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When he turned to the star of the evening, he said: "I would like you all to join me in paying homage to the one person who is most of all responsible for the creation of this edifice. Unlike the princes of Florence and the Pharaohs of Egypt, she is a dignified, simple lady."
Dorothy Buffum Chandler sat shyly in her seat, in what has already been nicknamed "The Hook" section of the Founders Circle, while the applause rose around her. Only after four minutes, when her son Otis tugged her to her feet, did she rise and grin happily at the applauding audience. Her husband is Norman Chandler, whose Times Mirror Co. owns the Los Angeles Times, among other things. But the ovation was only her personal due. For "Buff" Chandler had conceived the idea for the Music Center, almost singlehanded raised a staggering $18.5 million to build it, and organized a company to float another $13.7 million in bonds to finish the job. It was perhaps the most impressive display of virtuoso money-raising and civic citizenship in the history of U.S. womanhood.
But Buff Chandler, though she enjoys plaudits as much as the next, is still well aware that she is only providing the means to a more important end. At the champagne supper afterward, there was toasting and talk about her money-raising prowess, about the opulent beauty of the Pavilion, about Los Angeles as a new center of culture that has passed Chicago and is getting ready to challenge New York. But it was Buff Chandler herself who went to the heart of the matter. "What is important here tonight," she said, "is not the fund raising or the building that we are in. The only really important thing here tonight is the music we heard performed. That will go on forever."
Steady Surge. Buff's Music Center is only the most visible symbol of the steady upsurge of interest in matters cultural in a city that has felt itself too long dismissed as an uncouth poor relation of San Francisco. Last season there were more than 500 performances of chamber music in the Los Angeles area, or some 20 a week. A typical weekend calendar this season lists 64 stage productions, 36 music performances, and 97 art shows. U.C.L.A. has launched an enormously successful extension program, which last year drew more than 300,000 Angelenos to the campus at night to attend lectures, dance recitals, concerts, plays and art films. The number of art galleries has doubled in the past ten years, and Los Angeles' La Cienega Boulevard has become an art market second only to New York's 57th Street.
Buff's success has also inspired other building projects, the biggest of which is the new Los Angeles County Art Museum on Wilshire Boulevard. Designed by William Pereira, it is all but completed. Costing $20 million in all, the $11 million in private money was raised by Edward William Carter, 53, president of the Broadway-Hale chain of department stores, director of a dozen companies and organizations, and chairman of the University of California's board of regents (see EDUCATION).
The museum's main pavilion will house the permanent collection in galleries surrounding a large, four-story atrium. A second building will house the changing exhibitions, those on tour as well as those originated by the museum. The