAUSD history is Los Angeles history,\u201d said Cintia Romero, the archive and museum\u2019s curator and archivist. \u201cWe have all the people here; we have all kinds of buildings; we have all kinds of architecture; we have all kinds of cultures.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is rare for school districts to hold on to such artifacts, says Brenda Gunn, the president-elect of the Society of American Archivists.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s very common at all,\u201d Gunn said. \u201cI think what typically happens is that the school districts don\u2019t really invest in any sort of preservation. It\u2019s not often that a school district has an archivist, and if they do have any preservation efforts, it\u2019s usually by a nonprofessional.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Treasures at school sites\u00a0<\/p>\n

School officials also collect items unearthed at school sites during renovations \u2014\u00a0such as old fire alarms \u2014 as well as yearbooks and photographs that document LAUSD history. Los Angeles Unified says it maintains \u201cprofessional standards for archival care and are intended to ensure that important pieces of the district\u2019s history are maintained for future generations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSchool district records are like a continuous public diary of shifts in neighborhoods, how the school district has approached its curriculum, how did it manage desegregation or any big social and cultural events,\u201d Gunn said. She added that some might also be interested in viewing them for something more personal, like understanding family genealogy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little the LAUSD archive turns down. The main criteria is whether the art can serve in an educational capacity or as a teaching aide, Romero said. While LAUSD does sometimes loan pieces out to other institutions, it is \u201cnot in the business of buying or selling artwork.\u201d And sometimes, she said, selling wouldn\u2019t be in the \u201cspirit of the donors,\u201d some of whom were the original artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be valuable to be accepted. It can be a teaching aid,\u201d Romero said. \u201cSo, everything kind of has value, really. Everything can be somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The \u201cX\u201d on LAUSD\u2019s treasure map sits in a warehouse at the school police headquarters\u00a0in rows of boxes that house a large portion of the collection. That includes the district\u2019s\u00a0antiquity<\/a>\u00a0collection donated by Venice High School\u2019s historic Latin Museum, which operated from 1932 to 1997, and is now defunct.<\/p>\n

In a small museum at the LAUSD headquarters on S. \u200b\u200bBoundary Avenue, there is a display mimicking a late 19th-century classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the \u201cclassroom\u201d are wooden phonics teaching tools with scrolling letters, antique maps and silver-colored vessels once used during home economics classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The classroom has a list of \u201cRules for Teachers 1872\u201d that sits on the front desk: bring \u201ca bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day\u2019s session,\u201d take \u201cone evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Preservation at schools\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it is among the modern-day classrooms with digital tablets and smart boards where the rest of the treasure lies:<\/p>\n

Typically, in most school districts, items just end up sitting idly by for years, succumbing to what archivists call \u201cbenign neglect,\u201d Gunn said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are all kinds of places that this archival material will end up,\u201d Gunn said. \u201cAnd staff are like, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t want to throw this away, but it can\u2019t be in my office, so I\u2019m going to store it somewhere,\u2019 and then it stays there until the next person.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Gunn, the hope is that school officials may take the extra step to preserve art, documents and history. Leaving something in a storage closet or in a box and walking away is not enough, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not hurting anything. You\u2019re certainly not throwing things away, but you\u2019re not helping this; you\u2019re not improving the situation of the records,\u201d Gunn said. \u201cBut, what you hope is that someone down the road will see them, open that door and say, \u2018Oh, these are valuable. And, if we can\u2019t keep them here, then maybe there is another archive that will take them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the case of the LAUSD archive, there have been several thefts, including a painting at Dorsey High School. Romero said that while there aren\u2019t many details of the painting, the president of the school\u2019s alumni association has since found it, and traded $25,000 worth of posters and plans to leave it to LAUSD.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, the district maintains that school security procedures, including key access, protect the pieces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ensuring public access<\/p>\n

While LAUSD students might enjoy little treasures displayed on their school walls and in hallway display cases, it\u2019s more challenging for members of the public to view items in the collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, a formal inventory of art was curated. And in 2004, the collection was digitized, Romero said.<\/p>\n

So, since 2018, Romero and her small staff \u2014\u00a0made up of a volunteer and a small cohort of interns from Cal State Northridge and LAUSD\u2019s Downtown Business Magnet school \u2014 continued to digitize items and add them to a public\u00a0database<\/a>, which can be viewed for free.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This process of digitizing the archive is largely made possible by donations and grants, though Romero\u2019s position is funded through LAUSD\u2019s general fund, according to the district.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But curating the collection isn\u2019t just about LAUSD\u2019s or Los Angeles\u2019s past. It\u2019s also about the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Romero and her team also keep tabs on ongoing renovation projects at school sites that could reveal new additions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have so many schools, and each school has something,\u201d Romero said. \u201cEvery school has some kind of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you use this article in your work?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We\u2019d love to hear how The 74\u2019s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Embarking on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2308,7,48,52,51,47,50,49,100],"class_list":{"0":"post-251497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news","16":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}