Museums

Museums’ price is right—free

This weekend may be the last one in January (already!), but L.A. Arts Month isn’t over yet.

This Saturday and Sunday will mark the 6^th annual Museums Free-For-All across the Southland, as more than a dozen museums offer free admission for all or part of the weekend in celebration of the arts in Los Angeles.

Big-name participants include MOCA, the California Science Center, the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Tolerance, but many smaller museums hope the promotion will give visitors a chance to discover them as well.

“It’s a really wonderful opportunity for people throughout the county to think about museums, and maybe try a museum they might not have thought of going to,” says Joan Cumming, senior director of marketing and communications for the Autry National Center (conveniently located across from the zoo in Griffith Park).

The Autry, she points out, has family tours both days at 1 p.m. and—as a special treat for prospectors of all ages—gold panning. But culture hounds might also want to get a jump on Black History Month by checking out the California African American Museum, or treat the fire engine lovers in their lives to a tour of the excellent collection of vintage firefighting equipment at the Los Angeles Fire Department Museum and Memorial.

Details are here.

Posted 1/26/11

Taking a Broad view of new art museum

Contemporary art lovers can’t stroll through Eli and Edythe Broad’s collection just yet. But they can take an incredible early spin through the building that will house it. Architectural renderings of the new museum, to be built on Grand Avenue next to Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles, were released today and accompanied by a “fly-through” animated video conveying the look, feel and setting for the Broads’ renowned collection, which includes works by Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. The architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, envision a striking honeycomb exterior “veil” and a dramatic column-free top floor gallery for the museum, to be known simply as The Broad. Construction of the museum is expected to begin in late summer and take two years to complete. The board of governors for the new museum also was announced today.

Click on the image below to see the video from the Broad Art Foundation:

Posted 1/06/11

The young and the prehistoric

They grow up so fast, don’t they? But by this summer, the growth stages of the Tyrannosaurus rex—from the terrible twos of dinosaur toddlerhood to the menacing stance of the strapping young adult—will be on permanent display in the Natural History Museum’s new Dinosaur Hall.

Like some kind of prehistoric “My Three Sons,” the exhibit will showcase the life and times of a spectacular trio of T. rexes who once roamed what is now Montana. On display will be the fossil remains of the youngest T. rex ever discovered, a 66-pound, two-year-old dubbed Baby T. Rex; a rare 14-year-old 4,000-pounder known as Juvenile T. Rex; and 18-year-old “Thomas,” weighing in at 7,200 pounds and 33.5 feet long and boasting one of the most complete skeletons ever collected.

Officials at the Los Angeles County museum, who hosted a media preview of the “T. Rex Growth Series” exhibit this week, say it will be a “showstopper” that aims to surprise and enlighten visitors as it provides a fresh, imagination-stirring glimpse of dinosaur life back in the (Late Cretaceous) day.

The new hall, set to open in July, will double the museum’s dinosaur display space. It is part of an ambitious expansion and modernization plan for the museum as it heads into its centennial in 2013. The museum’s groundbreaking new “Age of Mammals” exhibition opened last year.

Posted 1/20/11

High art, low price

Brazilian dancers at the Music Center? Shepard Fairey deejaying after parties? Seminars for Westside photo connoisseurs?

If it’s January, then it must be Los Angeles Arts Month. And if you weren’t downtown last Wednesday for the lunch hour kickoff with Cirque du Soleil and the guys from Los Lobos, then there’s still plenty of culture to catch at once-a-year bargain prices.

Museum shops are offering discount coupons. The Pasadena Playhouse has orchestra seats for half-price. Tickets to upcoming performances of “The Turn of the Screw” are two-for-the-price-of-one at the Los Angeles Opera. And you can catch the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 20% off for selected concerts. Plus, admission to both Gettys, The Hammer and about a dozen other big museums will be free during the last weekend of the month.

Now in its third year, L.A. Arts Month was launched by city government and arts groups to promote local art and culture. It has since expanded to encourage patronage of the arts countywide.

“This is a way for families to get out and see what L.A. has to offer,” says Allison Starcher, taking a momentary break from her job as show manager for the 16th annual Los Angeles Art Show, an anchor event from January 19-23 that is expected to draw some 40,000 visitors to the Los Angeles Convention Center.  “L.A. has amazing museums, incredible theaters and wonderful galleries. There are very few cities where you can experience so much.”

The L.A. Art Show will, as always, run the gamut, opening with a gala benefit and that exclusive after-party hosted by Fairey, with free admission for kids under 17. The show will boast rare images by Henri Cartier Bresson, first-time exhibitions from galleries in China, a Sunday conversation with the punk graphic artist Robert Williams, and installations by street muralists Vox Humana, not to mention tours of the public art in L.A.’s own Metro stations.

Also in town this month will be the 20^th annual International Los Angeles Photographic Art Exposition, the Brazilian dance troupe Grupo Corpo, a Films 4 Change documentary and food tasting at the Broad Stage, and a vast array of ongoing exhibitions and shows.

And that’s not even counting the buildup to the much-anticipated “Pacific Standard Time” exhibition—years in the making—about L.A.’s role in the post-World War II art world. Culture fans will have to wait until October for that one, but it’s already a looming presence. Massive and region-wide, it’s planned as a sort of collaborative blitz of art shows on a single subject, spanning Southern California and involving more than 50 art institutions.

Posted 1/12/11

Now here’s a special kind of web site

Arachnophobes, you can skip this story.

For the rest of you, the Natural History Museum’s annual Spider Pavilion is set to open September 26. The six-week exhibition features hundreds of spiders inside the long greenhouse on the lawn outside the museum.

But when it comes to spider season, the museum knows no bounds—including your backyard. Once again, museum scientists are asking the public to participate in its “Spider Survey.”

The survey was launched in 2001 as one of the community science projects the museum uses to engage the public in gathering scientific information about Los Angeles’ ecosystem. Over the years, the museum has received 5,000 specimens from citizen entomologists, who’ve mailed or hand-delivered spiders they’ve found around their homes or schools.

Along the way, a few rarities have been discovered, including the dangerous brown widow spider, which is native to South Africa but was first found locally by a survey participant in Torrance. Los Angeles is a hotspot for such exotic species, says entomology curator Brian Brown, because they sometimes hitch rides on cargo coming into L.A.’s ports.

(If you’re new to the survey, click here for a how-to guide from the Natural History Museum.)

This year’s survey comes with a new request to spider hunters. Brown and his team are asking volunteers to create “pitfall traps” to capture “micro spiders” that have been overlooked in past surveys.

Although the museum plans to post detailed instructions on its website in the days ahead, the basic idea is to bury a plastic cup up to its lip and then pour in a little anti-freeze to immobilize unsuspecting itsy-bitsy spiders that fall inside—spiders that are nearly impossible to see, let alone capture by hand.

“It’s quite possible we can find some species that are new to science,” Brown says.

Beyond the potential of scoring new kinds of spiders, the goal of the survey and the pavilion is to teach visitors how beneficial and harmless these creatures actually are, according to the pavilion’s creator, Brent Karner, manager of invertebrate living collections, who’s popularly known as “Brent the Bug Guy.”

Dealing with human fears and mistaken beliefs about spiders is a big part of the project, Karner said. Inside the airy greenhouse-like pavilion visitors can get up close and personal with the giant wood spider from Malaysia, as well as two species of spiny-backed spiders from the Southeast U.S.

“I’m surprised at the number of people who say they have a very strong fear of spiders but who come anyway so they can work to overcome it,” says Karner, adding that full-blown arachnophobia is actually pretty rare. A mild to medium fear of spiders is common, with adults tending to be more scared than kids.

The Spider Pavilion is replacing the summer exhibit Butterfly Pavilion, a transition that represents a circle-of-life moment as the old tenants give way to the new.

“The butterflies are being eaten as we speak,” Karner said rather scientifically.

Tickets for the exhibition are included with museum admission. For those, who just want to see the pavilion, the rate is reduced—$3 for adults, $2 for seniors and students and $1 for children ages 5-12.

Posted 9/16/10

A sneak peek at great art

LACMA’s new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opens to the public this week. The three inaugural exhibits range from ancient to modern, colossal stone carvings to intricate beaded dresses. Images from a recent press preview for the 45,000 square foot gallery space, designed by Renzo Piano, capture the wide range of art under one expansively sky-lit roof.

Tickets for this weekend’s community weekend are free, but they are going fast. Check out LACMA’s website on Thursday to secure last minute tickets—or become a museum member and go anytime.

Posted 9-28-10

A head of their time

Before L.A.’s cultural bigshots can walk down the red carpet for the gala opening of LACMA’s new Resnick Pavilion, some real heavyweights had to make their own grand entrances.

The big men are a pair of Mexican kings, giant basalt heads of long-dead rulers of an ancient Mexican civilization that flourished more than 3,000 years ago.

They are the stars of “Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico,” one of three inaugural exhibitions that will launch the new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion at LACMA, which opens to the public on October 2 after festivities that include a grand gala opening.

Grand ceremony wouldn’t faze the two Olmec kings, whose names are lost to history but whose unforgettable heads weigh between 4 and 5 tons. The larger of the two depicts a ruler with a stern and masterful face. The other wears a sly half smile.

“These are individuals, and they are meant to be massive portraits,” said Virginia Fields, a co-curator of the show and LACMA’s senior curator of the arts of the Ancient Americas. The pair came from the ancient Olmec city of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, near modern Veracruz.

The kings’ elaborate royal progress from Mexico to LACMA was fit for a monarch. Wrapped in cloth and packed in padded wooden crates, the heads were air freighted north. Upon arrival at the Resnick Pavilion, they were met by work crews who gently unpacked them and strapped them to gantries and pulleys.

“I kept thinking, ‘How would the Olmecs have done this?’” Fields thought as she watched work crews carefully steering the giant heads to their resting places.

Then they were gently lowered onto a pair of monumental oxidized steel platforms designed by American sculptor Michael Heizer. Heizer, coincidentally, learned about the Olmecs as a boy. (His father was a UC Berkeley archeologist who studied Olmec culture.)

Joining the kings are about 120 other works large and small, including bowls, axes, pottery and sculpture. Among the large pieces: a pair of seated “twins,” who were priests or rulers, dressed alike in elaborate turbans. A large and mysterious woman standing at the mouth of a cave is the only large female figure ever found in Olmec art, said Fields.

In addition to the Olmec exhibit, two other shows will launch the Resnick, a striking gallery by Italian architect Renzo Piano, who also designed the neighboring Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA.

“Eye for the Sensual: Selections from the Resnick Collection”  showcases highlights of the family’s collection of European and American paintings, sculpture and decorative arts from the 16^th to 20^th century, including Art Deco masterpieces and an iconic portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette.

“Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915,” is a kaleidoscopic display of the evolution of fashion styles and techniques featuring 250 gowns, dresses and suits.

The world premiere of all three exhibits—and of the building itself—comes Saturday night, September 25, with an invitation-only fundraising gala featuring a performance by Christina Aguilera. The dinner will honor the Resnicks, L.A. area business owners and philanthropists who gave $45 million to build the museum.

On the 28^th, the museum hosts community partners for another preview.

The building will be thrown open to the general public with a free community weekend October 2-3 that will feature Latin music and storytelling as well as admission to the entire museum. The free entry does require tickets, which can be reserved now by calling (323) 857-6010 or visiting LACMA’s website.

Posted 9/21/10

A Grand location for Broad Museum

It’s official: Eli Broad absolutely will be building his namesake contemporary art museum along a stretch of Downtown Los Angeles with aspirations as audacious as its name—Grand Avenue.

“We want to make great works of contemporary art accessible to the broadest public, and we can think of no better location than in the center of the contemporary art world,” the billionaire philanthropist said in a media statement Monday, following the last in a series of approvals for the museum and parking lot. The Broad’s are expected to spend between $80 and $100 million on the project.

The museum, which will house the legendary contemporary collection of Broad and his wife, Edythe, is expected to be completed by late 2012.

Broad also announced that the museum—located near Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art—would  be designed by the architectural firm of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, which, among its many civic projects, designed the new Institute of Contemporary Art on Boston harbor as well as the renovation and expansion of Lincoln Center in New York.

Talking to reporters, Broad said the New York firm’s work would complement, “not clash,” with architect Frank Gehry’s iconic Disney Hall—but added that it also would not be “anonymous.” The design will be made public, Broad said, in October, when construction on the parking lot is expected to begin.

Broad’s long-awaited announcement came after the Grand Avenue Authority, a multi-agency panel that oversees the project, unanimously approved construction of the museum, which came into play only after a plan for retail businesses and residences was undermined by the deteriorating economy.

The hope of all involved is that the infusion of money into the Broad Collection museum—and the tourism it will encourage—will persuade other investors to get off the sidelines and rejoin the project.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, a member of the authority, called the Broad museum “a tremendous Plan B that we hadn’t anticipated,” one that she hopes will “reinvigorate interest” in the larger Grand Avenue plan.

In comments after the joint power authority’s vote, Broad made clear that the downtown site had long been his first and best option for the museum—despite statements from his camp that Santa Monica was in serious contention until the end.

“We always wanted it on Grand Avenue,” Broad said.

Last week, he expressed a similar sentiment to a writer for Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s website after the board signed off on the Grand Avenue location. “Absolutely, it’s coming to this site,” he told the writer.

Broad said he wanted to create a “populist institution” that would draw not only cultural tourists but youngsters from the region as well as the increasing numbers of people who now make downtown Los Angeles their home.

The museum will include approximately 50,000 square feet of sky lit galleries, a lecture hall and public lobby. There will be enough space, Broad said, to display upwards of 300 pieces—mostly from the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s—including pieces from Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman.

As part of Broad’s agreement with Los Angeles County and the Grand Avenue Authority, he has agreed to pay more than $7 million for the construction of affordable housing. The Broads also will endow the Broad Art Foundation with $200 million to cover the museum’s ongoing annual operating expenses.

Posted 8/23/10

Broad museum headed downtown [updated]

The legendary art collection of Eli and Edythe Broad is one step closer to finding  a permanent home—in a new “world class” museum to be built at 2^nd Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles.

County supervisors on Tuesday signed off on a revised plan to build the contemporary art museum on the site, which originally had been targeted for retail uses under the Grand Avenue Project. When that project originally was approved in 2007, developers had envisioned a sweeping array of businesses, residences, cultural attractions and a hotel along the corridor. Most of those elements are now on hold because of the recession, although one of the project’s centerpieces, a Civic Park stretching from the Music Center to City Hall, recently broke ground.

The supervisors’ sign-off on the new museum means that only one more official approval is required for the plan. That’s expected to come Monday from the joint powers authority overseeing the Grand Avenue Project.

Eli Broad was in the audience at the Hall of Administration on Tuesday, and said after the vote that the museum was headed downtown—not to Santa Monica, which also had been in contention.

“Absolutely it’s coming to this site,” Broad said.

But he declined to name the project’s architect, who is expected to be named on Monday. Architects including Rem Koolhaas and Diller Scofidio + Renfro have been reported as contenders for the commission.

Broad is picking up the $80 million to $100 million tab to build the museum and will set up a $200 million endowment to run it. Under the plan approved Tuesday, Broad also will be paying an additional $7.7 million that the county treasurer will hold in trust to build affordable housing downtown.

A museum to house the Broads’ collection—whose works are frequently loaned to other institutions for public display—is seen by cultural and business leaders as a vital step in downtown’s renaissance.

David Johnson, co-chair of MOCA’s board of trustees, said that the new museum across the street will “make Los Angeles one of the most important places in the world to see contemporary art.”

Carol Schatz, president and CEO of the Central City Association, said it will create 1,500 jobs and provide $234 million annually in related economic benefits.

“Cultural tourism is one of the great multipliers,” she noted.

Stephen Rountree, president and CEO of the Music Center, said he welcomes the energy the new museum will bring to the neighborhood—along with younger audiences he hopes will stick around to sample the offerings of his resident companies.

Broad, who did not address the board, echoed those hopes after the meeting:

“The exciting part is we want to dramatically increase attendance to all of the cultural organizations on Grand Avenue,” he said.

He noted that the new museum, with its architect to be named Monday, will join a spectacular stretch of buildings: Coop Himmelblau’s High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, Jose Rafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall and MOCA, designed by Arata Isozaki.

The new 115,000-to-120,000-square-foot museum is to be built on three levels. Its galleries will display pieces from the Broads’ collection of more than 2,000 works by artists including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons.

Posted 8/17/10

Updated 8/18/10: Following Broad’s reported comments on Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s website that the museum “absolutely” will be built in Downtown Los Angeles, a spokeswoman for the Broad Foundation, Karen Denne, said Wednesday that “no decision has or will be made” until after the upcoming meeting of the Joint Powers Authority. She said Broad did not make the statement, which is documented in the writer’s notes from her interview with Broad on Tuesday at the county Hall of Administration. The supervisor’s website stands behind its report.

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