UCLA Broad Art Center opens! "LA is one of the great art capitals of the world"

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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

A ceremonial departure
A Pasadena teahouse, falling on hard times, will be sent to Japan for restoration, then return to grace a new garden at the Huntington Library.
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
September 12, 2010

Japan's Grand Master of the Phoenix Cloud visited Los Angeles four decades ago and dedicated an exquisite teahouse to the public in the hopes of popularizing the sublime art of tea ceremony in the West.

Trained as a kamikaze pilot during World War II, the grand master saw tea as a way to promote peace, share Japan's cultural treasures and repair a national image battered by wartime militarism. The 400-year-old art expresses the values of harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity through the highly refined and ritualized making and serving of tea.

But the ceremony failed to catch on much beyond a small circle of Japanese Americans. The teahouse, given to the Pasadena Buddhist Church, declined in use. Termites began attacking the wood and paper structure, and the elderly couple who cared for the teahouse for decades no longer could do so.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino has stepped in to rescue the teahouse as part of an ambitious $6.7-million project to restore its Japanese garden and develop an authentic tea garden. In collaboration with the grand master's Urasenke School and the Buddhist church, the Huntington hopes to use the teahouse to expose the art to a broader swath of society and develop a premier program for Asian garden arts, including the tea ceremony, flower arranging, bonsai and stone viewing.

James Folsom, the Huntington's botanical gardens director, said the ancient Japanese art is as relevant to Americans today as it was to the Zen monks and warring samurai who practiced it four centuries ago.

"When life is so hectic, when you're rushing around looking at e-mails, how do you remind yourself to stop and be human again?" Folsom said. "The tea ceremony reminds us to step out of that, to appreciate silence and tranquillity in the presence of others and to enjoy the beauty of the moment. We would hope that tea helps lead people to a change in their own lives."

The Urasenke Tankokai Los Angeles Assn. offered a farewell bowl of tea to several guests in the Pasadena teahouse. The house, designed by the grand master's brother, Sen Mitsuhiko, is a light and airy structure featuring woven bamboo ceilings, white papered shoji screens, bamboo tatami mats and the all-important alcove displaying the day's carefully selected Japanese scroll, vase and flower arrangement.

The gathering's hostess, Soen Clarkson, performed the tea ceremony's ritualized acts: First, fold a silk cloth to wipe the tea caddy and tea scoop. Place the powdered green tea in a specially selected bowl. Pour in water heated over a charcoal brazier. Whip the mixture into a froth with a bamboo whisk. Then, offer it to the guests along with Japanese sweets.

As the guests sipped tea, Robert Hori, vice president of Urasenke's Los Angeles chapter and director of advancement at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, explained his choices in selecting the various accoutrements for the occasion. The careful consideration of such items is part of the tea ceremony's spirit of hospitality as the host aims to capture the gathering's treasured and irreplaceable moment.

The boat-shaped vase pointing outward symbolized the teahouse's departure from the Pasadena church, he said. A Rose of Sharon and bush clover, both short-lived blooms, reflect the transiency of life. The scroll of Japanese calligraphy was used when the grand master dedicated the teahouse, named the Arbor of the Pure Breeze, in Pasadena in 1965.

And for the day's tea scoop, Hori selected a utensil named "gratitude."

"We're really grateful for the opportunity to give the teahouse a new life," he said. "It's the end and it's the beginning."

Tea was first taken to Japan from China by a Buddhist monk in the 9th century. But it was not until the 16th century that Sen Rikyu perfected the Way of Tea by incorporating into it Zen elements of simplicity and oneness with nature. By designing a teahouse with an entrance forcing guests to lower their heads and crawl through, the tea master also sought to eliminate social distinctions.

Fourteen generations later, Sen's direct descendent, Tantansai — the Grand Master of Purity and Serenity — served tea to American Occupation forces in Japan. That, in turn, inspired his son Hounsai to move beyond his military training and lingering disdain for Americans and dedicate his life to international harmony through tea. In 1965, he visited the United States to officially dedicate the teahouse his father had bequeathed to the church.

Sosei Matsumoto, a 90-year-old tea master lauded for her accomplishments by President Clinton and the emperor of Japan alike, was the first to teach tea ceremony in the new Pasadena teahouse. The structure, she recalled Sunday, was used for classes every week, with special tea ceremonies for New Year's and the summer Obon festival honoring ancestors.

But the Pasadena tea group failed to expand and dwindled to about seven students, said Yaeko Sakahara, also 90, who took over the classes from Matsumoto more than three decades ago. One of the major obstacles, she and others said, is the traditional requirement to sit on bamboo mats with legs folded under, a position that can turn legs numb after a few minutes. Tea ceremonies can last from 20 minutes to four hours.

Another obstacle to sustaining interest in tea is growing acculturation among younger generations of Japanese Americans, said Irene Takemori, Pasadena temple president.

"The younger generation is more interested in sports and don't have a lot of time for this cultural stuff," Takemori said. "It's really a shame, because it's such a beautiful experience to drink tea and find peace of mind."

When health issues began to preoccupy Sakahara, the teahouse's future hung in the balance.

Enter the Huntington. The renowned cultural institute had been looking for a Japanese teahouse after one of its donors, Mary B. Taylor Hunt, bequeathed a $2.6-million endowment for an authentic Japanese tea garden and related cultural programs. The Huntington's nine-acre Japanese garden, designed by founder Henry Huntington and William Hertrich, reflects a Western interpretation of Japanese aethestics but is not considered authentic, Folsom said.

After months of consideration, the Pasadena Buddhist Church decided earlier this year to donate the teahouse, clearing the way for the transfer.

The Huntington plans to close the current Japanese garden next year for several months of renovation, including restoration of its ponds and a traditional Japanese house. The new two-acre garden will be installed behind the house, along with the Pasadena teahouse. The grand reopening is expected to occur in 2012, in time for the garden's centennial anniversary, Folsom said.

This week, carpenters from Japan are scheduled to fly to Los Angeles and begin dismantling the teahouse. The pieces will be shipped to Kyoto, restored, then sent back to the Huntington.

Folsom said the Huntington, working with the region's tea schools and the Buddhist church, will seek to popularize the Japanese art, possibly using more ceremonial forms that allow practitioners to sit in chairs rather than on folded legs, among other ideas.

For the longtime guardians of the teahouse, Sunday's farewell was bittersweet.

"The teahouse has been an integral part of the temple, so it's a little sad to have it depart," Takemori said. "But it's in the best public interest and for the best use of the teahouse."

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,1733678.story

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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

$100 million-plus for Huntington will be largest cash gift in institution's history
Culture Monster, Los Angeles Times
November 16, 2010 | 10:00 am

The suspense is over. Now that the late Frances Brody’s other heirs have received their shares of her fortune, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens has a much clearer idea of its own windfall from the L.A. art patron’s estate: a gift expected to easily exceed $100 million.

This represents by far the largest cash gift in the history of the Huntington, which was previously $21 million from Charles and Nancy Munger in 2002. It could even surpass the original endowment created when railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington died in 1927, which is roughly $107 million if adjusted for inflation.

“A number of museums have received significant gifts when you value the art and cash donations together,” says Steven S. Koblik, president of the Huntington. “But as a pure cash gift, this has very few equivalents -- except for the founding gifts that create institutions.”

Tim Seiler, one of the directors at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, agrees. "It's an extraordinary gift, especially for the cultural sector. A $100 million gift more typically goes to a school or university, and it's often a naming gift."

The few comparables tend to come from New York. In 2005, David Rockefeller made a $100-million pledge to the Museum of Modern Art, which ranks as its largest-ever cash gift. In 2008, Leonard Lauder's art foundation gave $131 million to the Whitney Museum of American Art, also its largest.

Brody died in November 2009 at age 93, leaving behind a wealth of artwork — including Giacometti bronzes and Matisse paintings — that she had acquired with her husband, Sidney, a real-estate developer who had died more than two decades earlier. The value of this art directly affected the size of her gift to the Huntington, where she was a board member for 20 years.

This October, the institution received $15 million in cash intended by Brody to improve the botanical gardens, one of her most passionate concerns as a board member. That amount, Koblik says, was specified in her trust instrument and was not in doubt.

The mystery, rather, was how much money the Huntington would receive for also being named the estate’s sole “residual beneficiary” — the heir who is paid after all others should the estate have extra money left over. That’s when the art figured in. When the art world witnessed Christie's sell several of Brody’s masterpieces in May, led by Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” for $106.5 million (which set a record as the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction), Koblik was watching with particular interest.

“It was an amazing moment,” he says. “When the Christie’s sale of the artwork proved so successful, we knew that would change the nature of our gift.” In effect, the auction created a surplus of $80 million after the other estate payouts, an amount that hit the Huntington’s bank account last week.

Brody estate trustee Robert Shuwarger says the Huntington’s final gift will consist of proceeds from selling the remaining property, including Brody’s A. Quincy Jones house in Holmby Hills. The listing price of the house, which has been on the market since May, has dropped from $24.95 million to $21 million.

“There’s also some miscellaneous property — some silver, porcelain, antiquities, things of that nature — that will be going up for sale at Christie’s,” Shuwarger says. He anticipates that most of those sales will be completed within six months.

Per Brody’s wishes, the full Huntington gift will benefit the botanical gardens, which cover 120 acres of the vast property in San Marino. According to James Folsom, director of the gardens, high-priority projects include “improving and modernizing” a water irrigation system that dates to the early 20th century and creating a “potager” or kitchen garden to complement the existing herb garden. Folsom says that these were pet projects of Brody, who loved her garden at home and, though known for her high style, was not too glamorous to get into a truck with him to drive around and shop for plants at nurseries.

Koblik adds that using the Brody money for botanical purposes frees up existing funds to address other needs, like “making staff salaries more competitive.” This does not, however, mean “quick raises,” he adds, noting the importance of resisting the natural urge “to get overexcited and spend money quickly to do everything we haven’t been able to do.”

Rather, he plans to treat the windfall “like an endowment,” to be invested in a diversified portfolio. (The Huntington’s actual endowment is about $240 million.) The plan is to spend only 5% of the value of the Brody funds over a three-year running average.

And, yes, Koblik says, this legacy-building gift more than compensates for not receiving Brody’s now-famous Picasso. “Right from the beginning of our relationship, Francie said to me, 'You’re not getting the art.' It took the discussion off the table,” he says.

“It was clear to all of us who spent time with Francie that she wanted to make a fiscal difference at the Huntington — she understood the power of this kind of gift.”

-- Jori Finkel

Read More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/cult...nstitutio.html

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Originally Posted by http://www.npr.org/

Billionaire Unveils Design Of Downtown LA Museum
by The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES January 6, 2011, 07:55 pm ET

Billionaire Eli Broad, center, arrives to speak at the unveiling of the Broad Art Foundation contemporary art museum designs in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011. The Billionaire's planned downtown Los Angeles contemporary art museum is a three-story, $130 million honeycomb structure.

Billionaire Eli Broad unveiled plans Thursday for the porous-concrete-shelled structure that will be the future downtown home of his 2,000-piece art collection and a hoped-for catalyst for the continuation of the city center's halting renaissance.

The three-story Broad Art Foundation, designed by New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro, consists of a spongelike mantle that lets light into the 40,000-square feet of gallery space, which itself sits atop a vast storage vault.

Broad said the downtown location on Grand Avenue amid a row of buildings by top-shelf architects — which the developer-turned-philanthropist played a leading role in having built — was a fitting home for the paintings, sculptures and prints he and his wife Edythe have spent four decades collecting.

"We're convinced Grand Avenue is where it's at," Broad said at the unveiling held at the nearby Walt Disney Concert Hall, a Frank Gehry-designed structure that Broad was instrumental in helping fund.

The $130-million art museum's construction is scheduled to begin in late summer, with the galleries welcoming their first visitors in early 2013.

The price includes a parking lot that the city's Community Redevelopment Agency will buy from the foundation for up to $30 million and operate after its completion.

Broad said the museum's initial exhibit will include a broad selection of works from his collection, including pieces by Jeff Koons, John Baldassari and Cindy Sherman. For the following three years, it will rotate its exhibitions every four months to focus on artist that are well represented in the collection, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst and Roy Lichtenstein.

Art not on view will be housed in the storage area at the museum's core, which visitors will be able to see through windows placed along a stairwell leading down from the top-floor gallery area.

"They understood the need to design a museum that would engage the public, to be an iconic piece of architecture on Grand Avenue," Broad said of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who also designed the renovation and expansion of Lincoln Center in New York City and the new Institute of Contemporary Art on the Boston harbor.

The Broads' museum is being built on a 2.5-acre parcel of county-owned land originally set aside as part of a stalled $3 billion shopping, hotel and condo complex known as the Grand Avenue project.

Under the deal for the land, Broad's foundation agreed to pay $7.7 million over the course of a 99-year-lease. The 77-year-old Broad, whose net worth was pegged last year by Forbes magazine at $5.8 billion, also pledged to fund the museum with a $200 million endowment.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa praised the Broads for building and financing the museum, which he predicted would help rekindle the downtown redevelopment projects that have been dampened by the economic downturn.

"This is going to become an anchor tenant for an area that is revitalizing before our very eyes," Villaraigosa said.

Read More: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=132722254

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Who is making the decisions to place so many similar uses next to each other?

Civic buildings need to be interspersed among retail, residential, and office space.

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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Eli Broad, today's Norton Simon
Los Angeles' two preeminent art collectors developed a generation apart but in surprisingly similar ways.
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Art Critic
January 16, 2011

Usually, Eli Broad's trajectory as an art collector is traced to mentoring by the late Taft Schreiber. Broad himself has talked admiringly of what he learned about art from the MCA Inc. executive (and Ronald Reagan's former Hollywood agent), whose small but extraordinary trove of works by Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Alberto Giacometti and 10 others was a magnanimous 1989 gift to the Museum of Contemporary Art from the estate of Schreiber's widow, Rita.

Still, another, even more celebrated name in the annals of Los Angeles art collecting ought not to be discounted, even if the influence was perhaps more indirect.

The recent unveiling of the Broad Art Foundation's new building design happens to coincide with the publication of an engrossing new book from Yale University Press. "Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best" ($65) at times reads like a primer for understanding Broad's vigorous acquisitions, contentious relationships with area museums, philosophy of creating an art-lending library and more.

The similarities between Broad and Simon — both self-made men of vast wealth, savvy business acumen, genuine art passion and an often-remarked penchant for aggressive and controlling dealings — are as vivid as the differences.

On Oct. 25, 1972, Broad bought his first important art, paying $95,000 at a Sotheby's auction for an 1888 Van Gogh drawing. Rhythmic lines and staccato flecks of brown ink show two peasant houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a seaside village in the Rhône Delta of Provence, the region where he spent his final years.

Today, the personal art collection assembled by Broad and his wife, Edythe — who first sparked her husband's art interest — looks very different from that Post-Impressionist origin. Ditto their foundation's vast collection. The roughly 2,000 works form a diverse compendium of contemporary art dating from 1960 and after, with a clear — and artistically strong — Pop art tilt.

Three weeks before the Sotheby's hammer fell, sending the drawing off to the Broads' L.A. living room while launching them on their nearly four-decade collecting adventure, Norton Simon was acting on an ambitious plan. Simon, quoted in a Museum of Fine Arts Houston press release for a large exhibition drawn from his personal and foundation collections, explained his concept of a museum without walls. Rather than construct a building to display his art, he expressed his intention to start an art-lending library.

"We hope," he said, "to fill a real gap in the cultural life of this country."

Masterpieces from his collection would be available for long-term museum loans, maximizing their educational potential. As the Houston show was being announced, another Simon show was at the Princeton University Art Museum, complete with a catalog whose cover featured Van Gogh's portrait of his mother.

Simon certainly had the wherewithal to establish an art-lending library. He bought his first paintings in late 1954 — two undistinguished works picked up at an art gallery in the old Ambassador Hotel, not far from his Hancock Park home. But soon he was off and running.

By 1962-63 he spent the equivalent in today's currency of more than $22 million on 67 works. The following year he stunned the art world by buying the entire inventory of Duveen Bros., the legendary purveyor of Old Masters to America's first generation of robber-baron art collectors. By the time he was done in 1989, he had made nearly 2,000 acquisitions.

Even many of the works he considered and didn't buy, plus ones he bought and later sold, would together rank as an outstanding collection. Many now reside in important museums, including the Getty and the Hammer in L.A., the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the national galleries in Washington, D.C., and Canberra, Australia.

Simon's holdings blossomed into the greatest art collection assembled from scratch in the post- World War II era. His closest rival for the title was Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Swiss steel magnate whose collection went to Spain, adjacent to the Prado. (It includes some former Simon works.) And Thyssen, who inherited his father's art collection, had a head start.

At 494 pages, "Collector Without Walls" is a thorough, unfailingly fascinating history of Simon's collecting activity, written with great insight by his longtime associate, Sara Campbell, now senior curator at Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum. Together with 1998's biography "Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture" by former Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic, we now have an exceptional resource for understanding events central to Los Angeles' emergence as a global cultural powerhouse.

Coincidentally, we also gain insight into Broad, a generation younger than Simon, who began to collect art when the nation's most famous and prodigious art collector lived just across town. One obvious connection is the lending library concept.

Andre Malraux, France's first minister of cultural affairs, had surmised that the world of art reproductions forms a "museum without walls." For centuries, engravings of masterpiece paintings and plaster casts of famous sculptures expanded the restricted reach of the originals. Malraux proposed in1947's "The Imaginary Museum" that the proliferation of photographic reproductions now accelerated the process.

Simon, who knew the power of advertising techniques from the Hunt Foods conglomerate that made him rich, understood. He surmised that the authenticity of direct art encounters could be restored by making the virtual "museum without walls" into an actual one. A consortium of existing museums could borrow from his great collection.

At the end of 1973 Simon had 100 works in his personal collection, plus about 500 in two foundations. By 1975, sizable loans were made to museums in Houston, Princeton, San Francisco, New Orleans, Pasadena and a dozen other cities, plus the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — where Simon had been a trustee, but from which he had noisily resigned in the belief that it was poorly managed.

Campbell oversaw the lending library concept. In addition to acknowledging its generosity, she is candid in pointing out the program's more pragmatic aspects.

Sizable costs for care and art insurance were not Simon's alone. His foundations, as charitable assets held for public benefit, had legal requirements to make their art available for public display. California tax benefits accrued to art purchases "parked" for three months at out-of-state museums, prior to arriving in L.A.

"We loan works to museums and make them available to scholars, along with an archive on the collection." That was Broad, not Simon, speaking in 1988 about the opening of his then-new Santa Monica art-storage and lending facility.

The same philanthropic and pragmatic mix applies to his lending library concept as it did to Simon's. So do Simon's flirtations with giving the collection away (at least seven institutions); distrust of traditional museum management; engineering of a bailout of an artistically adventuresome but financially faltering institution (the old Pasadena Museum for Simon, MOCA for Broad); later deciding to open his own museum, and more.

In fact, a 1970s shift in Simon's collecting activity also anticipates Broad's. Simon started with 19th and early 20th century French art. Eventually, he added European Old Masters, partially because they were far less expensive.

But after his 1972 marriage to actress Jennifer Jones, the collection's character changed: Simon became an outstanding collector of Indian, Southeast Asian and Himalayan art. In the next two years, he paid $6.6 million for 138 objects, many superlative — less than a third of what he paid during the same period for 123 fine examples of European art.

Broad, unlikely to establish a major collection of early Modern art, switched to contemporary. By the 1980s he was one of the field's most active players. The Van Gogh drawing, sold to help pay for the purchase of a rare, 1954 red abstraction by Robert Rauschenberg, is now in the collection of New York's Morgan Library.

Simon had scant interest in contemporary art. Sculptures by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth were about as close as he got. In 1968 he did pay $65,000 for "Cubi XXVIII" by the late American sculptor David Smith.

He sold the masterpiece in 1982 for $1.1 million — a not-uncommon practice in which Simon, acting like a dealer, took a big profit to subsidize other endeavors. Twenty-three years later, Smith's sculpture went under the hammer at Sotheby's. Its staggering sale price of $23.8 million set a new benchmark as the most expensive contemporary work then sold at auction. The buyer was Eli Broad.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,3414807.story

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Norton Simon's unexpected art-collecting influence
--Christopher Knight
Los Angeles Times
January 15, 2011 | 6:00 am

Hospital at Saint-Rémy (1889) Hammer Between 1955 and 1989, L.A.'s Norton Simon went from being a nonentity among private art collectors to blossoming into the world's most prodigious collector of the postwar era. He started with 19th century French paintings but quickly expanded into early Modern art, then Old Masters and finally Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art. The works he amassed make his namesake Pasadena museum an unparalleled treasure.

Even works Simon carefully considered but declined to acquire, lost in a divorce settlement or bought and then later sold to buy other works are among the great objects now housed in museums around the world. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings alone include Edouard Manet's poignant picture of a war veteran on a Paris street, "The Rue Mosnier with Flags" at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Paul Cezanne's chiseled "Boy in a Red Waistcoat" at Washington's National Gallery of Art; Paul Gauguin's patchwork pastoral landscape "The Swineherd" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Edgar Degas' eloquent pastel, "Dancer in Green," in Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection; and Vincent Van Gogh's roiling "Hospital at Saint-Remy," shown here, in the UCLA Hammer Museum.

The year 1972, following the tragedy of his son's suicide and the joy of his marriage to Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Jones, was especially active. Simon made his third largest number of acquisitions (more than 150) and his biggest total expenditure (nearly $18 million, which approaches $90 million in today's currency) during those 12 months.

1972 was also the year that another novice L.A. collector first jumped into the art arena -- one who made headlines in 2005 by breaking a record buying a sculpture owned for many years by, yes, Norton Simon. On Sunday I'll have an Arts & Books story on how, when he first set out to become a major art collector, Eli Broad seems to have had Simon's extraordinary achievement in mind.

Read More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/cult...influence.html

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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

$13-million gift boosts Natural History Museum's footprint
The donation to the Los Angeles County's Natural History Museum, the largest from the Otis Booth Foundation, will go toward an expansive glass entrance pavilion that will have as its centerpiece a 63-foot-long fin whale.
January 05, 2011|By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times

A 63-foot-long fin whale, one of the biggest skeletons owned by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, will become its public greeter, the museum announced Tuesday, in a new brightly lit glass entrance pavilion made possible by a $13-million gift.

"It's a major statement. It's beckoning and saying, 'Come in and see who we are,'" said Jane Pisano, the museum's president.

The Otis Booth Pavilion, named for the successful investor and former Los Angeles Times executive who was one of the museum's most influential funders and board members before his death in 2008, will replace what Pisano described as an "ugly, dark, barricading" array of steps and walls that had faced Exposition Boulevard. In their place, in time for the museum's 2013 centennial, will rise an architectural signpost that museum leaders say will figure prominently in their bid to boost annual attendance from about 600,000 at the site to more than 1 million, and to spur the $51 million in additional donations needed to fully fund the museum's six-year makeover. The design is by CO Architects, the same L.A. firm that has handled the rest of the renovation project.

Museum leaders have known for decades that the building — actually a series of connected structures that have been added piecemeal to the original graceful domed building that opened in 1913 — needed a commanding entrance, said Paul Haaga Jr., who has been on the board since 1993 and is now its chairman. But in planning the makeover, which began in 2007 and bore its first fruit last summer with the reopening of the restored 1913 building and the popular new Age of Mammals exhibit, officials had decided that a dramatic entrance would increase the cost beyond what they could reasonably expect to raise.

They put off the new entrance until fundraising was finished for the current $135-million "NHM Next" campaign that also includes a new Dinosaur Hall scheduled to open in July, and new indoor and outdoor exhibits focused on nature in Los Angeles that are expected to be finished by the end of 2012.

But when Franklin Otis Booth Jr. died at 84 from Lou Gehrig's disease, part of the fortune he'd made as a ground-floor investor in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. went toward establishing a new, L.A.-based charitable foundation whose portfolio currently stands at about $190 million.

The $13 million, which will be paid out over three years, becomes the fledgling Otis Booth Foundation's biggest gift, said Palmer Murray, Booth's son-in-law and the foundation's vice president and treasurer.

Murray said that Booth, a great-grandson of Los Angeles Times founder Harrison Gray Otis, left no instructions for the foundation's grant-making. Given Booth's decades of devotion to the Natural History Museum, Murray said, "it became clear to us this is something we have to be involved in." While going over the possibilities with museum leaders, he said, "the fin whale really piqued our interest," because it would give the building "the physical identity it had lacked" along its only major street frontage, creating both a physical and symbolic bridge to the world outside the museum by beckoning with an impressive example of the sights and knowledge to be had within.

In fact, there will be an actual bridge between the world and the entrance pavilion. Its pilings are already starting to rise from the fenced-in expanse of dirt that is currently the museum's front yard. As the 60-foot-high pavilion goes up, 3.5 acres of park-like "urban wilderness," intended to serve as a "living laboratory" of L.A.'s plants, insects, birds and small animals, will take shape directly outside, along with a landscaped amphitheater.

Except for the four years when the 1913 building was being renovated, the fin whale has been on continuous display since 1944. That's when curators finished studying and preparing the creature acquired from a Humboldt County whaling concern in 1926. It currently hangs as the sole occupant of a long, dramatically-lit gallery that's been dubbed the "fin whale passage," leading from the museum's central indoor plaza to the rotunda. When the whale assumes its new position as the museum's frontispiece, the "passage" will become a gallery devoted to Los Angeles history and nature.

The benefits of having a well-known identifying symbol or trademark attraction are well known to leaders of the Natural History Museum. While the main museum in Exposition Park draws 73% of its attendance from within Los Angeles County — many of them schoolchildren — its sister institution, the much smaller and narrowly focused Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, nearly reverses that equation, drawing 63% of its visitors from outside the county. That can be partly explained by the fact that the tar pits are internationally renowned as the world's most bountiful source of fossilized bones from the Ice Age. Pisano hopes that with new mammal and dinosaur halls, striking new natural grounds and a whale-under-glass, the Exposition Park flagship building will join visitors' list of must-see attractions.

The Otis Booth Foundation's gift doesn't directly advance the museum's "NHM Next" fundraising campaign, which still has $51 million to go to reach its $135-million goal. But Haaga, the museum board's chairman, sees the entry pavilion's creation as "really impactful and helpful in every way." The association with a respected Los Angeles figure such as Booth, and the foundation he created, could have an "endorsement effect" that will attract other philanthropists, Haaga said, and the rollout of the structure itself will give the museum one more accomplishment to celebrate and use as a rallying point for further fundraising.

On the other hand, the Booth Foundation gift is support from inside the museum's existing family of backers, rather than an expansion of its reach via the recruitment of a major new benefactor.

Museum officials say attendance has increased 35% during the six months since the Age of Mammals exhibit opened. Haaga said its success confirms the wisdom of the calculated risk that museum leaders took in deciding to gradually open the new attractions one at a time, knowing that if the first one underwhelmed the public, it could make it harder to raise money for the work that remained.

"Success breeds success," he said. "People want to give to visibly successful plans."

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan...llion-20110105

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The Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County offered a sneak peek Wednesday of the Tyrannosaurus rex display that will serve as the centerpiece exhibition of its new Dinosaur Hall, which opens in July.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/cult...x-display.html
Interactive graphic: Los Angeles Natural History Museum makeover
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...2365.htmlstory

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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

A star-studded opening for the Valley Performing Arts Center
Among the performers at the gala on the Cal State Northridge campus: Calista Flockhart, Cheech Marin and Cuban jazz musician Arturo Sandoval.
January 31, 2011|By David Ng, Los Angeles Times

Ten years and $125 million in the making, the Valley Performing Arts Center officially became a reality Saturday night in a celebration that brought together Hollywood celebrities with Los Angeles city and county leaders to inaugurate the building on the campus of Cal State Northridge.

The center's 1,700-seat main hall — featuring four plush levels encased in undulating wood panels — is the largest in the San Fernando Valley and is intended to attract top-notch performers to a region of Southern California whose reputation has tended to rest on such less-exalted forms of entertainment, as mall culture and the adult film industry.

The first season at the Arts Center, set to begin this Saturday (with singers Shawn Colvin and Loudon Wainwright III), features performers spanning the spectrum from classical music to jazz to Broadway. Saturday's gala concert reflected that diversity, offering a sampler platter of the arts, spiced with star appearances.

Calista Flockhart, accompanied by husband Harrison Ford, served as one of the evening's many presenters. The celebration included performances by Tyne Daly and Davis Gaines, singing selections from "Gypsy" and "The Phantom of the Opera," respectively; dancers Gillian Murphy and Jose Manuel Carreno from the American Ballet Theatre; and Cuban jazz musician Arturo Sandoval, accompanied on the bongos by actor Andy Garcia.

A number of the evening's performers grew up in the Valley or count themselves as Cal State Northridge alumni. Cheech Marin, who delivered a comedy and song routine, attended the school in the late '60s when it was San Fernando Valley State College. "I did a lot of performing arts while I was here, especially in bands," Marin said during the after-party, which was held nearby on campus. "They used to put on a lot of shows, but they were always in the gym, which wasn't great acoustically."

Nancy Cartwright, who provides the voice of Bart Simpson on Fox's "The Simpsons," has been a Valley resident since the '80s, and is the honorary mayor of the North San Fernando Valley. "A facility of this size has the potential to change the community," she said. "I'm enormously proud to live here."

Longtime Valley resident Beau Bridges attended the concert but did not appear onstage. "This has a lot of meaning for our community," he said. "It's the best we have now — and it's not far from my house."

During the concert, Monica Mancini performed songs written by her father, Henry, and recalled growing up in Northridge at a time when the community still had a fair number of orange groves. Soprano Carol Vaness dedicated her performance of "Vissi d'arte" from Puccini's "Tosca" to her Cal State Northridge music professor David Scott.

Other presenters for the evening included Eric Stoltz, Benjamin Bratt, Jane Kaczmarek, Noah Wyle, Steven Weber, Keith David and Doris Roberts.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attended the celebration, greeting patrons and trading music tips with Sandoval and Mancini. Villaraigosa said that for the last three years, some Los Angeles leaders have been trying to do away with the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. "We have to find ways to support the arts, including in our schools and universities," he said.

Jolene Koester, president of Cal State Northridge, described the Valley Performing Arts Center as "a miracle" but added that $17 million still needed to be raised to meet the university's $50-million fundraising goal.

With a $125-million price tag, the building represents a combination of public and private investment. State bonds provided approximately half the tab, while private donations accounted for a large portion. In addition, L.A. County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Michael Antonovich put in $2 million and $500,000, respectively, from their discretionary funds. Yaroslavsky described the building as "long overdue" and added that it would help bring jobs and other forms of investment into the Northridge area. "The arts are a great economic generator," he said.

In late 2008, construction on the center came to a halt because of a state budget impasse, but building resumed the following March after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lifted the state moratorium on public works projects.

On Saturday, tuxedoed attendees mingled in the building's atrium, enclosed in floor-to-ceiling glass walls that allow views to the west and north. The steel-framed building, designed by the Minneapolis architecture firm of Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, also features smaller performance and rehearsal spaces.

Kara Hill, the lead architect on the project, said the center was designed to be "extroverted," with a structural and spiritual connection to the rest of the campus. "Performance halls can often be pushed to the side of a campus," Hill said. "We wanted the building to be open ... so that people can see out and can be seen."

The acoustics of the main hall were designed to be adjustable — via movable panels and other devices — to accommodate the variety of artists expected to appear there. Saxophonist Dave Koz, who grew up in nearby Tarzana and who performed at the gala, described the hall's acoustics as "beautiful... crystal-clear and pure-tone."

Saturday's concert was not the first in the building. In November, the Moscow State Symphony, under music director Pavel Kogan, played two invitation-only concerts that were seen as a test run for the facility.

Organizers said they hope to ramp up programming to a level where there is one major artist event per week. They said the center is about 85% booked for the 2011-12 season, which begins in the fall.

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan...-arts-20110131

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Southern Orange County getting its own concert hall
After its public debut in October, the $73-million Soka Performing Arts Center will play host to concert and dance performances, as well as plays and musicals.
By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times
February 2, 2011

What the San Fernando Valley is celebrating this week — the debut of a major performing arts center that figures to be a source of enjoyment and pride for an area that had been short on cultural bragging rights — is on the agenda for southern Orange County too.

In Aliso Viejo, a small but wealthy private school, Soka University of America, has begun the countdown toward October, when it expects the first public notes to sound in its Soka Performing Arts Center. Construction has been completed on the 1,034-seat auditorium that, together with a companion building for arts classrooms, studios and offices, cost $73 million (the Valley Performing Arts Center, at 1,700 seats plus an educational building, cost $125 million).

Soka's hall places a premium on excellent sound –- hence the commissioning of Yasuhisa Toyota, the acoustician behind Walt Disney Concert Hall. Among its interior features are a stage made of white Alaskan cedar, chosen for its acoustical properties, and seating behind the stage.

The hall can accommodate about 1,200 people for shows in which a smaller performing space is needed and chairs can be set up on the stage; aside from church halls, it will be the only thousand-seater between the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, which is 18 miles to the north, and the California Center for the Arts, 60 miles southeast in Escondido. It was designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects; the exterior is of plaster, travertine, aluminum and glass.

Last Wednesday, the Pacific Symphony rehearsed in the hall to kick off the acoustic testing process. Meanwhile, it's up to David Palmer, hired in December as general manager after 19 years running the performance program at Whittier College's 403-seat Ruth B. Shannon Center, to book a schedule.

Designed primarily as a concert hall, but also envisioned for dance, plays and musicals — so long as the evening doesn't require more than minimal set changes — the center will be broken in gradually. Plans call for six to eight "major events" the first season, Palmer said. Then it will build over the two following seasons to an expected full complement of about 25 major headliners per September-to-May season.

Palmer said that jazz and Hawaiian music will be a presence, and that he aims for the programming to reflect Soka's ideals with a communitarian emphasis in which performers will be asked to give public workshops or engage with local schools. The 438-student institution is affiliated with Soka Gakkai, a Japanese Buddhist movement established in 1930. The university's website lists its core principles as fostering culture, pacificism and "the creative coexistence of nature and humanity."

Wendy Harder, spokeswoman for the Aliso Viejo university, said that alumni and supporters of the better-established Soka University of Japan, which opened in 1971 in the Tokyo suburbs, have been key contributors to the American venture, including the performing arts center. Blessed with nearly $500 million in invested assets and cash savings as of mid-2009 (nearly triple the holdings of Chapman University in Orange, the county's most prominent private school), Soka waives its $26,300 annual tuition for students whose family income is $60,000 or less; Harder said that about half of the members of the last two entering freshman classes have qualified.

Since opening in 2001, the school has grown slowly toward its eventual goal of about 1,000 students, Harder said, and that will be the approach in the arts as well: "Just a few things to get started, and as we see what kind of community support we have for what kinds of program," more offerings will develop. The first event will be the university's May 27 graduation ceremony.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,1721099.story

[edluva]

^thank goodness. orange county has been in dire need of concert halls for decades.

[dragonsky]

Coachella 2011 DVD Trailer
http://www.coachella.com/gallery/dvd-trailer

[dragonsky]

• Video Link

[dragonsky]

• Video Link

Originally Posted by PRNewswire

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's New Dinosaur Hall Opens to the Public
Visitors Inaugurate Dinosaur Hall with Increased Civic Pride for LA

LOS ANGELES, July 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- This morning, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County celebrated the opening of a new source of civic pride for Los Angeles with its new, 14,000-square-foot Dinosaur Hall featuring the debut of Thomas the T. rexalong with more than 300 fossils, 20 spectacular dinosaur skeletons and multi-media interactives. Twice the size of the Museum's old dinosaur galleries, the new permanent exhibition rivals the world's leading dinosaur halls for the number of fossils displayed, the size and spectacular character of the major mounts, and the integration of recent scientific discoveries and research into the displays.

Visitors from all over Southern California attended the festive opening day which began with a ribbon cutting with NHM President and Director Jane Pisano and Los AngelesCounty Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who called the new Dinosaur Hall a "major gift to Los Angeles and beyond." The opening day celebration also featured gallery tours, paleontological "dig sites," and family activities, including free art workshops and craft tables.

Crowds inside Dinosaur Hall were awestruck by the centerpiece of the exhibition, the T. rex growth series containing an extraordinary fossil trio of the youngest known baby, a rare juvenile, and a recently-discovered young adult (Thomas)—one of the ten most complete T. rex specimens in the world. The Dinosaur Hall's other standout exhibits include an imposing Triceratops; the armor-backed Stegosaurus; the predator Allosaurus; a 68-foot, long-necked Mamenchisaurus; and giant marine reptiles that swam in the oceans covering what is today California.

Using the exhibit's interactive touch screens, guests engaged in simulated paleontological role-play as excavator, prospector or illustrator, and learned about dinosaur senses and how they may have sounded based on a CT scan of a dinosaur brain.

Today's opening marks the mid-way point of NHM's institutional transformation,as well as a thoughtful reconsideration of what science and the story of our planet means to visitors. The transformation continues with the opening of an exhibition about Southern California's natural and cultural history in 2012, and more than three acres of urban nature experiences and exhibits serving as a new front yard for the Museum and the Otis Booth Pavilion in 2013.

Visit www.nhm.org for more photos and information for planning a visit.

About the Museum

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is located at 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, near downtown. It is open daily 9:30 am to 5 pm. The Museum was the first dedicated museum building in Los Angeles, opening its doors in 1913. It has amassed one of the world's most extensive and valuable collections of natural and cultural history—with more than 35 million objects, some as old as 4.5 billion years. The Natural History Family of Museums includes the NHM, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (Hancock Park/Mid-Wilshire), and the William S. Hart Park and Museum (Newhall, California). For more information visit www.nhm.org

SOURCE The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Read More: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...125689833.html

[dragonsky]

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Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Creative minds behind Cirque du Soleil's 'Iris'
A Q&A with director-choreographer Philippe Decouflé and composer Danny Elfman.
July 24, 2011|By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times

Last week previews began at the Kodak Theatre for "Iris," the latest big-top extravaganza by Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil. The show, which its producers hope will run at the Hollywood & Highland complex for the next decade, is a valentine to the art of cinema that combines circus acts, avant-garde theatrics and a touch of Hollywood razzle-dazzle.

The two top-billed members of its creative team are director Philippe Decouflé, a Paris-based director-choreographer, and composer Danny Elfman, former frontman for the progressive rock band Oingo Boingo and author of dozens of feature film scores, including Tim Burton's "Batman" and "Alice in Wonderland." We spoke with them about "Iris" this week at Elfman's studio in Los Angeles. In conversation, the pair work together like an aerial act. Elfman, humorous and upfront, maintains a steady patter of anecdotes and impressions about the show and its progress. Then Decouflé swoops in with elegantly crafted thoughts in Parisian-accented English. This is an edited transcript of their conversation.

This show is about cinema, not about Hollywood, although here in L.A. we sometimes think of them as synonymous.

Elfman: It's almost like cinema as an idea, rather than "movies." We're not trying to make you think of "Lawrence of Arabia," not trying to make you think of Alfred Hitchcock, we're not trying to make you think of specific movies. It's almost as much of an homage to [Louis] Lumière as it is to any single director.

Decouflé: The basic subject is cinema. For me it was so dangerous, I didn't know what to do for a long time. Because if we talk about just one school of cinema — like, I'm a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, but I cannot do a show which is an homage to Hitchcock because I have to give an homage to cinema in general. So I decided to work mainly on what was before cinema, about the fascination we have for images. It's the beauty of movement.

Danny, how does doing "Iris" compare with working on a film?

Elfman: Well, there's no comparison, almost on any level. Film, first off, you have a finished product, or semi-finished, by the time I come in. Secondly, it's a film, and you know what you're supposed to do. I knew that "Iris" was going to be in a constant transformation. But the thing that is most interesting is that there was no template to look to, to follow.

How did you two begin working together?

Elfman: We started two years ago. Philippe already had a lot of work done. He was creating the show in Paris. I just started writing music and sending it over to him.

Philippe, why did Cirque want Danny involved in this show?

Decouflé: Cirque du Soleil asked me to work on this show and to find a creative team. So my very first idea was let's ask Daniel, because he's one of my favorite composers. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a movie I have seen 50 times. And I had the chance that Danny, he hadn't seen a lot of dance shows in his life, but he saw my solo work in New York a little while before.

Elfman: It was really a bit of fate. I had an agent who was booking concerts. So one night in New York, he says, "We're going to go see a show, a dance show." And I get to the theater and there's just this picture of one person. It's a solo. And I go, "What?! You've taken me to a solo performance? Oh my god, I'm going to see a modern dance solo performance! This is going to be horrible!" And I loved the show. I said, "Whoever this Decouflé is, I'd love to work with him some day." And six months later I get this call saying Cirque is interested. And you also have to remember I started out as a street musician. I was a fire-breather, same as Guy [Cirque Chief Executive Guy Laliberté]. My first performing in my life was with a French musical-theatrical group, Le Grand Magic Circus.

The music for "Iris" incorporates many different styles, from Latin jazz to Balinese gamelan and Japanese taiko drums to serialism.

Elfman: Sometimes I'd get an idea thrown at me, just something to grab hold of. So there was lots of things, like doing Gershwin-esque, or doing Leonard Bernstein, doing something romantic.

Philippe, you often use live music for your dance pieces, right?

Decouflé: Since, I don't know, like 15 years ago, I decided to play only with live music. Because I think it's always better for the audience when all the elements that I use are live, and when they play together. And the relationship between dance and music for me is really very close. Dance almost always needs music, except you have the [Merce] Cunningham and [John] Cage style, where they decided to have the music independent from the choreography, but I'm not from that tradition.

Danny, are you the only Hollywood guy involved in the creative team?

Decouflé: Are you a Hollywood guy?

Elfman: What a scary thought!

Decouflé: It's true that I have a very French team [for "Iris"]. For example, my set designer, he's mainly working in cinema.

Elfman: I guess I would have to be the "Hollywood guy" in the team. Although, it's funny, after 26 years of working in Hollywood, I still don't consider myself a Hollywood guy. I'm not a Hollywood guy in the sense that I don't connect with Hollywood. I go to openings when I absolutely have to. As much as I support the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] and all the good things they do, because I love cinema, and cinema was my inspiration to get into music.

How did that translate into making music?

Elfman: All accident. My early designs in life were to be in movies — not an actor, but a cinematographer, an editor, a writer, maybe a director. Everything but an actor or a composer. My training was spending every weekend of my life at a theater. And I lived in an area where the kids went to the theater every Saturday and Sunday.

Philippe, does the culture of Hollywood — the Academy Awards and that kind of thing — interest you?

Decouflé: I don't know it so well, so I can't say. But I could say almost the same as Danny in many points, because I do what I do by accident also. Because it's a bit the same. When I was a kid, every day when I was in school, at midday I was escaping to go to the movies, mainly to cartoons. When I was a kid I was always crazy about Tex Avery.

Did you like cartoons because you can do anything in them?

Decouflé: Yeah, it's something about freedom, freedom of movement. So there is something about reaching the impossibility which interested me a lot. And voilà, I began to do what I did also by accident. I thought I was going to work in the movies, to make lighting, or the film credits at the beginning and the end of the movies.

Is there anything you haven't been able to do in the Kodak Theatre?

Decouflé: I have a model of the Kodak Theatre in my house in Paris, a big one, and I've slept with it for three years. (Laughter.) There is a basic problem in the Kodak: It's the American sickness of king-size. It's too big. It's a reproduction of an Italian theater, but really like king-size. So we had to fight to try to twist the relationship that the spectators have with the space. Because if you respect the normal aperture, it's too big, too far.

Elfman: That's what I noticed right from the beginning. "Iris" is much more human-based. There's a sense of anticipation that's more old-school circus than the new Cirque du Soleil shows. Because I've seen "O" twice, I've seen "Ka" twice. And I never feel that anything could ever go wrong in those shows, they're like clockwork. But here, you have four people, two people, six people, just doing their act, there's no help, there's nothing but them and their bodies. I bite my nails and grit my teeth much more than in any other Cirque show that I've seen. I know they're going to be OK, but I have to look away at moments because it just looks too insanely difficult. To me, of all the Cirque shows I've seen, this one, its unique quality is that connection with the human element. You don't need $100 million of CGI. You're just watching performers performing. And what a joy that is.

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul...lfman-20110724

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Getty acquires rare, illuminated Bible from 1200s Italy
Los Angeles Times
September 6, 2011 | 1:28 pm

The J. Paul Getty Museum has added a prized, 750-year-old Bible from Italy to its noted collection of illuminated medieval manuscripts, and the museum says it will go on display Dec. 13 as a highlight of the upcoming exhibition, “Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination 1250-1350.”

The Getty’s announcement says that the so-called Abbey Bible, named for a former British owner, was created in the mid-1200s for a Dominican monastery. According to museum officials, it “is one of the earliest and finest” illuminated Bibles to have emerged from Bologna in northern Italy, “one of the major centers” where scribes turned Latin scripture into art.

The work’s hallmarks, per the Getty, include “unusually lavish illumination” encompassing “whimsical figures…drolleries, grotesques and dynamic pen flourishes,” as well as rare images of praying monks.

“Sensitively depicted facial expressions…reveal the artist to be a skilled storyteller, and the pages brim with incident and event,” the Getty says.

The museum wouldn’t say what it spent to acquire the Bible this summer.

In July 2010, Christie’s in London offered it at auction as part of its multi-part sale of the Arcana Collection, a trove of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts that the British newspaper, the Daily Mail reported had been collected over three decades by an anonymous American businessman.

Christie’s experts had predicted that the Abbey Bible, named for a British major who owned it from 1965 to 1989, could command a high bid of $4 million to $5.6 million, but it went unsold at the auction. According to Christie’s description, the Abbey Bible measures 10.6 inches by 7.8 inches and consists of 514 leaves of vellum; the artistry is found in 125 large, decorated capital letters, and in scenes and decorations painted in the margins of about 80 of the pages.

Read More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/cult...al-bible-.html

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

L.A. movie palaces get starring role in period films
The downtown theaters, several of which have been renovated, provide authentic atmosphere in 'J. Edgar' and 'The Artist' and can double as nightclubs, casinos and hotel lobbies.
By Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times
6:20 PM PST, November 22, 2011


The opulent picture palaces and vaudeville halls of downtown Los Angeles may be monuments to a bygone era, but they are still keeping their ties to Hollywood.

Theaters in the historic Broadway district, including the Orpheum, the Palace Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre, are featured in several current and upcoming movies, including Walt Disney Pictures' "The Muppets," Warner Bros.' "J. Edgar" and "The Dark Knight Rises," and the Weinstein Co.'s "The Artist," the silent, black and white, period romance that opens in the U.S. this week.

The elegant structures are popular among location managers and set designers because of their rich and varied architecture, which ranges from Art Deco to French Baroque and Spanish Gothic — sometimes all in the same venue.

"These downtown L.A. theaters constitute a local treasure trove of historic and exotic show palace interiors and exteriors," said Harry Medved, co-author of the book "Location Filming in Los Angeles." "They can double as live theaters, nightclubs, casinos, hotel lobbies or music halls in London, New York, Detroit and Paris."

Another selling point: because they are no longer used to show first run-movies, the buildings are readily available for dressing up as movie sets.

"They are an incredibly valuable resource for filming in Los Angeles," said John Panzarella, location manager for "In Time," the recently released sci-fi thriller starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. Panzarella booked the grand lobby of the Los Angeles Theatre to depict a European casino.

"In Time" is among more than a dozen movies that have filmed at the Broadway district landmark, which was designed by architect Charles Lee and opened in 1931 for the gala screening of Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights." The building, now listed with the National Register of Historic Places, was the last and most extravagant of the downtown movie palaces built between 1910 and 1931. Together, they formed the core of the city's entertainment district, which also hosted live performances by artists as diverse as Judy Garland and Duke Ellington.

Later, they hosted puppets. Producers of "The Muppets" also shot a scene in the same lobby, where Kermit the Frog makes his final speech on the grand staircase.

Most of the original 19 theaters have long since closed. A handful — including the Million Dollar Theater and the Palace — remain open for special events, screenings and concerts. (Loew's State Theatre, at 7th Street and Broadway, is a church.) Several rent their auditoriums, lobbies and ballrooms to film crews, which may be the reason they're still around.

"Their use as film locations is one of the main reasons they are still here and intact," said Hillsman Wright, co-founder of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation, which has been working to preserve the storied real estate. "They are very powerful buildings that were designed to take you away from the troubled world, particularly during the Depression era. They were built to inspire and they still have that quality."

Richard Middleton, executive producer of "The Artist," said the old movie houses are an asset to a city that has suffered from runaway production.

The Oscar contender is set in the 1920s and tells the story of a silent movie star struggling to adapt to the advent of the talkies. It was filmed on location in Los Angeles, at the Los Angeles Theatre and the Orpheum.

"It's pretty hard to find period-correct theaters that can give you the look from that time," Middleton said. "Luckily for us, these theaters are in good condition and have maintained their architecturally integrity."

In addition to "The Artist," several other movies have filmed at the Orpheum, including "Funny People" "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Dreamgirls." The theater has also been a location for commercials, music videos, live concerts and even performances of "American Idol."

Owner Steve Needleman has invested more than $4 million in improvements to renovate the theater, which he heavily markets as a film location. He says that up to 60% of his business comes from film and TV productions, which pay as much as $10,000 a day to shoot there.

"We're offering a production value to them that you just can't get in other places," Needleman said. "It's getting back to that old- time look of Los Angeles."

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,1638371.story