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Topic Archive: Arts & culture
He drew more than 3,800 caricatures and other pieces for the New York Review of Books.
Posted December 30, 2009 10:25 AM
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...
Posted December 20, 2009 11:39 PM
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...
Posted December 15, 2009 12:37 AM
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...
Posted December 14, 2009 3:36 PM
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....
Posted December 14, 2009 5:51 AM
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...
Posted December 14, 2009 5:19 AM
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...
Posted December 9, 2009 4:46 PM
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...
Posted December 7, 2009 2:29 PM
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...
Posted December 7, 2009 9:15 AM
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...
Posted December 6, 2009 11:41 PM
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...
Posted December 6, 2009 11:05 PM
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...
Posted December 3, 2009 11:56 PM
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 —...
Posted November 30, 2009 3:48 PM
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...
Posted November 30, 2009 2:59 PM
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...
Posted November 30, 2009 1:49 PM
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...
Posted November 29, 2009 9:20 PM
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...
Posted November 28, 2009 2:29 PM
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...
Posted November 27, 2009 1:31 PM
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...
Posted November 26, 2009 12:15 PM
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...
Posted November 24, 2009 3:45 PM
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...
Posted November 17, 2009 6:10 PM
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....
Posted November 16, 2009 10:39 PM
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 —...
Posted November 13, 2009 11:13 PM
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...
Posted November 12, 2009 6:20 PM
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...
Posted November 12, 2009 11:21 AM
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...
Posted November 12, 2009 12:33 AM
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...
Posted November 11, 2009 11:24 PM
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...
Posted November 8, 2009 12:48 PM
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...
Posted October 26, 2009 9:21 PM
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...
Posted October 20, 2009 3:55 PM
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...
Posted October 20, 2009 11:52 AM
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...
Posted October 18, 2009 9:46 PM
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...
Posted October 17, 2009 12:04 PM
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...
Posted October 15, 2009 9:47 PM
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...
Posted October 13, 2009 7:53 PM
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...
Posted October 12, 2009 9:10 PM
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...
Posted October 7, 2009 12:58 PM
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....
Posted October 4, 2009 12:22 PM
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...
Posted October 2, 2009 4:42 PM
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...
Posted October 1, 2009 9:12 AM
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...
Posted September 30, 2009 1:59 PM
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....
Posted September 27, 2009 10:27 PM
The Museum of Neon Art is leaving Downtown for Glendale's Brand Boulevard. Earlier post here and new L.A. Times story....
Posted September 24, 2009 9:45 PM
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...
Posted September 23, 2009 3:58 PM
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...
Posted September 2, 2009 6:11 PM
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...
Posted August 26, 2009 3:55 PM
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...
Posted August 26, 2009 12:32 PM
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...
Posted August 25, 2009 5:37 PM
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...
Posted August 17, 2009 5:04 PM
"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...
Posted August 13, 2009 10:32 AM
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...
Posted August 11, 2009 5:59 PM
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...
Posted August 8, 2009 9:58 AM
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...
Posted August 7, 2009 10:55 PM
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...
Posted August 3, 2009 11:15 PM
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....
Posted August 3, 2009 10:50 PM
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...
Posted August 3, 2009 5:25 PM
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...
Posted August 1, 2009 1:44 PM
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...
Posted July 31, 2009 9:20 AM
"Forget the exterior," Gehry says in this recent interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, via Curbed LA. Covering the interior in wood cost an extra $5 million, and was...
Posted July 30, 2009 12:45 PM
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...
Posted July 30, 2009 10:10 AM
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...
Posted July 28, 2009 6:22 PM
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...
Posted July 26, 2009 10:28 PM
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...
Posted July 17, 2009 4:15 PM
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...
Posted July 13, 2009 8:39 AM
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...
Posted July 12, 2009 11:39 PM
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...
Posted July 9, 2009 3:59 PM
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...
Posted July 9, 2009 12:25 AM
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....
Posted June 29, 2009 11:46 PM
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...
Posted June 27, 2009 3:15 PM
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...
Posted June 26, 2009 4:36 PM
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...
Posted June 24, 2009 12:42 AM
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...
Posted June 19, 2009 1:45 AM
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...
Posted June 4, 2009 9:39 AM
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....
Posted May 1, 2009 4:21 PM
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...
Posted April 30, 2009 11:30 PM
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...
Posted April 30, 2009 9:45 AM
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...
Posted April 27, 2009 11:55 PM
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...
Posted April 13, 2009 8:15 AM
"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...
Posted April 12, 2009 10:40 PM
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...
Posted April 10, 2009 1:35 PM
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...
Posted April 8, 2009 9:43 PM
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...
Posted April 4, 2009 4:51 PM
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...
Posted April 2, 2009 4:35 PM
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...
Posted March 24, 2009 6:06 PM
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...
Posted March 20, 2009 11:42 PM
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...
Posted March 18, 2009 5:22 PM
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...
Posted February 26, 2009 7:50 PM
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...
Posted February 13, 2009 5:19 PM
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...
Posted February 9, 2009 4:15 PM
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...
Posted February 7, 2009 11:53 AM
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....
Posted January 12, 2009 5:35 PM
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...
Posted January 6, 2009 9:46 AM
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,...
Posted January 5, 2009 3:47 PM
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,...
Posted December 30, 2008 6:40 PM
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...
Posted December 29, 2008 11:16 AM
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...
Posted December 28, 2008 10:20 PM
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...
Posted December 28, 2008 12:59 AM
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...
Posted December 23, 2008 8:56 AM
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...
Posted December 19, 2008 7:54 AM
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...
Posted December 17, 2008 4:57 PM
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...
Posted December 16, 2008 3:55 PM
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...
Posted December 8, 2008 11:53 AM
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...
Posted December 5, 2008 4:10 PM
Members of Mariachi Vritas 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 Caldern....
Posted November 29, 2008 3:23 PM
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...
Posted November 28, 2008 7:16 PM
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...
Posted November 26, 2008 12:33 PM
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...
Posted November 24, 2008 12:35 AM
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...
Posted November 22, 2008 10:42 PM
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...
Posted November 22, 2008 10:19 PM
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...
Posted November 21, 2008 8:33 PM
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...
Posted November 20, 2008 9:22 AM
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...
Posted November 2, 2008 9:04 PM
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" —...
Posted October 28, 2008 11:38 PM
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...
Posted October 27, 2008 12:10 AM
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....
Posted October 23, 2008 11:37 AM
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...
Posted October 23, 2008 10:08 AM
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...
Posted October 23, 2008 12:38 AM
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...
Posted October 14, 2008 12:13 PM
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...
Posted October 13, 2008 9:12 AM
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,...
Posted October 10, 2008 3:24 PM
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,...
Posted October 2, 2008 11:12 PM
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...
Posted September 21, 2008 11:49 PM
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...
Posted September 16, 2008 9:52 AM
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,...
Posted September 4, 2008 11:59 PM
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...
Posted June 19, 2008 9:12 AM
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...
Posted June 2, 2008 11:53 PM
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...
Posted May 6, 2008 10:10 PM
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...
Posted April 30, 2008 9:16 AM
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...
Posted April 24, 2008 2:16 PM
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...
Posted April 9, 2008 12:37 AM
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:...
Posted March 18, 2008 11:41 AM
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...
Posted March 11, 2008 6:40 PM
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...
Posted March 7, 2008 9:44 AM
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...
Posted February 27, 2008 7:35 PM
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....
Posted February 17, 2008 10:49 PM
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...
Posted February 15, 2008 4:45 PM
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...
Posted February 7, 2008 12:25 AM
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...
Posted February 6, 2008 8:05 PM
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....
Posted January 30, 2008 3:05 PM
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...
Posted January 24, 2008 1:11 PM
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...
Posted January 16, 2008 9:33 PM
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...
Posted January 8, 2008 9:18 AM
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...
Posted January 7, 2008 2:56 PM
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,...
Posted January 6, 2008 10:56 PM
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...
Posted December 31, 2007 11:17 AM
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....
Posted December 9, 2007 3:04 PM
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...
Posted November 21, 2007 9:49 PM
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...
Posted December 5, 2006 6:22 PM
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| The funeral for Mark Lacter will be held Sunday, Nov. 24 at 12 noon at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 W. Centinela Avenue, Los Angeles 90045. Reception to follow.
Before I lived in Echo Park, there was a tiny 1920s bungalow-cottage-standalone house on N. Occidental in Silver Lake. I...
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