Despite initial reports, Art Walk is back

Despite a misleading announcement last month that the Downtown Art Walk would be discontinued for the remainder of this year, the ever-growing event will resume its monthly madness tonight.

Jay Lopez, the Art Walk’s former executive director, posted a message a few weeks ago on the event’s official website saying it was canceled through January and would continue in the new year as a quarterly event, according to the Los Angeles Times. Although other board members did acknowledge that there was talk of canceling the event, they said they never discussed turning it into a quarterly event.

The future of the event was in question because of a shortage in the funding needed for security, trash collection and other services required for such a large gathering. The Times estimated that around 20,000 people attend the Art Walk each month. Though it is wildly popular among patrons, not everyone in the art community supports the event.

“[The galleries] aren’t interested in doing an event where there are 20,000 drunk kids,” Bert Green of Bert Green Fine Art told the Times. “The galleries have to do what’s in their own interest, which is to focus the event back to art.”

Green is involved with the organization of a newer, decidedly daytime art walk, one of many art walks that have been popping up all over Los Angeles in the past few years.

Its future still under debate, the success of tonight’s Downtown Art Walk could play a large role in determining what is to come for the art-loving, food-filled event.