Todd Gray artwork is displayed in the Wilshire/La Cienega Station. (photo courtesy of Metro Art )

When Metro’s new D Line subway extension starts transporting passengers throughout the city on May 8, it will also connect them with communities around the subway stations through art. 

Riders entering and exiting the Wilshire/La Cienega station will see a monumental piece by artist Todd Gray paying homage to the Saban Theatre (formerly the Fox Wilshire Theatre), an art deco gem that has been a landmark at 8440 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills since 1930. The Saban Theatre is located across the street and a half-block east of the Metro station. Gray’s artwork “Mining the Archive: S. Charles Lee, Architect” is based on architectural drawings by the acclaimed architect who designed more than 400 movie theaters in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Fox Wilshire Theatre. Known for creating opulent and glamorous movie palaces, Lee incorporated intricate art deco and streamline modern designs meant to make going to the theater an experience.

Gray said he walked and drove Wilshire Boulevard many times to get inspiration for his piece for the Metro station. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is headquartered a few blocks west on Wilshire Boulevard and he wanted to incorporate cinema into his work because of its important connections to Los Angeles history. Gray said he was particularly struck by the physical beauty of the Saban Theatre and its links to Hollywood, which coalesced perfectly with his concept for the art piece.

“Every time I pass the Saban Theater, I pause,” Gray added. “It’s just a fantastic edifice. It’s just a beautiful piece of architecture.”

The idea took him to the UCLA Library’s Special Collections, which holds the archive of Lee’s work including architectural drawings, renderings, blueprints, photographs and surveys. Like the crews excavating the subway tunnels, Gray mined the archive for information about the Saban Theatre, coming across architectural drawings and interior photographs that became the basis for his work in the subway station. Gray said he was especially impressed by Lee’s hand-drawn designs.

“What really hooked me was that all of these drawings are by hand. And right now, young people growing up, whatever your age, I think drawing by hand is becoming a lost art because everyone is doing computer graphics,” Gray said. “I thought, wow, this is really great, to talk about the theater, talk about the gesture of hand, something that humans do with our hands, as opposed to going through a machine to do it. That was the step by step, how it led me into it.”

Gray said the process of conceptualizing the artwork, mining the UCLA archives for the drawings and photos and then creating the artwork itself unfolded over a period of years, dating back to before the pandemic. He is jubilant that the public will finally see the work, which wraps the full interior of the subway station entrance, including the walls on the sides of the escalators.

“I love art deco, because to me, art deco is like contemporary rococo. It’s excessive, it’s jubilant. It’s very stimulating,” Gray said. “Architecture really speaks to the public, and I like the way that [the theater] spoke to the public. I like the way that, as Charles Lee said, these are his dream palaces. It was a way to escape your reality and into the dream palace.”

Clare Haggarty, director of public arts and design for Metro, said art has been an important component of the transit system for decades and the new stations along the D Line are no exception. Each of the stations has three large art works. In addition to Gray’s piece, the Wilshire/La Cienega station includes Mariana Castillo Deball’s “Four Pleated Landscapes: Fossil Ground, Woven Cienega, Medicinal Flora and Urban Desert Fauna” on the concourse level, and Soo Kim’s “Night/Quartz” on the station platform.

“We don’t give the artists a theme. We just ask the artist to make something that is site responsive, unique to the site and will resonate with our riders, and then they run with it,” Haggarty said. “These stations are for the community. We’re really connecting people to all of these incredible destinations whether they are going out or going to work or going home, so the artwork is reflective of the neighborhood surrounding the station. And what is also great about public art is that it often speaks to histories that maybe people don’t readily know about and it sparks curiosity. You may say, ‘Hmm, what’s going on with this artwork.’ And then you untangle this incredible story about the neighborhood you may not have known.”

The Saban Theatre is owned and operated by Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts, which purchased the theater in 2005 and restored the interior and exterior of the historic building. The building was renamed the Saban Theatre in 2009.

Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts’ Rabbi David Baron said the theater being depicted in the artwork in the Metro station is a distinctive recognition. The temple is holding a special service on March 27 at 7:30 p.m., and Gray will be acknowledged during the event.

“We at the Saban Theater are very honored that Metro will include these drawings of the Saban Theatre in its presentation at the subway station at the corner of La Cienega and Wilshire,” Baron said. “This theater is one of the important iconic landmarks of the city of Beverly Hills, and we’re also on the National Historic Registry. We are really thrilled that our location, which has been, without denying it, suffering during the extensive construction of 11 years, will finally get the opportunity of exposing people to this venue that we’ve been actively preserving and keeping alive for future generations.”

Baron said he hopes the artwork encourages people to see a show at the Saban Theatre and learn more about the venue.

Gray added that he wants people to be inspired by his artwork, and asked riders leaving the station to take time to stop and reflect on its connection with the Saban Theatre building across the street. 

“I call that the ‘aha’ moment,” Gray said. “Folks who are coming from downtown or East L.A. or traveling west and they get off at that stop, they will say, ‘Oh, what is this?’ They will see the interior photos that I have and they will see the drawings. But then when they finally get to street level, boom, it’s in front of you, and then that connection is made. That’s the ‘aha’ moment. And I think that is a wonderful thing that art can do, to give you that new relationship to something that you might ignore.”