Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
"82 Portraits and 1 Still-Life" opens at the museum this weekend. Some pics.
Archive: Arts
"82 Portraits and 1 Still-Life" opens at the museum this weekend. Some pics.
We must have played "Angel Baby" a million times since the only hit from Rosie and the Originals came out in 1961, Art Laboe posts on Facebook.
The Sunday afternoon line outside the Broad Contemporary Art Museum went down the block
The iconic Luis Valdez play is back where it started in 1978.
Been a few years since I posted on the anniversary. But here are a couple of videos.
As Lynne Seemayer, she created an indelible part of LA street art lore and became something of a legend.
Wong's artwork inspired "Bambi." He contributed to other films and was also known for his beach kites.
The singer writes about her performance of a Bob Dylan song at the Nobel Prize ceremony.
The legendary guerrilla cliff art was painted in one night by a young mother hanging from ropes. She's still around and should be more famous.
MONA had to leave downtown in 2011 but things are all right now. Visiting is like seeing old friends again.
Vice revisits the story of how designer Amy Inouye saved Chicken Boy from the landfill.
The museum's newest exhibition explores featherwork items from the era in Hawaii that predates the cultural carnage that followed the Christian missionaries.
For better worse, the hottest corner of the downtown Arts District boom now has a giant international art destination.
The organizers blame lack of a mature market for art fairs in Los Angeles.
Evening host Jim Svejda does one-hour interviews with all the Oscar-nominated composers every night this week.
Time for the Broadway theater and entertainment district to be a year-round draw, says longtime activist Hillsman Wright.
For an exhibition on menswear fashion through the years, a zoot suit seemed essential to include.
Not many top bands with more certifiable Los Angeles roots than the Eagles, who met Linda Ronstadt at the Troubadour, became her band and with her blessing went out and dominated the 1970s.
Bowie's social media accounts posted tonight that the musician and actor has died after an 18-month fight with cancer.
His career included work with David Alfaro Siqueiros, illustrating for "Sleeping Beauty" and "Fantastic Voyage," and murals for Disneyland and other Disney parks.
Sloan, 70, died Monday night. 'For those who grew up in Southern California in the golden glow of the mid-'60s," Joel Bellman writes, "he produced the soundtrack of our lives."
An exhibit of World War II camp photos at the Skirball includes images by Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake.
The Broad on Bunker Hill looks to be a hit. The Petersen, on the other hand, looks like something...
A clip from Arthur Lee's revered 1967 album "Forever Changes" helps enliven a story on mortgages. Join me in "A House is Not a Motel."
Analyst Ken Doctor says the fight for Times control is still on and has some intriguing wrinkles.
If you read one more long piece on the repercussions of last week's story about Jackie Fuchs and her account of being raped by Kim Fowley, I suggest Ann Powers' personal essay for NPR.
The editors call Sasha Frere-Jones "one of the leading voices of our time on music, language and culture." He won't report to any of the arts or culture editors, however.
Her book does not include Jackie Fuchs' details of being raped by Kim Fowley, the band's creepy creator. Here's why.
The bassist for the 1970s girl band had never talked about the long-rumored incident until now. She collected details from witnesses -- not including Joan Jett, who has yet to acknowledge what she saw.
Copeland came from a difficult situation in San Pedro and Gardena and today becomes the first African-American female principal dancer ever in the company.
Fairchild has been in LA Observed a few times, so let's see how he did at Sunday night's Tony Awards -- up for best actor in a musical.
Burden's "Urban Light" outside LACMA has become one of the most admired and photographed works of art in Los Angeles.
Far from DTLA, Fuentes has been chronicling street art in the desert and has some ideas on what's missing.
The Huntington Library announced it has acquired a full set of Ansel Adams portfolios that the California photographer shot and printed himself between 1948 and 1976 and called "an excellent cross section of my work."
"Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada" says the sign placed on the road into Vegas from LA in 1959. "A luminous diamond stretched like Silly Putty, each letter of 'Welcome' encircled by silver dollars."
Metro is installing the artwork for the elevated station at Sepulveda Boulevard. Westwood/Rancho Park and Palms went first.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino will open its new $68 million education and visitor center next Saturday, April 4.
She was hit and given a black eye by actor Scott Shepherd in London, and now leads an effort to make the theater a safer place for the people who on productions.
LACMA's VP in charge of getting the Levitated Mass boulder in place. A noted liberal rabbi. A former LA City Council member.
Tyler Green, the arts critic and reporter who writes Modern Art Notes, has signed a deal to write a biography about Watkins for UC Press.
Charles Champlin wore a lot of hats on the Los Angeles arts and entertainment journalism scene: LA Times arts editor, film critic, book critic, columnist, author, host of TV programs and more.
I'm reposting this Gary Leonard photo from 2011 of the artist Richard Duardo, who died Tuesday.
Tributes to the Los Angeles printmaker and artist Richard Duardo are filling my social feeds. Duardo has been referred to as the "Warhol of the West" for his prints of pop-culture icons.
On the same day that LACMA introduces donor Jerrold Perenchio, the Getty announces it acquired a Manet painting at a record price.
The museum has summoned the media on Thursday morning to announce what the release calls the largest gift of art in the museum's history. The donor is Jerrold Perenchio.
Sussman began her career as an office designer for Charles and Ray Eames. She created a distinctive graphic look for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Los Encinos State Historic Park, as I've said before, is my favorite history-drenched enclave of Los Angeles. So why not Hamlet on the grass?
Peter Zumthor's new design spares acreage around the La Brea Tar Pits and has the initial blessing of Mayor Eric Garcetti, LACMA director Michael Govan and Jane Pisano of the Natural History Museum.
The fifteen Barouni olive trees were transported to LA on large trucks and transplanted into the plaza outside the museum.
The number of Spanish speakers on staff goes up by one with the addition of Carolina Miranda, formerly of Time and KCRW, a Valley native who worked as an LAT desk assistant more than two decades ago.
A.O. Scott in the New York Times says Adam Sandler's "Blended" is so bad it will make your child stupid. The LA Times calls it a "fun...enjoyable romp."
Mural by Alfredo Diaz Flores at Louise Avenue and Vanowen Street depicted Mission San Juan Capistrano. I don't know how long it has been gone, but it was there last time I looked.
Citing her health, Linda Ronstadt says she won't attend April 10 in Brooklyn. Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Carrie Underwood and Glenn Frey will go instead and make sure she is properly feted.
The American Ballet Theater soloist we wrote about here the other day will speak Thursday night at Bergamot Station.
It's stunning how fast this all happened. One day, the National Enquirer was posting a bogus story that claimed David Bar Katz was the secret gay lover of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Less than three weeks later, the tabloid is paying for Katz to create the American Playwriting Foundation.
When the museum does open on Bunker Hill, there will be a public plaza and a restaurant whose partners include Bill Chait of Bestia and alums of Thomas Keller restaurants.
Schell won his best actor Oscar for the 1961 Staley Kramer film "Judgment at Nuremberg.” He later directed “Der Rosenkavalier” for the Los Angeles Opera in 2005.
Pete Seeger, a champion of American folk music and social change since the 1940s, collected songs in the South with Alan Lomax, traveled in California with Woody Guthrie, performed for President Barack Obama — and adapted the civil rights movement anthem "We Shall Overcome."
Sounds as if the Troubadour stage has hosted another memorable show. "Deliriously upbeat," writes Chris Willman for the Hollywood Reporter. Adds Steve Hochman: "Hard to believe anyone could steal a show with a lineup like this. But, well, Rhiannon Giddens."
The Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles is poised to name as its new director Philippe Vergne, director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York, according to Jori Finkel in the New York Times. The LAT, which laid off Finkel last year, doesn't have the story.
The position open now is for an on-air host of entertainment programing. As I understand the plan, the coverage will begin as a segment on "Take Two" then expand to a half-hour show.
Members of the Antaeus Company classical stage troupe made a humorous end-of-year fundraising video that uses a lot of pixelated skin to make the point that actors need costumes.
This painting of a freeway made in 1966 by the artist Vija Celmins is "a prime example of a California-based artist making work that engages the state’s famous highway system," writes arts journalist Tyler Green. He shows 25 examples.
Joseph Gatto is the longtime art teacher at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts who was found shot and killed in his Silver Lake home last week. Gatto was the father of state Assemblyman Mike Gatto.
The county-owned Bob Hope Patriotic Hall on Figueroa Street a bit south of downtown has been getting a makeover.
UCLA Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin announced at her annual Saturday night gala that the the Westwood galleries will switch to free admission in February. Hammer donors Erika Glazer and Brenda Potter are making the change possible.
I haven't been to enough Writers Bloc events to know if a standing ovation is usual when the author simply comes on stage, but that's what happened tonight in Santa Monica.
The Broad opened its doors to the media today for a hard-hat tour of the still under-construction museum and made some news.
The documentary photographer Bruce Davidson is known mostly for his images of New York — and not the softer sides of the city. Recently he has been dropping into Los Angeles for weeks at a time to shoot mostly in the hills and canyons. Palm trees, yuccas and the ivy growing on the undersides of freeway bridges factor in his LA pictures.
Linda Ronstadt told the AARP website she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease eight months ago, after beginning to show symptoms eight years ago. "No one can sing with Parkinson’s disease,” Ronstadt said. “No matter how hard you try.”
Steven Soboroff has picked up an interesting addition to the typewriter collection we have mentioned here from time to time. It is a Perkins Brailler that was used by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
For the first time in 83 years, one of Los Angeles' "rarest naming rights assets" is available. All media references to the Theatre will carry your brand name, the pitch promises investors.
Maurice and Paul Marciano of the Guess Inc. jeans empire paid $8 million for the Millard Sheets-designed venue. They plan to renovate and use it to collect their art, with occasional public showings.
Jeffrey Deitch formally informed the Museum of Contemporary Art board at today's meeting that he will be leaving as director. Joel Wachs is on the search committee.
After a report last night by Tom Christie that MOCA has formed a search committee, media outlets are confirming that an announcement of Deitch's exit is imminent.
Davan Maharaj, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, responded last evening to the Southern California museum directors who emailed a complaint yesterday about the firing of arts reporter Jori Finkel, who was laid off recently. Read Maharaj's response inside.
In a letter to editor Davan Maharaj, the heads of the Getty, Hammer, LACMA and a dozen other institutions call for reinstating the position that was occupied by arts reporter Jori Finkel.
"Dear Hollywood Wax Museum," says a story in Vice. "I recently visited your Los Angeles location and was exceptionally disappointed with what I saw...It was all of your waxworks. They look like something from the nightmares of a person who has been blind since birth and has no real concept of what human beings look like."
A 1915 mural of a stagecoach scene that used to hang in the lobby of the Rosslyn Hotel in downtown Los Angeles has shown up for sale on eBay. Part of a set that was removed when the Rosslyn was remodeled, the mural is by long-ago LA muralist Einar Petersen.
This weekend's New York Times Magazine had a long feature on how artist James Turrell has "knocked the art world off its feet," partly by opening three major shows in different cities inside a month. One of those cities is Los Angeles, as we have posted already. What hasn't been covered in LA is just how close the intricate LACMA show came to not being ready on time.
That's the Van Nuys city hall, where the Los Angeles City Council will hold its Friday meeting. Davies is in town to perform at the Canyon Club and elsewhere. Vintage videos inside.
I don't think any politician who moved on from Los Angeles City Hall in recent times has invented a new life for himself (or herself) more successfully than Joel Wachs. The former city councilman from the Valley has been the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York for more than a decade now — and his moves have made him a transformative figure in the art world.
The Kayne Griffin Corcoran gallery on South La Brea opened with an inaugural exhibition of work by artist James Turrell, including e Skyspace room where visitors sit in reclining chairs and observe subtle light and color changes from a dome in the ceiling.
"Melville was the most extraordinary advocate Los Angeles theater has known," says the CEO of LA Stage Alliance.
If you lived in Los Angeles in the 1960s and were inclined toward rock and roll, you might have seen Ray Manzarek and The Doors play at Sunset Strip clubs, at Ports O'Call in San Pedro — or at your high school. Memories are flowing on social media.
Ray Manzarek, the Doors keyboardist, died at a clinic in Germany. Manzarek had cancer of the bile ducts. Sunset Strip clubs dimmed the lights Monday night in his honor. Video and photos inside.
They are donating $70 million for USC to create a new academy for students "who challenge conventional views of art and industry." The unveiling will officially be tomorrow at Interscope Geffen A&M Records in Santa Monica, but USC put out the release tonight.
In this film made for MOCA TV, Chloe Sevigny bitches about everything in LA and pees in front of the camera — it's amusing and moreso when the twists occur at the end.
Wilson was a Los Angeles Times art critic from 1965 until he retired in 1998, and the chief critic for 20 of those years.
The Museum of Contemporary Art released a statement today saying it would remain an independent institution. The statement does not mention LACMA or the proposal to merge with the Wilshire Boulevard museum, but it didn't have to.
Bobby Rogers shared a birthday with Smokey Robinson and they began singing together at Detroit's Northern High School. Their group, The Matadors, changed its name to The Miracles after Rogers' cousin, Claudette Rogers, joined. They became the first Motown Records success.
In hula, it's a big thing to compete in the annual Merrie Monarch Festival held each spring in Hilo. This year there are only three troupes from outside Hawaii, and two are from the Los Angeles area. There's video inside; one halau struts its stuff Sunday in Lakewood to raise money to go.
Big weekend for Angelenos in the New York Times, including an obituary of Huell Howser. Plus: Kobe and Vanessa back together.
In this Univision video in English, the curator of a new show at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City explains the colorful dresses, other clothing and body harnesses found 58 years after the artist's death.
Page was to receive a lifetime achievement Grammy Award next month. The top selling female recording artist of the 1950s died in a nursing home in Encinitas.
I'm catching up on some locally prominent deaths I've missed during the holiday slowdown. Video inside: 17 minutes of "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida."
Fontella Bass, a church choir singer in St. Louis who recorded as a soul singer for Chess Records and had a hit with "Rescue Me" in 1965, died Wednesday at age 72 in her hometown. She suffered a heart attack three weeks ago.
Awesome. Brilliant stroke to go female with the Led Zeppelin anthem. The surprise church choir voices finally brought Robert Plant to subtle tears.
Imagine if Disneyland had been built in Burbank, or if LAX lay west of the corner of Balboa and Roscoe. A major new exhibit will look at the city that never happened — a cool video inside invites you to support the project on Kickstarter.
The Jenni Rivera memorial held today at the Gibson Amphitheatre looked to be a very large family gathering. There were the 6,000-plus fans in the seats who sang along with the songs and chanted her name, and there was the singer's extended family baring their souls on stage.
Rivera's family is asking to be left alone for a private burial, but on Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon there will be a public memorial service at the amphitheater in Universal CityWalk. Her minister brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., will lead the service.
Friesen was the longtime president of A&M Records, executive producer of "The Breakfast Club" and was at work on a documentary about back-up singers called "Twenty Feet From Stardom."
Jeni LeGon made her name in the 1930s singing and dancing with other African-American stars such as Bill Bojangles Robinson and Fats Waller. She later taught dance in Los Angeles, the NYT says.
Oxy posts a little remembrance today that connects the small size of Shankar's living room in Beverly Hills in the 1970s with a 40-year tradition of live Indian classical music at the Eagle Rock campus.
The Washington Post's Paul Farhi takes his stab at explaining why most Americans had never heard of Jenni Rivera until the Mexican-American performer died in a plane crash — and why very few media in Southern California had ever done stories on the local girl who made good. Make that very good.
Ravi Shankar has died in San Diego after being admitted to Scripps Memorial Hospital last week complaining of breathing difficulties. The legendary musician and his musician daughter Anoushka are nominated for 2013 Grammy awards in the world music category. The prime minister of India has confirmed the death and called Shankar a national treasure.
The April 18 induction ceremony will be held at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, moving to the West Coast for the first time since 1993. The event will be open to the ticket-buying public, and will air as an HBO special on May 18.
Authorities in Mexico say that the remains of singer Jenni Rivera were found overnight in the wreckage field of her jet that crashed Sunday in mountains in the state of Nuevo Leon.
She will perform "Llorando," from the David Lynch film "Mulholland Drive," perhaps one last time on Sunday in Downtown LA. The brain surgery is expected to damage her voice.
Starting this month, museum visitors who take a guided tour on weekends and pay an extra $25 will get to see the special cars kept out view in the garage.
Beside Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica, bridge foundations are rising that portend the demise of a portion of the Bergamot Station arts complex, including the Track 16 gallery where many have attended events through the years. Lisa Napoli pays a little tribute for KCRW.
Forty years ago this weekend, Italian pop singer Adriano Celentano released a song that became a hit in Italy and across Europe — but it wasn't sung in Italian or English. Caution: infectious video ahead.
Bill Dees was a Nashville songwriter working with Roy Orbison in 1964 when they wrote 'Oh, Pretty Woman," inspired by Orbison's wife Claudette. The song changed both of their lives forever.
The Brewery Arts Complex in Lincoln Heights held its twice-annual open house and art walk this weekend. Good crowds both days. Here are a few pics.
For his new book documenting the rock and roll billboards of the Sunset Strip, Robert Landau wondered what happened to Paul's head from Abbey Road. Now we know, 43 years later. Pics and video inside.
Gary Leonard's Take My Picture gallery on Broadway is opening a new exhibit tonight of 51 paintings and drawings by Philip Stein, who was nicknamed Estaño by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson sent in a letter to the Los Angeles Times responding to a piece on Saturday by Mike Love, another original member of the band — and Wilson's cousin — about how it came to be that an entity called the Beach Boys will continue to tour without Wilson or Al Jardine.
That $10 million art theft at the home of Santa Monica bond trader Jeffrey Gundlach has been solved — or at least he has gotten his artwork back and two men have been arrested. I guess rewards work when they are big enough.
My item last week on the Getty's parking revenue included two incorrect numbers billed as coming from the museum's IRS filings, and they alter one of the key points of the post. In fact, the Getty has netted more than $1.2 million in new parking revenue that did not go for executive salaries.
On Sept. 11 at the Hollywood Bowl, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky narrated the Abraham Lincoln parts of it “A Lincoln Portrait,” by Aaron Copland. Watch the video.
In the late 1970s, performance artist Stephen Seemayer used an 8mm movie camera to film the artists who were starting to inhabit Downtown, "before skyscrapers, MOCA and loft living." His 1981 documentary, "Young Turks," has been re-cut with Pamela Wilson using found footage of Al's Bar, Pino's Tropical Paradise, the Atomic Cafe and other landmarks of the Downtown art scene that no longer exist. Watch the trailer inside.
Johnny Perez came out of San Antonio as the drummer of the 1960s band Sir Douglas Quintet, which had hits with 'She's About a Mover" and "Mendocino." Perez landed in Topanga Canyon and more recently owned Topanga Skyline Studio, a famous recording venue used by Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Sting, T-Bone Burnett and others.
Philips is the former LA Times staff writer who left the paper shortly after editors fully retracted his 2008 story naming names in the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. He will break what he calls a new story Thursday via tweet.
Officially, there is no admission charge to visit the Getty Museum. But parking takes in almost two million dollars more than it used to.
América Tropical, on a second-story outside wall of the old Italian Hall on Olvera Street, is the last surviving public mural by Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros in the United States that remains in its original location.
On Friday night, Zocalo held its first event outside in the new Grand Park — a co-branded dealie with KCRW. On the panel, Los Angeles Times arts reporter Jori Finkel...
The Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles isn’t in a party mood this year, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports.
The newest music writer on the LAT staff is Mikael Wood, most recently a freelancer for the paper and elsewhere. Here's the newsroom memo:
The Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre's latest work, "Kiss n' Ride," will be performed inside the city's Van Nuys FlyAway Bus Terminal on Woodley Avenue.
It has been two decades since artist Robert Mapplethorpe's exhibit of sexually graphic photographs of black men were denounced by Jesse Helms and put on trial for obscenity in Cincinnati. (The jury acquitted the museum director.) Now Mapplethorpe’s rarely shown "X Portfolio" will go on display this fall at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "in a space beyond immediate sightlines."
Theater critic Don Shirley likes to peruse the new CTG seasons when they are announced and gauge how well the material fits the company's pledge to tell stories "inspired on our own streets” and through “collaboration with other Los Angeles theatres and ensembles.” Only this time, Shirley says that principle has gone missing from the CTG website.
The trompe l'oeil bookshelves were commissioned by Lee Dembart, a former Los Angeles Times editor and writer, and painted in 2005 by artist Don Gray. Author Robert Crais posted about the garage door recently on Facebook.
Artist Colin Rich, who made a pretty stunning timelapse piece on Los Angeles at night last year, returns to the subject of illuminated LA. The music this time is "Echoes of Mine" by M83. Watch inside.
Scott McKenzie, who died Saturday at home in Silver Lake, is best known for singing the ballad "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," which beckoned the youth of the world to come to the first Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and became an anthem of that year's Summer of Love. The song, written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and released by Lou Adler's Ode Records, went as high as No. 4 on the Billboard chart but was No. 1 across Europe. Check out this video from Monterey.
Artist Chris Burden used to see the Helmut Jahn-designed Tower building at Wilshire and Midvale Avenue on his trips to and from UCLA, where he taught for 26 years. It's a "visually complex and satisfying office building" that gives him pleasure, as he explains.
Lauren Bon's latest project is to install a large working water wheel to extract water out of the Los Angeles River (once the city's main source) and irrigate land beside the Broadway bridge, near the Los Angeles State Historic Park where her cornfield transformed a former train yard in 2005. Check out the prototype.
Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen tracked down his man — the mysterious figure who stands up and dances at so many live music performances around town that he showed up in "Shut Up and Play the Hits," a documentary on the band LCD Soundsystem. Here's the scoop.
Lauritzen is portrayed as "a laid-back evangelist of the classical radio world" in a short Times feature by Scott Timberg.
Charles McNulty's review sounds completely fair, while saying what had to be said. "The unretireable Minnelli owed her success on Saturday as much to her signature strengths as to her often parodied weaknesses."
Bloomberg News is moving a story by Chris Palmeri saying that the Museum of Contemporary Art has reversed an earlier decision and will hire a new chief curator. “In the past weeks we have witnessed considerable media attention and criticism directed at MOCA and its leadership, particularly at our director,” the MOCA board’s executive committee wrote in a letter to other trustees.
Hamlisch collapsed and died in Los Angeles on Monday. He has won three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize. He had been scheduled to return in September as conductor of the Pasadena Symphony and Pops.
Just your average cigar-smoking, tequila-swigging, pistol-packing lesbian Mexican ranchera singer who may have had a love affair with Frida Kahlo.
Portman and Benjamin Millepied managed to keep it secret until after the fact, so good on them.
William Poundstone writes at Artinfo that the whole notion of Eli Broad trying to run the Museum of Contemporary Art into the ground is uninformed, illogical and should just go away. Frequent MOCA critic Tyler Green agrees, posting on Facebook: "This is fantastic. I wish I'd written it."
Residents in the city of San Fernando could not stop their J.C. Penney store from closing over the weekend. But they did manage to stop the dismantling of the store's long-time neon sign.
If you remember the exhibit at LACMA a couple of years ago on European clothing through the centuries, here's some interesting behind-the-scenes detail on the show and its recent run in Berlin. Plus a reprise of our video tour with costume designer Marlene Stewart.
Charles Young, the former UCLA chancellor who was named chief executive officer at the troubled Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008, has sent an email to friend and museum trustee Eli Broad urging they move on from director Jeffrey Deitch.
Dick Clark points out the DWP building and the new Music Center, then the Turtles play "You Baby" on the Grand Avenue sidewalk with City Hall in the background, in a clip from "Where the Action Is."
Keith Shapiro grew up in Pittsburgh listening to Dr. Demento talk about a magical place in LA's Westwood called Rhino Records. Now he's making a movie. Check out the video.
Embattled MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch sat down with the LA Times' Reed Johnson on Friday to give his side of the past month's turmoil at his museum. Deitch "vigorously defended his two-year record of exhibitions and programming. Meanwhile, a NYT critic who endorsed Deitch's hiring backs away some.
In honor of Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, which would have been last weekend, KCET blogger and artist Ed Fuentes went in search of understanding why LA's months of celebrating the Dust Bowl era singer-songwriter includes city signs proclaiming 4th and Main to be "Woody Guthrie Square."
The lead singer for The Bangles released a new solo album today and made the rounds, including a conversation and mini-concert at the Grammy Museum last night and a visit to "Good Day LA" on Fox 11. Meanwhile, she performs with the original band next month in Pershing Square then goes out on tour. Oh by the way, she is 53 and the mother of two teenage sons.
Ruscha became the last of four artists to leave the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art since the whole kerfuffle erupted over the removal of chief curator Paul Shimmel.
The board of the Museum of Contemporary Art lost two more prominent artists. In a joint resignation letter, Opie and Kruger said "perhaps we're just not the appropriate artists to represent this current version of MOCA."
The artist, on the Museum of Contemporary Art board board for 12 years, is the fifth member to leave since February, says Mike Boehm in the LA Times. Baldessari said his reasons include the recent ouster of chief curator Paul Schimmel and news that the museum will hold an exhibition on disco music's influence.
Research readers will now have to pay to park at the Getty, and automated machines are replacing the money takers out at the Sepulveda gate. Still $15 a car to get in, or $10 after 5 p.m.
In an op-ed in the Sunday L.A. Times aimed at defusing the controversy over curator Paul Schimmel's departure, museum patron Eli Broad expresses his support for the direction the Museum of Contemporary Art is headed. He's fairly critical of some past practices and says he's happy with controversial director Jeffrey Deitch.
The news last week in the LA Times that the MOCA board of directors fired curator Paul Schimmel, with Eli Broad giving him the word, revealed deep discord in the arts journalism world about the direction of the Bunker Hill museum under the recent guidance of Jeffrey Deitch.
U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter gave the commencement speech last month at Pomona College and hinted that he may know a thing or two about a long ago prank at Claremont's Bridges Auditorium.
Barry Smolin's show devoted to the music of the Grateful Dead and beyond was on the air at KPFK from 1995 until slipping into hiatus a few months ago. "The Head Room" debuts Friday at 10 p.m.
Just 48 seconds — kind of fun to watch the transformation of LACMA's back lawn into the city's newest outdoor gathering spot.
Michael Heizer and LACMA unveiled his giant boulder this morning, and several hundred people came out to take a look. Lots of oohing, ahhing and picture taking under the boulder. As LACMA director Michael Govan said, how often do you get to see under a sculpture?
The painter mostly of sports scenes and the Olympics, and a longtime contributor to Playboy magazine, died today, his publicist told AP.
Business editor John Corrigan gets the AME slot for arts and entertainment, while Ochoa — the former LA Weekly editor who is married to Jonathan Gold — becomes Arts and Entertainment Editor reporting to Corrigan. TV critic Mary McNamara also gets a new title.
If you plan to visit the galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, you better start thinking about going earlier in the day. The museum, currently open until at least 8 p.m. every night except Wednesday (when everything is dark), is shifting to an earlier schedule.
Life Books has released a new book with photographs from the magazine's archives and other sources: "The Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Rock ’n’ Roll." Were you at Anaheim Stadium in '78? Altamont Speedway?
The Platters were another popular vocal group that formed in Los Angeles and lasted. Reed, a Kansas City native, was there at the beginning — he gets credit for naming the group — and he sang bass "on all of the 400 recordings the group made during its peak years, including four that reached No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart." Video and obits
Zócalo hosts a Music Center conversation on Sunday with choreographer Benjamin Millepied, and among the group's eclectic web offerings up now is an essay on what whiteness means.
The nurse attending Bobby Womack in Encino wears an expression for which the phrase "long-suffering" was invented. "Can I give you your meds?" she asks, proffering a handful of tablets. "Potassium, magnesium, something for blood sugar," she explains.
Joe Donnelly, the co-editor and publisher of Slake: Los Angeles, writes in a Las Vegas magazine about his epiphany with the Beach Boys, many years ago. "I think it was 'Sloop John B' that did it," he writes, "...a miniature pocket symphony, if you will, of ascending and descending harmonies, vocal bass lines, multi-tracking, odd-but-effective instrumentation." Excerpts and a video
The founder of music publisher TRO, The Richmond Organization, "contributed mightily and without fanfare to the music business for nearly three quarters of a century," family friend and former employee Michael Sigman, the former LA Weekly publisher, writes at the Huffington Post.
Calder Greenwood, one of the artists who stationed some papier-mâché figures in the vacant pit where the state building in Downtown was razed five years ago, says he doesn't know what happened to his papier-mâché sunbathers. "But I'm glad people saw them while they were up."
The Getty Center’s Central Garden will reopen to visitors on Saturday, May 26. It has been closed since February for maintenance to the walkways and planters.
The figures that showed up — briefly — in the Civic Center pit on Wednesday are made of papier-mâché and apparently the work of artist Calder Greenwood, the LA Weekly says. Sounds good to us.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino announced Wednesday it will close the Main Exhibition Hall on June 5. After renovation and reinstallation with "a new, dynamic permanent exhibition designed to provoke visitors’ sense of connection to history and literature," the hall will reopen in fall 2013.
Artist J. Michael Walker sends word that his friend Calvin Hicks died on Sunday, from complications of cancer. Hicks' photography was most recently seen in the Pacific Standard Time exhibition, "Identity & Affirmation: Post-War African-American Photography," at Cal State Northridge.Also: Otto Jensen, Burbank photographer was 101
The LA author of a new history of the ukulele says last week's story in The Daily got a few key things wrong. Here are his corrections, and more proof that the uke has soul.
The payoff for all that excitement and disruption involved in moving a 340-ton hunk of rock from Riverside County to Wilshire Boulevard comes June 24. That's the day the Levitated Mass exhibit will debut at a dedication ceremony on the back lawn of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Free admission if the rock passed through your Zip code.
The stringed instruments that define so much Hawaiian music all came from somewhere else — and not so very long ago. In the case of the ukulele, that was from Portugal's Madeira Islands. Hawaii's King David Kalakaua embraced the four-stringed instrument after it arrived about 1879, and the rest kind of is history, as Los Angeles writer Swati Pandey explores at the Daily.
The singer known for her disco era hits such as "Love to Love You Baby," "Last Dance" and "On The Radio" has died of lung cancer.
Friend and artist J. Michael Walker recounts in a piece for the LA Times op-ed page ow the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida overwhelmed artist Willie Middlebrook in the hospital last month.
Yes, the long wait is over. We now know what the bathrooms will look like when the Hollywood Bowl season opens. Courtesy of ZevWeb.
The Inglewood artist died over the weekend, just a week after the opening of the Expo Line, which features his artwork in the Crenshaw station. The MTA joined friends on Facebook in announcing his death.
Here's a side of Clippers' play-by-play man Ralph Lawler that you probably didn't know. The 1960s stage musical "Hair" changed his life. He's this week's guest DJ on KCRW.
"In a world full of secrets, lies, and depravity, there are some crimes that the police are just too mainstream to handle. Enter: The Silver Lake Badminton and Adventurers club. The heros Silver Lake deserves but hasn't necessarily heard of yet."
Pedro E Guerrero: Photographs of Modern Life" is on exhibition at the Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery through April 25. Guerrero, who is now 94, was a close friend of, and the photographer for, Frank Lloyd Wright.
"He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation. This is just so sad to talk about...." More inside.
The artist and his wife are staying in an Airstream trailer at LACMA during the installation of Levitated Mass. He gave architect Frank Gehry a tour of the site this week.
Leonard Cohen delivered a heartfelt statement in Los Angeles Superior Court today at the sentencing of Kelley Lynch, his former business manager. He also thanked the judge for "the elegant manner in which these proceedings have unfolded. It was a privilege and an education to testify in this courtroom."
An op-ed piece protests the plan by Metro to raze the Wilshire Boulevard buildings that house the A+D Architecture and Design Museum and nearby galleries in order to stage construction of the Purple Line stop at Fairfax Avenue.
Nice informal footage of Leonard Cohen rehearsing in Ghent, Belgium with his band and the angelic accompaniment of the tour's two backup singers from Ojai, Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla.
Saturday is the official last day of the Pacific Standard Time extravaganza that began last fall.
Richard Parks' documentary film about epic Los Angeles record collector Murray Gershenz, who's pushing 90, debuts on The Documentary Channel on April 21 and will also be on NPR's All Songs Considered website.
If you are still hearing in your head the French sex song interlude from last night's 'Mad Men' season debut, Slate's David Haglund provides the original (above) and some...
The Los Angeles artist talks about doing three murals inside Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Downtown.
Next month there will be a major conference at USC and a star-studded concert at L.A. Live of Guthrie's music, all for the centennial of his birth.
The LA County Coroner has ruled that Whitney Houston died of an accidental drowning in which heart disease and cocaine were factors. Traces of marijuana, Xanax and other drugs were...
Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing was published in Venice between 1976 and 1981. Now there's a book.
Los Angeles journalist RJ Smith's biography, "The One: The Life and Music of James Brown," is getting some rave response. Enjoy some video of the Godfather of Soul.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer to be there on the day the hula flash mob drops in.
Arts critic and blogger Tyler Green is perturbed by MOCA's latest untraditional arrangement — "it’s extremely unusual — and perhaps unprecedented — for a museum to put an exhibition in a space owned by a dealer or to accept funds from a dealer to place an exhibition in a space he owns."
Total gallons of diesel fuel burned: 2,250. Cars towed on Wilshire: 10, including six Hondas.
The creator of "Soul Train," who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in the hills last month, never thought he got the credit or support he was due.
* Update: The megalith arrived at its final home at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art about 4:30 a.m. ths morning. Gary Leonard was there when it passed...
What you need to know to see the LACMA boulder arrive early Saturday morning, but plus more notes.
At 9 p.m. tonight KCET's new Open Call series is airing a documentary I helped produce on UCLA professor and jazz guitar legend Kenny Burrell. Then on Saturday, I'm showing photos from the old Valley Times newspaper at the Central Library.
The "slot" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where the Levitated Mass boulder will go on display. The rock arrives Saturday. More...
>The Lost & Found Project's Exhibit of Photos Swept Away by Tsunami in Japan opens Thursday at the Hiroshi Watanabe Gallery in West Hollywood.
Angels Flight Railway president John H. Welborne announced that the one-way fare to ride the cars up or down Bunker Hill in Downtown will rise next Monday.
The plan is for the Levitated Mass convoy to enter Los Angeles on Thursday night — in hopes of reaching the museum on Saturday morning.
That's a respectable crowd on the sidewalk — reminded some residents of when the Olympic torch came through in 1984.
Tonight's fire at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Orange Avenue wasn't just in another storefront. It's the former location of Radio Recorders, a legendary sound studio.
The Ansel Adams Museum Sets were selected out of his archives and printed by Adams near the end of his life, then sold on condition that the buyers would eventually donate their set to a museum.
The 340-ton boulder that's headed for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is attracting crowds of fans — and potential new visitors to the museum — as it rolls...
Carol Kaye played bass guitar on many hit songs of the 1960s and 70s. She came out of Long Beach, played in LA jazz clubs and broke into session work in Hollywood with an invitation to play on a Sam Cooke recording.
Nice video piece by KCRW's Saul Gonzalez and Michael Garber on the resurgence of a market for vinyl records.
The lead singer of the musical group The Monkees that was cast for a television show that ran on NBC from 1966-68 died of a heart attack in Indiantown, Florida, where he lived.
The 340-ton boulder that is destined to sit on the lawn behind the Los Angeles County Museum of Art began its long-delayed trek last night, after suitable festivities at the Stone Valley Materials quarry in Riverside County.
The Da Camera Society's Chamber Music in Historic Sites series certainly will live up to the latter part of its name with Saturday's shows.
Two were session musicians and more, while Levee was the principal clarinetist of the LA Philharmonic.
Photographer Gary Leonard is really looking forward to the move of that 340-ton boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Arts blogger Lee Rosenbaum says what startled her most about Timothy Potts was "his lack of thorough knowledge about the Getty's written antiquities-collecting policy."
The KPCC afternoon host mentions meeting Leonard on a Buddhist retreat, before she know who he was.
Just as blogger Lee Rosenbaum said yesterday, the Getty announced today that the museum's new director is Timothy Potts.
The sculpture garden and all the lawn areas are included in the closure, in case that affects your plans to visit.
Sunday's Caltrans-induced traffic jam on Interstate 10 coming back in from Palm Springs was so bad that at least one group of music industry types headed to the Grammy Awards flew into Santa Monica Airport.
Beverly Hills police today confirmed the reports that singer Whitney Houston was unconscious and underwater when attendants entered her Beverly Hilton bathroom on Saturday afternoon.
The Grammys handled the death of Whitney Houston by having host LL Cool J follow opening act Bruce Springsteen with some words of tribute and a prayer "for our fallen sister," and Jennifer Hudson sang "I Will Always Love You."
While the body of Whitney Houston lay upstairs, music business legend Clive Davis and his guests held their annual pre-Grammy party — somewhat muted, it sounds like, and with some high-profile absences.
KTLA brought in a full crew, I'm told, to pull together a nearly five-minute news piece on Whitney Houston's rise and fall. If the player doesn't show, here's the link....
"Whitney Houston was one of the world's greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades," Recording Academy President/CEO Neil Portnow says.
Publicist Kristen Foster told AP on Saturday afternoon that the singer had died. TMZ reports she died at the Beverly Hilton, where she was to attend a Clive Davis party tonight.
Posted at Brian Wilson's Facebook page, along with the line "who's watching the Grammy's on Sunday?"
Misty Copeland is the 29-year-old soloist for the American Ballet Theatre (and muse of Prince) who we told you about last year at LA Observed.
Largest crowd for a Walk of Fame star ceremony that many could remember, outside the Capitol Records tower on Thursday. Photo by Gary Leonard.
All those posters around town for Lana Del Rey worked. Pretty much everything she's doing seems to be working, including that bad turn on SNL.
Los Angeles police outside a 1987 show by The Ramones and Black Flag at the Hollywood Palladium.
Fifteen or so years since Universal Music Group left for Santa Monica, the honchos at Universal City are taking down the signs on various streets and driveways that honor music legends.
Artillery founder Tulsa Kinney has posted her interview in the magazine with Mike Kelley, possibly the last interview with the artist who apparently killed himself at home in South Pasadena earlier this week.
South Pasadena police say that artist Mike Kelley was found dead Tuesday night at home and may have killed himself.
O'Brien, Nick Offerman and Patton Oswalt will take part in a family-friendly benefit for the Geffen Playhouse Story Pirates Play/Write program.
Ruth Price's Jazz Bakery received approval today from the Culver City city council to develop a new Frank Gehry-designed, 250-seat theater.
Adam Leipzig, publisher of the website Cultural Weekly, doesn't pretend to be objective about the city's move to remove the Latino Theater Company from the Los Angeles Theatre Center, its Spring Street home for six years.
Historian Jon Wiener op-eds in the Los Angeles Times about a divisive 1966 art installation intended as a protest against the Vietnam War.
Levy's clients included Cannonball Adderley, Betty Carter, Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock, Shirley Horn, Freddie Hubbard, Ramsey Lewis, Herbie Mann, Les McCann, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson and many others. In 2006 the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Levy's role in jazz.
KPFK (FM 90.7), which had a long association with Johnny Otis, will air tributes starting tonight with Bill Gardner's 8 p.m. show, "Rhapsody in Black."
Etta James, who was 73, is another of the great R&B figures to come out of the Los Angeles area. She died Friday in Riverside after suffering from ill health, including leukemia and dementia.
Johnny Otis, the white songwriter and singer from the Bay Area who said he "chose" to live as a black man, died in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday.
The Southern California Slack Key Festival on Sunday at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center will feature some of the top Hawaiian musicians whose work made it into Alexander Payne's...
Chris Burden's installation now at LACMA came together with the help of an interesting crew that reflects Southern California.
Lots of L.A. in the video for Lana Del Rey's first hit.
It may come back, but for now The Music Box on Hollywood Boulevard has the feel of a former venue
Charles McNulty's year-end lookbacks "demonstrated anew [the paper's] curiously constricted view of the importance of the other LAT — LA theater."
Ink and Paper spends nine lovely minutes at adjacent shops out of another time in the Westlake district, near MacArthur Park.
The Music Machine got a regular gig at Hollywood Legion Lanes bowling alley and in 1966 scored their only chart hit, "Talk Talk."
Video from the only rehearsal of the local tradition at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
The makeover project is costing $3 million and Mark Rios is the architect.
American Masters on PBS on Monday night aired "Charles and Ray Eames: the Architect and the Painter," about the famed Los Angeles design team and couple.
The Levitated Mass boulder is still in Riverside County, despite what Los Angeles magazine says.
News item: Brian Wilson will rejoin the Beach Boys to make a 50th anniversary album and go on tour.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was on stage in 1986 when KCRW held its first live music show ever, at the Olympic Auditorium.
Manuscripts, correspondence, calendars and other archival materials are included in the acquisitions, as well as some photographs of course.
The music industry veteran who was shot in his Mercedes by Tyler Brehm in Friday's rampage in Hollywood died of his injuries this afternoon, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced.
The L.A. Film Critics Association is tweeting out the news from their annual vote.
The Central Library has an impressive collection already and is looking for more.
President of the Huntington Library and botanical gardens asks for financial help to clean up "extensive" damage from last week's winds.
Kent Twitchell's mural of L.A. Chamber Orchestra players started going up in 1991
Barbara Orbison, who was 60, died here in Los Angeles on Dec. 6, the 23rd anniversary of the death of her husband Roy Orbison.
Dobie Gray, born in Texas, moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to be an actor but had greater success as a singer. (He did spend a couple of...
The amateur musical groups selected to perform in the free holiday concert at the Music Center on Christmas Eve get 20 minutes each to rehearse — in one day-long marathon on the fourth floor of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. LA Observed was there Saturday.
Ed Fuentes, the Downtown photographer and muralist, examines the case for preserving the mural created on the plywood box that city crews had erected in the Occupy LA camp to protect a fountain.
Parking at the Getty Museum used to be free after 5 p.m.
A no parking sign of dubious origin, plus evidence of progress on the Eli Broad art museum on Bunker Hill.
The singer known as Heavy D collapsed this morning outside his home in Beverly Hills, and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai.
Recording star Shakira poses after receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this morning.
The Eastsider L.A. has a nice piece on Darren Pearson, an Eagle Rock artist who uses the LED on a key chain to "draw" images of dinosaurs.
On Wednesday night, the Geffen Playhouse run began for "Next Fall," handpicked for the schedule by producing director Gil Cates.
The big fashion and celebrity fundraiser on Saturday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio and Eva Chow, is billed in today's Wall Street Journal as essentially a borrowed idea.
Noah Margo, a write-in candidate for the Beverly Hills school board, has a family musical legacy.
Gilbert Cates, the stage, film and TV producer and director and the producing director of the Geffen Playhouse, has died at age 77.
Work on a ball gown for the L.A. Opera's latest production The L.A. Opera will opens its doors for the company's first open house on Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler...
Each October, Gary Leonard heads out to Santa Monica Beach for artist Tyrus Wong's birthday.
For 16 years, Whittier artist George Sportelli has been cleaning and maintaining his mural of actor Tony Curtis on the southbound Hollywood Freeway. But no more.
I was inspired by my first visit last week to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library to make this week's KCRW column about L.A.'s historical tradition of concerts and recitals in private homes.
I guess there are many variations of the Laurel and Hardy dance meme on YouTube, but this was new to me until Facebook this morning.
After some delays, the 340-ton boulder destined to be part of an exhibit at LACMA is now scheduled to leave the Riverside area quarry on Oct. 25. Wait until you see the route map.
Lorraine Ali is the new pop music editor for the Los Angeles Times, where she began writing for the longtime pop music editor Robert Hilburn.
The New York Times finds some skepticism about the arts festival.
See the Eames living room, furniture by Neutra and Schindler, Dick Van Dyke's Studebaker Avanti and more.
Miguel Angel Corzo, president and CEO of the new LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes near the historic Plaza, has been removed and there have been layoffs.
Taped at LACMA for Pacific Standard Time.
Los Angeles did not have a public exhibition space devoted to art until 1954.
It's the usual story: he blew all his money, he's suing his former representation for squandering even more of it, and he feels the FBI and his enemies are after him.
There was a bit of extra buzz this year due to the participation of former television journalist Bill Lagattuta.
Sound City Studio Center in Van Nuys is where many top records were made. "If you're a fan of rock and roll...this is hallowed ground."
With the news that R.E.M. is breaking up, James Poniewozik warns: "For the next day or two, those of us who attended college in the '80s and '90s are going to be insufferable."
The City Project has posted a series of photos of wall art that has been popping up in Westwood Village.
The video that explains Pacific Standard Time in less than two minutes and why the museums in L.A. are so excited.
Otis Redding, a Stax/Volt artist from Dawson Georgia, broke ground twice in California. He introduced R&B to the Whisky on the Sunset Strip in 1966. The next year he...
Today would have been the 75th birthday of the rock and roll pioneer who died at 22 in the 1959 plane crash that also killed Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson. At 11:30 a.m.outside the Capitol Records building, Holly's widow Maria Elena Holly will accept his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As part of David Kipen's Libros Schmibros pop-up bookstore at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, artist and author J. Michael Walker created a map that spans 23 feet by 5 feet that depicts L.A. literary figures.
Daily News columnist Doug McIntyre on the weekend shuttering of the Van Nuys jazz bar.
He was installing a floor-to-ceiling piece in the new West Hollywood library when L.A. Independent managing editor John Moreno caught up with Fairey.
Before the Ronettes, the Supremes or the The Shangri-Las were The Exciters.
But don't buy any advance tickets, and if you're a band, cash the check quick and get out of town.
The former CBS News correspondent and local TV newsman in Los Angeles is now painting and sculpting at a studio in Elysian Valley.
Questions now are whether $140,000 or so is enough and whether the city will reconsider the denial of a permit for this weekend's scheduled street fair.
Caltrans had planned to show off four new pieces of artwork along Los Angeles freeways this morning, replicas of murals from the 1984 Olympics era that had been defaced by taggers. But overnight, two of the pieces were stolen.
Bad day for legendary songwriting teams. Nick Ashford, a prolific writer of hits for Motown with his partner and later wife Valerie Simpson, died in New York City.
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met in Los Angeles in 1950 and teamed up to write dozens of early rock and roll hits, including many for Elvis Presley. Leiber died today at Cedars-Sinai.
Scott Wannberg, a member of the traveling poet troupe known as the “Carma Bums” and a 23-year employee of the late Dutton's Brentwood Books, died Friday of an apparent heart attack in his recent hometown of Florence, Oregon.
Q&A with the director follows Saturday night's free film screening at the Hammer Museum of the 1973 documentary on "the black Woodstock," more properly known as the Wattstax Music Festival.
New York Times art critic Holland Cotter reviews "Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s" by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp.
The murals inside the Tujunga Wash flood control channel known as The Great Wall of Los Angeles are getting some fresh care.
Gustavo Arellano, creator of the Ask a Mexican! column syndicated out of the OC Weekly, writes today that "I've been sitting on this announcement for months, partly because I fully expected it to fall through."
You may remember the local ballet company that we featured in an audio photo video a couple of years ago. The LA Weekly looks at why so many dancers leave.
The effect of moving the vendors and food trucks out of the crowded core of Downtown's Art Walk was, predictably, to steer some of the people to other blocks.
Twenty-nine years after they frolicked on La Cienega and in the Beverly Hills fountain for the "Our Lips Are Sealed" video below, the Go-Go's showed up in Hollywood today...
The Getty's acquisition includes photographs of nudes, celebrity portraits, and images made for high-fashion ad campaigns.
Food trucks will be kept outside the core area of this Thursday's Downtown Art Walk, the first to be held since the death last month of Marcello Vasquez when a car went up on the sidewalk.
East of West L.A., Linda Ronstadt signs to write her memoirs, and finalists for the Southern California Book Awards.
Lauren Ambrose will play the role of Fanny in the Los Angeles production of "Funny Girl" set to open at the Ahmanson Theatre in January.
It comes just a day after a near-riot broke out at the premiere of a documentary on the Electric Daisy Carnival.
In addition to the newsroom turmoil at the Los Angeles Times, a couple of other transitions to note today. Tina Dupuy is leaving Fishbowl LA — voluntarily! — after three...
It seems that newcomers are negotiating lower prices while the older mariachis are trying to maintain the traditional $50 hourly rate. About 200 of the price-fixers belong to United Mariachi...
The British soul singer with a drug and alcohol problem was found dead in her London apartment on Saturday afternoon local time. An autopsy is pending.
Chris Nichols of Los Angeles magazine has the story behind a Jacques Overhoff sculpture that was hidden behind a medical building near Wilshire and Bixel.
"Born of the motorcycle and hot rod culture of Burbank California in the early 1970s, the Travis Bean guitar was fused from gear head sensibility and rock and roll creativity," says a website.
Debra Levine at Arts Meme urges movie fans to take in the final run of films curated by Ian Birnie at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
See the Museum of Neon Art begin its move out of Downtown to Glendale.
How do you bring a 340-ton rock to Wilshire Boulevard? First you need a transporter with 208 wheels, and about fifteen men.
"Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die."
Ben Westhoff, a New Yorker who has written for the Village Voice, NPR, Pitchfork, Spin and XXL has been named the LA Weekly's music editor.
This popped up tonight on Facebook: Leonard Cohen, Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen in San Sebastian in 1988, singing about Janis Joplin.
Here's a report by Los Angeles theater types who aren't fans of the Center Theater Group model.
Today's column on KCRW: Is Los Angeles a theater town?
Clemons, a beloved member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band since 1972, couldn't survive the massive stroke he suffered a week ago. He died Saturday at a hospital in Palm Beach, Florida.
Lawrence Wayne Fischer, known for a long time as Wild Man, was a musical partner of Frank Zappa until the two had a falling out, and the "spiritual godfather" of Rhino Records.
Mitchell tells IndieWire's Dana Harris that in his new role as curator for the Film Independent/Los Angeles County Museum of Art film series, "The first thing I want to do is not alienate people who have been coming to LACMA to see movies.
Carl Gardner was singing in the Los Angeles R&B group The Robins in 1955 when he and other musicians formed The Coasters, the first vocal group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Banksy will sponsor free admission at The Geffen Contemporary every Monday for the duration of the Art in the Streets exhibition. Thierry Guetta, the other star of "Exit From the Gift Shop," takes a big loss in court.
Kristy Edmunds, who comes to UCLA from Australia, talks about programming the performing arts and how she intends to get to know what Los Angeles audiences want.
Andrew Gold, who died Friday at home in Encino, had serious roots in the Los Angeles music scene. His father, Ernest Gold, won an Oscar for his score on the...
Randall Roberts is moving over to fill the pop critic spot at the Los Angeles Times that was vacated recently by Ann Powers. Read the memo.
Before the eight-week run closed Sunday at the Ahmanson Theatre, "God of Carnage" sold 97,567 tickets and grossed $7,794,941. Those are all-time highs for a play at CTG.
Janice Min's THR makeover, Farrah Fawcett's death, Sheriff Baca's special recruit, how L.A. County cities fit together plus some quotables.
Gil Scott-Heron, Jeff Conaway, Margo Dydek, Irene Gilbert, Don Kubly, Dana Brand, Tom West.
The Hollywood Bowl is celebrating its 90th year by posting a Twitter-sized nugget from the archives on the web each day.
We first told you about Roger Guenveur Smith's one-man show, which traces its roots to the summer day in 1965 when San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal conked Dodgers catcher John Roseboro's head with a bat, back in 2009.
LACMA is beginning prep work for a major new art installation that will open to the public in November.
The most famous dancer (I think) from San Pedro is profiled in the current New York magazine as the first black female soloist at American Ballet Theatre in decades and as the muse to Prince in a recent video. Copeland, a prodigy after she took up dance as a teenager,
The West Coast premiere of artist Christian Marclay's "The Clock," a 24-hour montage of thousands of scenes from films and television depicting the passage of time, will run in LACMA's Bing Theater from 11 a.m. on Monday, May 16 until Tuesday at 11 a.m.
James Cuno will assume his position August 1. He has been president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2004.
Laurents wrote the books for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" and the screenplay (from his own novel) for "The Way We Were."
The cocktail lounge at the Canoga Park Bowl features classical music on Wednesday nights.
Shana Ting Lipton was among the press corps that freebied in to tonight's launch party for the 90th season of the Hollywood Bowl. Nice night for it.
A biography of Harvey and a Visiting Blogger excerpt about the woman who designed the floor of the cafe at Union Station.
In their forthcoming book "Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum," reporters Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino detail Getty scams through the years.
The Brian Setzer Orchestra with "Jump Jive An' Wail" in the old Fred Harvey diner at Union Station.
Los Angeles has Chinese restaurants, Herb Alpert, Austin Beutner and girls on quads. Miller-McCune has Lee Baca.
Donna Perlmutter, the former dance and music critic for the Herald Examiner and CityBeat — and freelancer for the L.A. Times and New York Times, among other places — is the newest contributor to Native Intelligence.
If you never saw the short-lived but very popular amusement park that was at the Ocean Park end of Santa Monica Beach — or want to see it again — check out this Nancy Sinatra video.
Bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens used her music to tell people about the plight of coal miners and working women in the South, and inspired the work of Emmylou Harris and others.
The preview portrays Eli Broad as L.A.'s top philanthropist and arts patron, one who is not shy about putting his name on things.
My topic tonight is LACMA on its 46th anniversary, with mentions of the David Smith sculpture exhibit that opened this weekend and the new book from Angel City Press on...
Forty-six years after a fatal car crash ended talks on a major show, LACMA honors David Smith.
The Geffen's production of "The Escort" with Mad Men's Maggie Siff as a call girl has had a heck of a time getting its ads past censors.
Oscar Garza at LA Fwd has posted a two-minute silent clip of the Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston murals being installed and unveiled for the 1949 opening of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building at West Adams Boulevard and Western Avenue.
Smithsonian withdraws bid for historic murals, LAUSD's Deasy won't take $55,000 raise, a City Hall exit, art and books notes and a local media obituary.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist "rose to fame for his plays that explored such themes as contemporary gay identity, youthful angst and modern anomie."
The Museum of Neon Art isn't moving far — to the heart of Glendale's Carusoland — but it will be the end of an era.
The Long Beach-raised rap music star Nathaniel D. Hale, known in the music industry as Nate Dogg, died today, his family told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Los Angeles Magazine asked the Chicago native to riff a little on life in Manhattan Beach.
L.A. food writer and author Charles Perry writes about his former roommate in a Visiting Blogger post for LA Observed — and insists he did not turn on the former LSD designer.
Staff members of L.A.'s leading live theater organization tell their personal stories from childhood for the It Gets Better Project.
The tank painted with the words "This looks a bit like an elephant" was towed from the field along Pacific Coast Highway on Friday.
Tulin was the bassist for the 1960s psychedelic garage band The Electric Prunes (formed in the Valley) and had been playing recently with the Smashing Pumkins and with Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan.
"Caution," located at Soto and 1st streets, was sawed off the wall in broad daylight, as they say.
Jonathan Alcorn spots this latest Banksy piece on a tank at the base of the palisades along PCH across from Will Rogers Beach. Recently: LAT: The truth of 'Exit Through...
LA Weekly editor Drex Heikes told the staff this afternoon that the paper's new arts and culture editor will be Zachary Pincus-Roth.
Powers, the LAT's pop music critic since coming from Blender in 2006, will join NPR Music and switch to contributor status at the Times.
The NYU arts professor who had a Los Angeles tattoo parlor embed a web camera in the back of his head has changed...focus...and is now wearing the camera around his neck.
Unlike in New York, the LACMA audience apparently was quite satisfied to hear Martin talk about art.
Jane Fonda blogged on Tuesday that tonight's opening performance of "33 Variations" at the Ahmanson Theatre would be attended by Cher, Colin Farrell, Angelica Huston, Chelsea Handler, Rosanna Arquette, Carla Gugino, Christian Slater, Peter Fonda, John Glover, Ben Vereen, Lindsay Lohan "and many other friends and family." She was right.
The Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art jointly announced today that more than 2,000 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe will be housed here in Los Angeles.
Judy Graeme at Native Intelligence got a preview this afternoon of the new exhibition of costumes from the past year's Hollywood movies that opens Tuesday at FIDM.
There's a reason that, 52 years later, they still remember Ritchie Valens. Especially in Pacoima.
Little, Brown and Company has bought world rights to "In Search of Johnny Cash," an exploration of the singer's life by former L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn that is promised to go beyond previous works.
Forty seven years later, the San Fernando Valley gets another performing arts space and it's bigger and grander.
In March, the U.S. Postal Service will release its first stamp featuring neon art. The design is by Van Nuys neon artist Michael Flechtner.
Charles Brittin was a beat-era photographer whose best-known work captured Los Angeles and the avant-garde artists of the decades when the Ferus Gallery was big. His photos from the streets...
The former lead singer of X talks about the former punk venues of Downtown and her appearance tonight at the Redwood Bar and Grill on 2nd Street.
Finkel, the arts writer at the L.A. Times, took some questions in the green room at Zocalo Public Square.
Singer Neil Diamond's 70th birthday is Monday. On Sunday afternoon, five skywriters spelled out a birthday greeting over the Bel-Air hills.
"Before Black Swan, I had never danced in my life, and I will never dance again."
On the Guest DJ Project, KCRW gathers the musical choices of a pretty wide variety of people, Angelenos and not. Recent guests have included Colin Firth (who gets his star...
Robert Masello's novel "Bestiary" came closer to the truth than he could have imagined.
Tropico de Nopal is west of Downtown, but the gallery space and its director are of the Eastside.
The Broad Art Foundation this morning announced the designs for The Broad, the name it's now using for the museum to be built on Bunker Hill to hold Eli and Edythe Broad's art collection.
Design for The Broad, permanent housing bust in the Inland Empire, Brown's new team and Rihanna's topless cover does well, plus more.
L.A. Philharmonic maestro Gustavo Dudamel took another step into the big media world with a guest appearance last night on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
There were several events listed today on the calendar for Los Angeles Arts Month, but the opening media moment is a lunchtime show on Wednesday by David Hidalgo and Louis Perez of Los Lobos in the Music Center Plaza.
When Monrovia High school's drama teacher wanted the students to produce "Rent," the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical with a cult following that deals with AIDS and homosexuality, the district's superintendent said no.
Photographer Gary Leonard will be a guest of Patt Morrison's during the 1 p.m. hour coming up on KPCC (89.3 FM) to talk about the demise of Kodachrome film.
Denis Dutton in 1998 created the well-read Arts & Letters Daily, which the New Yorker's Blake Eskin today calls "the first and foremost aggregator of well-written and well-argued book reviews, essays, and other articles in the realm of ideas. Denis was the intellectual’s Matt Drudge."
One of the existing copies of the Magna Carta, the charter of rights presented to England's King John at Runnymede in 1215, will be displayed at the Los Angeles County...
Actor, writer and KCRW personality Harry Shearer takes issue with the L.A. Times' recent depiction of how Disney Hall's popular "Twelve Days of Christmas" pop-up sing-along number came about.
Flash mob takes over a Canadian food court. Views on YouTube in under a month: 19 million and counting.
Sounds like some fun stories were swapped about L.A. in the 40s, 50s and 60s, and especially of the gay and artistic underworld of the time, tonight at the Hammer.
The Geffen Playhouse regrets to announce that the show cannot go on.
A house fire last week in Boyle Heights claimed all of the musical instruments and clothing of 19 mariachi musicians. On Friday night, a benefit at Mariachi Plaza on 1st Street raised some money.
Connie Bruck does the honors in today's issue and introduces Broad as "the Lorenzo de’ Medici of Los Angeles—the city’s singular patron, especially of the arts.”
Kristina Schake joins the White House as communications director for Michelle Obama. Maryna Hrushetska leaves as director of the Craft and Folk Art Museum.
Christie, the senior features editor, was (I believe) the last of the pre-New Times mainstay editors still with the LA Weekly.
he team that saved Chicken Boy from destruction and had it mounted on a Highland Park art studio will receive a 2010 Governor’s Historic Preservation award on Friday.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens has a much clearer idea today of its windfall from L.A. art patron Frances Brody's estate.
In the video, LA Observed's Judy Graeme goes through LACMA's exhibit on fashions of the 1700's and 1800's with Marlene Stewart, a costume designer on films such as "Ali," "The Doors" and "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."
The Los Angeles Philharmonic announced today it will transmit live performances of three Sunday afternoon concerts next year to more than 450 high-definition-equipped movie theaters.
Back in the day of Jerry Brown I, noted Los Angeles artist Don Bachardy painted the official portrait for the gallery of governors in Sacramento. Only the work didn't go over so well.
The Natural History Museum is looking to hire a puppeteer, but the job isn't for everybody.
The high-end Los Angeles art scene is "an art world with its own unique structure and rules," a Wall Street Journal story says today, backed up by an on-line list of everyone who sits on the boards of directors of the Getty, LACMA, MOCA, the Hammer and the Norton Simon.
This week's photo by Gary Leonard, as writer Rip Rense rightly suggests via email, might benefit from some background on Tyrus Wong.
The latest L.A. centric video from Nowness goes inside the Los Feliz home of Jeffrey Deitch, the New York art dealer who took over this year as director of...
The music staff at KCRW has fallen in love with Carla Morrison, a young singer from Tecate, Mexico.
The next executive director of the Art Walk will be expected to meet a lengthy list of skill and experience requirements.
f you were thinking of coming on the Neon Cruise this Saturday night, come on down.
With all the notoriety, of course people were going to show up.
I finally saw "Chicano Rock" tonight thanks to KOCE, the Orange County PBS station hoping to grab more of the post-KCET Los Angeles audience.
CicLAvia on Sunday, Zocalo on Saturday, Liz Phair on Friday.
Burke died Sunday on board a flight from Los Angeles that had landed at Amsterdam, where he was due to play a concert. His family — which includes 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren — posted the news on his website.
The website formerly known as LAStageBlog — itself an outgrowth of LA Stage magazine — is now bigger, better and design-ier.
We're doing another LA Observed night on the world-famous Neon Cruise on Saturday, October 16.
Downtown property owners, i.e. some of the big beneficiaries of the monthly Art Walk's growing popularity, stepped up with $200,000 in funding to save the event and professionalize its operation.
Sound consultants have already begun tuning the concert hall's acoustics, with the help of a single pianist at a Steinway.
Nowness.com has posted a slide show of scenes from inside the late artist's "imaginarium" in Venice, along with features on Graham and on Angelica Huston.
Eli Broad’s decision to build his art museum on Bunker Hill, and how he arrived at the decision , "illustrates how the billionaire homebuilder does business, and how he has...
Arthur Penn, the director of "Bonnie and Clyde," The Miracle Worker" and "Alice's Restaurant," died Tuesday in New York a day after turning 88.
Last week's abrupt announcement that the Downtown Art Walk would cease being held monthly on Thursday nights is now being called an unauthorized statement by "former director" Jay Lopez.
When the official Downtown Art Walk returns in January, it will switch to a weekend day and be held quarterly, the organizers say.
LAO's Judy Graeme attended today's press preview for the new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion at LACMA.
Buddy Collette, the legendary jazz musician and Los Angeles native who died here on Sunday at 89, "both profited from and contributed to the rich midcentury jazz scene along Los...
This weekend is the last one at Fat Beats, a destination music store for hip-hop artists and fans for 14 years.
The Strand, a program on the BBC World Service, features a segment on One-Ten, the opera being composed in serial form along and about the Pasadena and Harbor freeways by Los Angeles Magazine.
Rock musician Jesse Ed Davis's 64-year-old ex-girlfriend has Polaroid photos of Paul McCartney and the other Beatles, plus Eric Clapton and others, hanging around at John Lennon's Santa Monica beach house.
Blogger Tabloid Baby notices, and cares, that the little Trader Vic's remnant at the pool of the Beverly Hilton has added modest blue bikini tops to the bare breasts of the polynesian women in a painted scene.
Ground was broken on a $9 million interpretive center for the American Tropical mural at Olvera Street.
The Eric Owen Moss art tower beside the Expo Line, as observed by John Rabe, Mark Peel and Scott Timberg — and Moss.
Paddy Hirsch, senior editor in Los Angeles for American Public Radio's "Marketplace" program, is heading to Stanford on a John S. Knight fellowship.
Why, I think that's a Kaufman and Broad home.
All that theater last week about Eli Broad not having decided to build his art museum Downtown? Theater.
The Palomar Ballroom, billed as the largest dance hall on the West Coast, was at 3rd Street and Vermont Avenue on Aug. 21, 1935.
You may remember last week's item on Edwards needing help for a medical airlift home from Denver. He got home to Santa Barbara and died there yesterday.
Eli Broad insists that Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's news website misquoted him saying that his art museum will definitely be built Downtown on Grand Avenue.
"Scar" Lopez co-founded Cannibal and the Headhunters at Lincoln High School, helping give birth to the distinctive Eastside sound.
The Board of Supervisors today approved its part of the deal to lure Eli Broad's art museum to Downtown. After the vote, Broad called it a done deal despite the formality of another vote scheduled Monday by the Grand Avenue Authority.
The museum invokes the LAPD to cut down on scalping. An email warning to a ticket buyer.
Edwards, a longtime session player in L.A. who was a member of Linda Ronstadt's band The Stone Poneys in the 1960s, needs a medical airlift from Denver to Santa Barbara...
Bobby Hebb, who wrote the 1966 hit "Sunny," died today in Nashville at age 72.
enice photographer E. F. Kitchen has a new book out, Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages, exploring the activities of the Society for Creative Anachronism, whose members recreate the arts and battles of the Middle Ages.
L.A. musician Ashleigh Haney, who I've mentioned here a couple of times, is back on tour as a backup singer for Rihanna, living the strange life of world traveler and stage-view witness to a pop culture phenomenon. She blogs about it.
This Disney-made video on the origin of the California Institute of the Arts was made when the Music Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art were still being talked about and designed.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch praise the choice of Grand Avenue for Eli Broad's modern art collection.
L.A. journalist Anthea Raymond narrates interviews with players from the early Downtown music and arts scene.
I gather July's Downtown Art Walk is always pretty sizable, given the time of year. But turnout at last week's walk was especially large, apparently.
For two reasons I'll be opening my Los Angeles Times early tomorrow.
I caught In the Heights last night at the Pantages and saw what all the fuss is about, both for the 2008 Tony winner for best musical and the fans'...
Getty House, Mayor Villaraigosa's official residence in Windsor Square, played host tonight to a party for the cast of "In the Heights," the touring Tony winner for best musical on Broadway that's now playing at the Pantages.
Just because. It's a commercial by Japanese photographer Kazumi Kurigami.
Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne considers the record as Eli Broad prepares to cause another museum to be erected in Los Angeles, probably Downtown on Bunker Hill.
The editor of HuffPost Arts is artist Kimberly Brooks, a habitue of Arianna Huffington's Brentwood salons who is married to actor Albert Books. The bloggers-for-free will include Suzanne Muchnic, the...
Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, fills on an interim basis the position of President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, left empty by the death of James Wood.
Ernest Fleischmann, who died Sunday, ran the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra from 1969 to 1998.
"Memphis” won the Tony Award for best musical on Sunday night, “Red” won for best play, and Hollywood actors Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denzel Washington, Viola Davis and Scarlett Johansson all won in their categories.
The Getty has just announced the death of James N. Wood, the institution's president and CEO.
Susanna Hoffs, the throaty former lead singer and guitarist of the Bangles by way of Palisades High School, is raising money for a friend in need of a liver transplant by selling her costumes from the band's heyday on eBay.
If you're French, he'll watch the World Cup with you. And he remembers Dennis Hopper.
Marvin Isley was the youngest member of the Isley Brothers — he came along in 1973 after his brothers had been performing since 1954.
Proceeds benefit the Cunningham Dance Foundation (CDF) and REDCAT.
he Lincoln Center Theater's touring production of South Pacific has been previewing at the Ahmanson Theatre since last week, but tonight was the media and stars opening night.
Irene Hirano Inouye, the founding CEO and president of the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo from 1988 to 2008, has been elected the next chair of the Ford Foundation.
In a critic's notebook piece, L.A. Times music critic Mark Swed looked back at the inaugural season with Gustavo Dudamel at the head of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
On my trip to Bilbao in 2007, one of the more unforgettable visual aspects to the Guggenheim Museum (other than seeing a replica of Walt Disney Hall beside the xx river in Spain) was Louise Bourgeois' sculpture of a giant spider.
Richard Stayton, now the editor-in-chief of Written By, was working at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1985 when he met and first wrote about Dennis Hopper.
Dennis Hopper died this morning at home in Venice, likely from complications of advanced prostate cancer.
The judge overseeing the Associated Press lawsuit against Shepard Fairey — over his famous "HOPE" poster of then-candidate Barack Obama — told the Los Angeles artist that he is likely to lose in court.
While the Pasadena Playhouse has fallen into bankruptcy and the Pasadena Symphony is in turmoil, the repertory-theater company A Noise Within is going ahead with plans to move from Glendale to Pasadena.
Both drama critics of the New York Times, Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood, say that Scarlett Johansson deserves a Tony award for her Broadway debut in the revival of Arthur Miller’s “View From the Bridge.”
Gustavo Dudamel, his roots in Venezuela's El Sistema, and the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles were the subject of a segment tonight on "60 Minutes."
YOLA Expo Center Youth Orchestra in South Los Angeles is the first youth orchestra program established by the L.A. Philharmonic, inspired by El Sistema, the Venezuelan program that spawned Gustavo Dudamel.
Arts journalist Tyler Green is moving his blog, a must-read for scoops on the Los Angeles museum scene, from its long-time home at ArtsJournal to Art Info.com.
A public memorial for music critic Alan Rich has been set for Tuesday, May 25th in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School on Bunker Hill in Downtown
Max Palevsky sold Scientific Data Systems to Xerox in 1969 for $1 billion, then used his money to collect art and to finance liberal causes and campaigns, including those of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Tom Bradley for mayor.
Since the prize of the Frances and Sidney Brody art collection — “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur” — sold at auction last night for a record $106.5 million, the New York Times offers a look inside the mansion where the Picasso used to hang.
From May 17-31, Rhino Records will re-open near its original Westwood Boulevard location. Rhino, which closed in 2006, did the resurrection by pop-up thing during the holiday season in 2007....
Friends and admirers are passing around on line the news that longtime Los Angeles music critic Alan Rich died yesterday. He would have been about 85.
That planted rectangle on the 110 near Downtown that Caltrans sold to Toyota last year for a Prius ad is being given a baseball-themed message.
Regarding all those web parodies using footage of the Adolf Hitler character from the film "Downfall," the German production company that owns the film has asked YouTube to yank them all.
Who knew opera could be so contentious? Fan Rip Rense reams LAT critic Mark Swed for not reporting on loud booing, while a heckler who interrupted a lecture on the Ring Festival was almost evicted by Zev Yaroslavsky.
Charles McNulty's public rant about the Pulitzer Prize awarded today in drama is unusually interesting, not because he's the L.A. Times theater critic but because he was chair of the official jury of drama critics and playwrights that recommended a different prize winner
Myrna Loy crossed over from the silents to carve out a career as the witty, urbane type in 1930s Hollywood fare. She attended the Westlake School for Girls, but for decades a statue said to be based on her stood outside Venice High School. Venice alumni raised the money to restore the sculpture, and on Saturday a restored sculpture will be re-dedicated.
The Getty adds its entry to the growing list of blogs by and about art institutions (here is LACMA's Unframed, for example.) It's called The Iris: Views from the Getty,...
Tonight on NPR's "Fresh Air", Milo Miles favorably reviews the recent DVD release of the film on the remarkable gathering of musical talent at the Teenage Music Awards International shows held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in October, 1964.
Picture editor Honore Brown, posting at The New Yorker's Photo Booth blog, writes that photographs such as those by Jim Marshall (who died last month) "don't get made anymore." Brown...
Ann Japenga's new website wallows in the art, history and landscape of the California desert, "an online magazine and gathering place for desert rats, collectors, historians, artists and anyone who loves the early painters of the desert...where landscape, history and art come together under the brow of Mount San Jacinto."
Now 54, the doyenne of Los Angeles punk band X — called by Robert Hilburn "not just one of the greatest female rockers, but one of the greatest musical figures, period" — still does shows and lives quietly in Orange County. Scott Martelle profiles Cervenka in Orange Coast magazine's April issue.
Ferber, the Hollywood Bowl's longtime production supervisor and special events manager, provided the voice that greeted concert-goers: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hollywood Bowl."
The musician who began as the lead singer for the Box Tops in the 1960s died in New Orleans.
Last month's pretty funny and creative spoof of Jeffrey Deitch's selection to run MOCA (with some great insider references to the L.A. arts scene and digs at Eli Broad's power)...
Today's observation du jour regarding Angels Flight: the Downtown funicular, in a scene evoking its authentic pre-1969 setting, makes an appearance in a You Tube video for the End Times album by the band EELS.
I've been receiving some nice comments all day for posting yesterday's item about the Millard Sheets painting called Angel's Flight. Here's a cover from the literary journal Black Clock that shares the noir vibe and Bunker Hill setting.
In honor of Angels Flight re-opening Monday to paying passengers, let's return to the days when the funicular originally called the Los Angeles Incline Railway was an integral part of Downtown life.
Gustavo Turner was introduced today as the music editor of the LA Weekly, replacing Randall Roberts. Read the memo.
Video of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, which performs at UCLA's Royce Hall on Wednesday night, traveling and playing at the Auditorio de Madrid, set to the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.
KCAL's news went out in the field this afternoon for a report from that Prius flower patch beside the 110 freeway where that makeshift memorial to Toyota victims was taken down — four days ago.
White crosses were laid out over the former site of Toyota's floral ad for the Prius beside the Pasadena Freeway near Downtown. A sign reads, "You Reap What You Sow."
On Wednesday night in the Getty Center restaurant, retiring KCRW chief Ruth Seymour received a champagne and hors d'oeuvre send-off from people in the arts and media.
An unsealed legal filing reveals details about L.A. artist Shepard Fairey being the subject of a federal investigation for "potential violations" of laws prohibiting evidence tampering and perjury.
It's community leadership day on LA Observed, I guess. New York Times bureau chief Jennifer Steinhauer profiles Eli Broad as the "iron checkbook" whose grip on Los Angeles and its...
In an interview with Lee Rosenbaum of the art blog CultureGrrl, the former director of the Getty Museum opens up a bit about his problems with Getty Trust president James Wood.
On Tuesday we begin to find out how well L.A. Times editors have been able to contain the damage from the latest management order to cut costs — by moving to some of the earliest news deadlines in town and trimming story lengths. Read the latest memo.
Chic Leak blog came back from last night's launch of a line of acrylic body paints with nice photos of naked bodies and a classic PR quote.
Founded in 1917, the playhouse designated the state theater of California is out of money and will close Feb. 7 after the final performance of its current production of "Camelot."
California's prisoner release program is Warren Olney's main topic tonight on "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW.
Discussions this morning centered on the parking lot south of the REDCAT theater.
Michael Brand's resignation as director of the Getty Museum was requested by Getty Trust president James Wood, according to L.A. Times reporter Jason Felch, citing unnamed sources.
Howard Stiers was strolling last night's Downtown Art Walk when he stopped in at the ARTY Gallery and had a chat with the founder of a Los Angeles art institution.
TiGeorges Laguerre, the Haitian restaurateur in Echo Park who Jenny Burman visited with earlier today, talks about the earthquake devastation tonight on "Which Way, L.A.?" with Warren Olney.
As expected, MOCA chose New York gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch as its new director.
Today's New York Travel section recommends 31 places to go in the world this year. Tucked in between Leipzig and Shangai — and after Antarctica and Damascus — is our own little town.
When Eli Broad introduces the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art on Monday, the betting is that the choice will be unconventional.
Everyone in the flamenco community in Los Angeles knew Ben Bradley made a wicked tortilla Espanola.
The Times, chasing the news that Michael Brand resigned as director of the Getty, got Brand on the phone but he didn't say very much. "I really don't want to...
The release gives no explanation. Brand's five year contract was to be up this year.
Mathieu Dufour, on leave from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while playing here with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has decided to return to the Midwest. In the Chicago Sun-Times, he's quoted...
The kickoff media op for year two is Tuesday morning at 9 at REDCAT Downtown. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilmember Tom LaBonge, actor Alec Mapa, LA Opera mezzo soprano Ronnita Nicole...
He drew more than 3,800 caricatures and other pieces for the New York Review of Books.
More by Steve Greenberg...
That's City Councilmember Janice Hahn and former mayor James Hahn in the front row, flanking their parents at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, site of the county's free holiday concerts. This...
When our LA Sketchbook cartoonist Steve Greenberg had a drawing in Sunday's Daily News, it was something of a time warp. He was the paper's first staff cartoonist back in...
Muchnic is retiring from the arts beat at the Los Angeles Times after 31 years. At least, she's leaving the staff. She will continue to contribute as a freelance arts...
French rock icon Johnny Hallyday, called by many the French Elvis, has been placed in a medically induced coma to assist his recovery from back surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center....
Larry Sultan, who died Sunday of cancer at his home up in Greenbrae, grew up in the San Fernando Valley and in 2004 came out with a large-format book called...
Leonardo da Vinci's "Angel in the Flesh" is hanging this week at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood, the drawing's first public showing ever in the Americas. The piece used...
Roger Guenveur Smith was six years old and living in Los Angeles the summer day in 1965 when San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal conked Dodgers catcher John Roseboro over...
This week's New Yorker publishes All That, new fiction by the late David Foster Wallace, who killed himself last year. In March, the magazine published an excerpt from his last...
At this weekend's Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, Mel Brooks said that picking up the award at the age of 83 was “better late than never.” Other honorees were Dave...
In part three of Iris Schneider's exclusive-to-LA Observed posts following Bruce Lisker's reentry to society after 26 years behind bars, Bruce moves in with Kara in Marina del Rey. Iris...
Judy Graeme observed while the Los Angeles Ballet polished this year's Nutcracker in a nondescript studio on Exposition Boulevard in West L.A.See and hear the holiday mainstay come together and...
Or maybe it's the willingness of the city's Department of Cultural Affairs to get involved as a sponsor. While a hundred or so Los Angeles writers, artists and speakers —...
While we're on a bit of a music jag, Esther Wong was the godmother of punk in Los Angeles. Her restaurant-clubs in Chinatown and Santa Monica would be in the...
Unofficial word from a former Del-Fi employee on Facebook is that Bob Keane, the record producer who signed Ritchie Valens out of Pacoima in 1958, died over the weekend. Keane...
Kevin Bronson, the music writer formerly with the L.A. Times, remembers Mike Penner for more than his sports writing or his sexuality. They bonded over rock and roll. Penner was...
Caltrans has quietly installed new directional signs over the northbound 110 freeway out of Downtown, in the process taking down one of Los Angeles' all-time great guerilla art installations. In...
News is spreading fast via email and Facebook that Avery Clayton died of a heart attack on Thanksgiving. He was an artist and executive director of Western States Black Research...
Author and Jewish Journal book editor Jonathan Kirsch blogs that his "very first experiment in the deconstruction and interpretation of sexual imagery" took place when, as a child, he found...
Forensic artist Melissa Cooper says she created a facial rendering based on the Page Museum's solitary human skull, but she says the museum won't show her work out of fear...
Since we broke the news Friday night about Eli Broad's museum talks with Santa Monica, there have been copycat blog posts — plus a nice mention by Tyler Green at...
Iris Schneider has posted her photos from MOCA's 30th anniversary party, including John Baldessari and David Hockney, Eva Mendes and Gwen Stefani, and Lady Gaga performing on a pink piano....
At the Broad Art Foundation's 25th anniversary event tonight in Santa Monica, there was talk that a museum for Eli Broad's art collection — formerly contemplated in Beverly Hills —...
LA Observed contributor Iris Schneider has a gorgeous audio slide show of Gustavo Dudamel images on the New York Times website. The accompanying story by Daniel J. Wakin discusses Dudamel...
LACMA staffer Maggie Hanson blogs that one of the best things about her job as stacks manager of the museum's research library is getting to share rarities like the complete...
Really nice Column One by Esmeralda Bermudez on Art Laboe, the disc jockey who has been taking requests and sending out dedications to L.A. low-riders for 50-plus years. He's now...
Don Shirley, a theater critic in Los Angeles for many years, including many at the L.A. Times, is now writing for L.A. Stage. He wasn't real thrilled on Sunday to...
The 76-year-old New York photographer is "among the leaders of a loose-knit new wave of photographers — including Lee Friedlander, Danny Lyon, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus — who emerged...
New author Robert Hilburn got a pretty nice shout-out for "Corn Flakes with John Lennon And Other Tales from a Rock 'n' Roll Life" at last night's U2 show at...
Diane Haithman has been writing in the Calendar section of the L.A. Times for a good long while. Most recently she has been doing a lot for Culture Monster, the...
Associated Press has filed new court papers in its case against artist Shepard Fairey, and contends that in admitting his deception over use of an AP photo of Barack Obama...
Rick Caruso, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission when William Bratton was hired to run the LAPD, argues in a Visiting Blogger post at LA Observed that now is...
The Los Angeles artist says in a statement that he actively tried to conceal which photo he worked from in creating his Hope poster of Barack Obama. It was an...
David Hockney, who moved to Los Angeles from England in 1964 and is as associated with L.A. as almost any artist, has been living back in Yorkshire with his longtime...
When Brendan Mullen came to Portland last year for a book event at Powell's, Nancy Rommelmann threw a party and introduced him around. She remembers her friend, who passed away...
Brendan Mullen, author and the founder in 1977 of local punk rock club the Masque, died today after suffering a stroke while celebrating his birthday on the road with his...
The iconic fashion and portrait photographer — most notably for Vogue — died this morning at his home in Manhattan. His death was announced by Peter MacGill, his friend and...
The capper of Gustavo Dudamel's Hollywood Bowl debut as leader of the L.A. Philharmonic last night was a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, accompanied at the end by fireworks....
LA Observed contributor Iris Schneider went along as Bruce Lisker went shopping at Target, which came to the Valley during the 26 years he was in prison for the murder...
Earthquakes in L.A. North, prayers for Samoa and hoopla for Dudamel below the jump, with much more of course. Mark Lacter's morning headlines are at LA Biz Observed. Also be...
Lisa Fung, the Los Angeles Times editor who runs arts and culture coverage in the Calendar section, has been an active blogger for the paper's Culture Monster blog. Now she's...
On the Lufthansa leg of my flight back from Germany this month, I caught the marvelous documentary Tocar y Luchar, about the Venezuelan music education system that produced Gustavo Dudamel....
The Museum of Neon Art is leaving Downtown for Glendale's Brand Boulevard. Earlier post here and new L.A. Times story....
The Museum of Neon Art is thinking seriously about moving from Downtown — and Los Angeles — to the city of Glendale. "MONA needs a permanent location to display these...
Los Angeles lawyer and journalist Ben Sheffner, who used to represent some Warner Music arms, pens a piece at Slate today that destroys an earlier New York Daily News story...
For those who keep score, we have our third newsworthy passing of the last 24 hours. Greenwich collaborated with Phil Spector and Jeff Barry on a bunch of hit songs...
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Time Warner Cable in partnership with Ovation TV have each committed $75,000 to help the Los Angeles County Museum of Art "extend continuous film...
Singer Lila Downs had an emergency appendectomy on Sunday and has to beg off her Thursday date to perform for free at Santa Monica Pier. Randall Roberts has the details...
Bluefat is by John Payne, a former music editor of the L.A. Weekly. He calls it "a magazine for music, film and visual art devotees with open minds and a...
"It’s safe to say that rock and roll as we know it would not exist without his invention," says the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That invention? The solid-body...
The Autry Museum of Western Heritage has withdrawn its $175 million expansion plans, citing in part the conditions proposed by Councilman Jose Huizar. What this means for the Southwest Museum...
Photographer Iris Schneider enjoyed spotting people having picnics on the lawn at MacArthur Park so much that she began taking pictures. Her audio slide show from the park's new Levitt...
The Bay Area art magazine Artweek has gone out of business after nearly 40 years of publication. The final issue was dated June 2009. From the website: A victim of...
Perhaps stung by the strong critical reaction to the decision to rethink its film program, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has put up an online forum to take...
The first tickets to hit eBay for the "free" Hollywood Bowl concert on Oct. 3 to welcome Gustavo Dudamel to the L.A. Philharmonic are offered at $1599.99 for four....
The L.A. Times' emeritus pop music editor has a memoir of his decades covering the business — "Corn Flakes with John Lennon And Other Tales from a Rock 'n' Roll...
Today's L.A. Times follows on our Thursday night news about the Festival theater closing and adds a triple whammy of bad news for Westwood: Mann is giving up its leases...
Nice science column in today's Wall Street Journal by Robert Lee Hotz on the lost art of restoring and conserving masterpieces. It's set at the Getty, which is spearheading a...
Cari Beauchamp took her deep personal umbrage at Native Intelligence the other night, and now you can add the LAT's Kenneth Turan to the list of Hollywood and film aficionados...
Museum director Michael Govan announced the film program will be closed and rethought — audiences were down, he said. LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp, an author and film historian, calls...
Esa-Pekka Salonen's house in upper Brentwood has gone on the market for $4.1 million. It has six bedrooms, 5.5 baths and a chilly Scandinavian demeanor throughout. Check out the sauna...
In today's LA Observed segment on KCRW, I honor Julius Shulman as a foremost chronicler and interpreter of Los Angeles and get personal on behalf of my wife, who has...
Robert Korda's body was located by LAPD detectives Sunday in the county morgue. His death is under investigation. Korda disappeared on Wednesday and his son Noah had been seeking help...
Korda, 69 and a veteran of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has not been seen since Wednesday, the day before he was supposed to drive from home in Van Nuys to...
Jonathan Kirsch reviews "A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California," Dorothy Lamb Crawford's study of the 1930s emigres to Los Angeles such as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold...
Wednesday night's opening performance of "Monty Python's Spamalot" at the Ahmanson ended with creator Eric Idle taking the stage (to a standing ovation, though his name was never used) and...
They lit the torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for this weekend's Electric Daisy Carnival. Nice photo, and a lot more where that came from, courtesy of Drew Ressler....
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza takes over August 1 as the dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University. He's also the editor of The Zeleza Post and...
Robert Hilburn, the former L.A. Times pop music critic, lives not far from the Jackson family compound in Encino and knew Michael — and wrote about his music — for...
Photographer Gary Leonard has what looks to be a very cool exhibit up in his Broadway gallery: prints made from Kodachrome slides he saved from the trash showing Pacific Outdoor...
Patricia Marroquin at Hispanic Business profiles Rodri Rodriguez, the Cuban-born creator of the annual Mariachi USA festival that returns Saturday to the Hollywood Bowl for the 20th time. While it...
The Getty just formally announced its hike to $15 per vehicle to park at the museum or the villa, but parking will be free at both locations for evening events...
I continue the Getty finances and parking fee discussion, 4:44 p.m. on 89.9 FM, online in perpetuity at KCRW.com and via podcast at iTunes. Script is behind the jump....
This morning's post on the Getty's $15 parking fee — I agreed with the NYT's Ed Wyatt that it's essentially an admission charge — elicited a nice flow and range...
In a piece today on the Getty's financial pinch, the New York Times' Ed Wyatt puts the parking fee hike in perspective: For a hilltop museum with no public parking...
Parking at the Getty Museum will rise to $15 a car on July 1. The Getty likes to call itself a museum accessible to the whole city, but it's starting...
Esa-Pekka Salonen is coming to the end of his run at the L.A. Philharmonic, and the tributes are mounting. This weekend the L.A. Times landed a package of stories on...
"The sudden appearance of these designs, even in provisional form, in the middle of a deep recession prompts a couple of questions. Why now? And why -- when the last...
Leonard Cohen returns to Los Angeles with performances tonight and tomorrow at the Nokia Theatre. He's backed by Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla in this video from a 1990s (or...
That was L.A. writer Rip Rense who booed during the cheers for Achim Freyer at Saturday's opening night performance of "Die Walküre" at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Times' Mark...
Small update to this post from December about Ashleigh Haney, the SoCal singer who was then on tour with Rihanna. After two years the tour is over and Haney returns...
The troubled museum-in-waiting near Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace has taken steps to file for Chapter 7 protection, at least partly due to the impact of a scam, per...
If you still have tickets to the Ahmanson for this weekend, you should be pleased to hear that Stacy Keach will return to the role of Richard Nixon for three...
Proprietor Ruth Price says the non-profit music and art venue lost its lease at the Helms Bakery in Culver City and will close there on May 31. She plans to...
I caught "Frost/Nixon" on stage last week at the Ahmanson. Stacy Keach as Nixon was the show's most powerful performer and crowd pleaser. Alas, he's out indefinitely after suffering a...
L.A. artist Shepard Fairey guested with Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" tonight to explain his side of the dispute that has ensued over Fairey basing his Obama campaign poster...
On Saturday, Father Daniel Berrigan's Vietnam-era protest drama, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," opens at The Actors' Gang in Culver City. And on Wednesday, L.A. Theatre Works begins a...
TMZ reports that law enforcement sources tell the site Rihanna was found in Hancock Park with two "huge contusions" on her forehead, and a bloody lip and nose, from the...
The Los Angeles artist best known now for his Obama poster was taken into custody on his way to Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art for the opening of his first...
Jm Farber wrote for the South Bay Daily Breeze for 16 years, serving as the paper's theater and arts critic. He was let go today, according to Culture Monster....
The longtime L.A. music critic blogs about this week's death and the legacy of arts patron Betty Freeman. (Here's my news post from yesterday.) Rich: She insisted on facing death...
Betty Freeman, who died at her home in Los Angeles on Sunday, was a leading patron of the arts and new music. That's her in David Hockney's Beverly Hills Housewife,...
Forrest J Ackerman, archivist Tina Allen, artist Arthur C. Clarke, author Philip Conisbee, curator Michael Crichton, author Bo Diddley, rocker Elaine Dundy, author Patricia Faure, art dealer Robert Graham,...
Tibby Rothman writes at The Venice Paper that artist Robert Graham, who died on Saturday, was a Venice patriot: "The last time I saw him, he was at one of...
Random stuff emerges as I pare down my desk piles to make room for the new year. Here's video featuring L.A. singers Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla, who gave Leonard...
The Venice sculptor Robert Graham died Saturday at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center after being ill for six months. Born in Mexico City on Aug. 19, 1938, Graham moved to...
The board of the Museum of Contemporary Art will announce today that it accepts Eli Broad's bailout offer, will not merge with LACMA, director Jeremy Strick has resigned and former...
The New York Times reports that the Museum of Contemporary Art board reached a preliminary agreement on Thursday to accept Eli Broad's financial rescue offer, while the L.A. Times adds...
Heavy snow (by SoCal standards) has closed highways in and out of the Antelope Valley, San Gabriel Mountains and San Bernardino Mountains and of course over the Grapevine on...
LACMA's board came out today and proposed in writing that the museum merge operations with MOCA. Here's a story by the LAT and the release from LACMA. Also, on KCRW'S...
Weston Naef, longtime senior curator of photography at the Getty Museum, will retire to curator emeritus status on Jan. 31. The Getty announced in a statement that after retiring, Naef...
Today's piece talks about the Carleton Watkins photographs at the Getty, kind of a companion to my post last night and Judy's recent piece at Native Intelligence. The four-minute commentary...
Members of Mariachi V�ritas de Harvard believe they are "the first and only 100% undergraduate student Mariachi in the East Coast." Here they are (bigger) with Mexican president Felipe Calder�n....
Tyler Green at Modern Arts Notes, getting impatient with the slow movement on the Museum of Contemporary Art front, lays out a path to Jeremy Strick gracefully yielding MOCA to...
The Santa Monica music shop has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and will be the subject of a Thanksgiving program from 9 a.m. to noon on KCRW (89.9...
The Times estimates that about 450 people showed up Sunday at the Geffen Contemporary, answering the call to show their support for MOCA. Some also wanted to know WTF is...
Cindy Bernard and other artists are calling on friends of the Museum of Contemporary Art to show up tomorrow at 3 p.m. to hear an update on the financial crisis...
Don Heckman has been the unofficial jazz critic of the Los Angeles Times since hall of famer Leonard Feather died in 1994. But Heckman blogs today that he thinks he...
The philanthropist and art collector writes in an L.A. Times Op-Ed piece that with the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown reeling financially, "the time has again come for this city...
Times critic Christopher Knight today calls out the financially flailing Museum of Contemporary Art for mishandling its future. I read with interest in Wednesday's paper about the fiscal calamity plaguing...
This video of the band X performing "Los Angeles" has a lot of early 1980s footage of the city, including the original Hard Rock Cafe downtown, an RTD bus advertising...
I put together a four-minute video from the weekend's Los Angeles Archives Bazaar at USC on the two documentaries I caught up with — "Chicano Rock" and "The Eastsiders" —...
Writer Brian Bentley has posted online a long story on Rikki Madrigal, a fixture on the Wednesday night barbecue circuit in Silver Lake's hipster scene who died in a house...
The Center Theatre Group says it's making 100,000 tickets available at $20 a pop to all shows this season at the Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum and Kirk Douglas Theatre....
The Getty Center will remain closed today to visitors and most staff to help reduce traffic congestion resulting from this morning's hillside brush fire (now out) in Sepulveda Pass. The...
Patricia Faure ran the gallery that bore her name at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, and other notable Los Angeles galleries before that: Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Asher/Faure Gallery. Times art...
It's not just the Pasadena Symphony. The almost-certainly-a-recession is affecting arts and culture organizations all around. On KCRW's Politics of Culture at 2:30 this afternoon, Ruth Seymour talks with key...
Laurie Niles of Violinist.com said the letter hit her like a punch in the stomach. "Due to the recent extraordinary conditions in the financial markets, the Pasadena Symphony has been...
Arts blogger Tyler Green calls Unframed, the staff blog at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, his "new daily obsession." They are not limiting posts to happenings at LACMA,...
Our columnist Bill Boyarsky has been on the national campaign trail this year for Truthdig, and as he used do to for the Times as a columnist and political reporter,...
The singer whose voice wowed the L.A. music industry at the Troubadour and Palomino clubs so long ago — one of the top selling female recording artists ever — now...
The Annenberg Space for Photography is scheduled to open next spring on the former site of the Shubert Theater in Century City. The release says it "will be a 10,000...
The Getty Center galleries have stayed open until 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, offering a nice spot to meet someone in the evening and watch the sun set (or,...
I really like this photo of Venice from 1957, showing the lineage of the ocean-front condos and converted beach shacks that are now so desirable. It's by Charles Brittin, the...
Brittin was the in-house photographer of the Los Angeles avant-garde artists who made the Ferus Gallery legendary in the 1950s and 1960s, then he faded from view. Now the Getty...
As an amateur admirer of mariachi, I enjoyed CityBeat's feature on the female ensemble Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles. But I was stopped by the byline: Kamren Curiel, who I...
Artist Kent Twitchell settled his lawsuit against the U.S. government and 12 other defendants for painting over his 70-foot tall landmark mural of Ed Ruscha at Olympic and Hill downtown...
The Center for Land Use Interpretation, as is their style, interprets the new BCAM as "more than an immediate housing for cultural artifacts...[but] engaged in an unspoken interaction with far...
Another local music critic down, not many left to go. Alan Rich, who is at least 83, was let go as classical music critic over lunch with LA Weekly editor...
Longtime L.A. Times pop critic Robert Hilburn has signed with ModernTimes/Rodale to do a "deeply personal and highly opinionated memoir" of his decades covering the music scene. From the flackage:...
Last weekend's New York Times did a nice spread on J. Michael Walker and his one-of-a-kind Los Angeles book, "All the Saints of the City of the Angels: Seeking the...
Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes has the memo and the explanation from spokesman Ron Hartwig that staff reductions are a result of new CEO James Wood bringing the Getty...
Not too many musicians follow this particular career arc. Buddy Miles, who died yesterday in Austin of congestive heart failure, began as a session player with the Delfonics and on...
The skylight over the rotunda of the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park has been nicely, if painstakingly, restored with help from the great-grandson of the original Judson Studios artist....
One of my favorite quirky L.A. public sculptures — the gold panner of Carthay Circle — has been stolen and recovered. The bronze cast in 1925 by Henry Lion recently...
Vogue fashion photographer Irving Penn began taking photographs of workers in Paris in 1950, usually posing them in natural north light. He continued in New York, and eventually amassed a...
Downtown blogger Angelenic has the scoop (and some nice photos): Wilshire Boulevard institution La Fonda will reopen on Valentine's Day. The new version won't appeal to Japanese tourists or homesick...
Irene Hirano will step down next year as president of the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. But that's not her big news. She also become engaged to Sen....
Search warrants were served on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego...
Mark Swed's Jan. 7 LAT review of an L.A. Philharmonic performance of pieces with an urban theme said, among other things: In between came Frank Zappa's 'Dupree's Paradise.' Short, diverting...
Eli Broad has changed course and decided not to donate his impressive collection to any museums — including LACMA, which is close to finishing the Broad Contemporary Art Museum on...
Music Center president Stephen Roundtree said today that the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will close for renovations in 2013, not 2011 as originally announced. Apparently, offices for displaced staff need to...
In the eyes of the New York Times, the 96 students in the Colburn School conservatory on Bunker Hill "are among the finest young musicians in the world." The story,...
If you were in Hollywood last night, you might have seen a line around the block at the Pantages after the performance of Wicked. Hundreds of fans queued up outside...
The defrocked Getty curator of antiquities who has faced criminal charges in Europe finally talks to the media, in the form of Hugh Eakin in this coming week's New Yorker....
Sharon Waxman went out to the Getty Villa today to monitor the packing up, and shipping out, of some of the 40 statues and other antiquities being returned to Italy...
Harold Nelson is out as director of the Long Beach Museum of Art, replaced on an interim basis by former board president Ron Nelson in a move by trustees...
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
