Embarking on a treasure hunt for the art and artifacts held by the Los Angeles Unified School District is no small feat. The nation’s second-largest school district is home to 389,000 students and roughly 100,000 pieces of art, including paintings, sculptures, maps and murals.The art can be found in schools and district buildings across the district’s 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.Sure, the collection holds school records — classroom materials, photos, yearbooks. But it also has ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets dating back to 2100 BCE. Sculptures of “Don Quixote” by Salvador Dalí from 1979. A 1931 “Bugs Bunny & Friends” by the animator Chuck Jones shows Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and The Road Runner reading a book entitled “History of the 9th St. School.”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 merged. Most of LAUSD’s 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. Going Deeper The LAUSD Art & Artifact Collection began to take shape in the 1850s and is now worth more than $12 million. The collection’s roughly 100,000 pieces are scattered across LAUSD schools and…
