Major Institutions Band Together to Market Museums.

Several of L.A.'s major cultural institutions are banding together to form a marketing roundtable, hoping to increase attendance by pooling their ideas and resources.

Representatives from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skirball Cultural Center and others recently met to begin organizing the group, which plans to develop promotional efforts that could give a boost to the area's growing cultural scene.

"It's really important for museums to work together. We have so much competition for people's leisure time," said Carol Komatsuka, creator of the roundtable and vice president of marketing and communications at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.

Collaboration among the area's many museums appears to be growing. Many institutions have long been sharing ideas for enhancing funding through a finance round table, and museums in the area have been known to work together on certain events.

The formation of the marketing round-table signals this increasing cooperation, said Mark Thie, LACMA's marketing manager.

"We're at the point where we realize that we're not competing with each other, that we're here to complement each other. And this is just one sign that museums are coming together to present a unified front," he said.

The perceived competition is the broad array of other entertainment options that Angelenos have to choose from.

"We don't have the money that the Disneys and the Universals have," Thie said, referring to two of the area's biggest tourist attractions. "Given the resources we have, we're greatly overshadowed by the for-profit leisure activities."

Thie hopes the new roundtable will encourage museums to go beyond working on a one-on-one basis and lead to the creation of larger partnerships between museums and other organizations in the area.

"I see it as a really positive thing for culture in Los Angeles," he said.