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  #81  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2006, 7:08 AM
ocman ocman is offline
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LA now has to share it's magnificent conductor with London.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/stor...950313,00.html

London music on a high as Philharmonia lures Salonen


Martin Kettle
Friday November 17, 2006
The Guardian

The internationally acclaimed Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is to join the Philharmonia Orchestra in London as its principal conductor from next year, the Guardian can reveal. He will succeed Christoph von Dohnanyi, who has held the post since 1997.

For the past 14 years Salonen has been with the the Los Angeles Philharmonic, raising it to such a level that it is now regarded as America's top symphony orchestra. He will remain in charge in Los Angeles when be takes over the Philharmonia. The Philharmonia's coup in capturing Salonen - whose services the New York Philharmonic had made little secret of wanting - sets up the prospect of a new golden age for London's orchestras, three of which have recently secured the services of some of the most sought-after musical directors in the world.

Article continues
The London Philharmonic which, like the Philharmonia, will again be based at the Royal Festival Hall when the South Bank's current modernisation and rebuilding programme is completed in autumn 2007, will be headed by the Russian maestro Vladimir Jurowski, who takes over from Kurt Masur. Jurowski is also the music director of the Glyndebourne Festival.

The London Symphony, based at the Barbican, will be headed by the protean Ossetian conductor Valery Gergiev, who is due to take over from Sir Colin Davis in January 2007.

That leaves the Royal Philharmonic, headed since 1996 by the Italian conductor Daniele Gatti, as the only one of the four without a recent change at the top. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, which is sometimes regarded as London's "fifth orchestra" - though not by itself, as it is funded by the licence fee rather than by Arts Council England - also has a relatively new chief, the Czech conductor Jiri Belohlavek.

In this new battle of the batons the only certain winners look likely to be the music public, who can look forward to an orchestral life of a quality and diversity with which no other city can compete.

Salonen's arrival in London on a permanent basis will make the Philharmonia the most natural home for contemporary music among the four. He is a prolific composer, and his own music is certain to feature in his programming plans. But his wide-ranging, non-traditional approach to his orchestras make him the closest thing any of them could have found to Sir Simon Rattle. Short of tempting Rattle back from the Berlin Philharmonic, it is hard to think of a more exciting appointment for the Philharmonia to have made.

Salonen, who studied horn, conducting and composing in Helsinki in the 1970s, considered himself a conducting composer until his London debut in 1983, when he took over a performance of Mahler's third symphony with the Philharmonia at short notice. He became a composing conductor virtually overnight.
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  #82  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2006, 7:39 AM
bobcat bobcat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocman View Post
For the past 14 years Salonen has been with the the Los Angeles Philharmonic, raising it to such a level that it is now regarded as America's top symphony orchestra.
"Quality" rankings are always subjective, but LA Phil and SF Symphony are regular cited as the two most forward looking orchestras in the country, both more willing to present works by modern composers than their peer orchestras in the East. Also, LA Phil now has the largest annual budget of any symphony orchestra in the country, and while that may or may not be an indication of its overall quality, it's usually the case that larger budget organizations are able to offer the highest salaries in order to attract the most talented performers.
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  #83  
Old Posted Dec 18, 2006, 7:13 AM
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Nearly bare Bruins will brave the chilly night
UCLA's Undie Run strips away some of the pressure of finals week -- and most of the normal student attire. Tonight's the night.
By Charles Proctor, Times Staff Writer
December 13, 2006


UCLA senior Mike Valkosky plans to commemorate final exams tonight by dropping his pants.

But the 21-year-old sociology major faces a tough choice: Should he try a pair of boxers this year or stick with his trusty green Speedo?

Valkosky isn't the only student who's struggling with such questions. In what has become a tradition at the Westwood campus, thousands of students mark the Wednesday of exams week by running across campus in the dead of night clad in nothing but their underwear.

Turnout for the quarterly event, known as the Undie Run, has soared since theater-major Eric Whitehead first dashed solo in his underwear through the streets of Westwood west of the campus four years ago. Last June, more than 5,000 people followed in his footsteps, frolicking and flaunting in their most intimate apparel.

But the growth worries administrators and UCLA police, who see potential for property damage and injury as people from outside UCLA and even outside Los Angeles converge on campus to watch, snap pictures and shoot video. Some administrators and students speculate it's only a matter of time before the Undie Run gets too big for its britches and is shut down.

UCLA is not the only university with student traditions that involve partial or even full-on nudity. A student group at UC San Diego called "Students for a Sexier Campus" has an Undie Run that was inspired in part by the UCLA event. Students at the University of Florida host "The Great Underwear Dash." And UC Berkeley and Harvard, among others, have or had traditions involving students streaking during exams.

UCLA's Undie Run stands apart for its size, even though it has no formal leaders, except perhaps the runners at the head of the pack.

Word spreads via online social networking sites, e-mail and old-fashioned word of mouth. At midnight, students gather at the northernmost corner of Gayley and Landfair avenues. The half-mile route goes from Gayley through the courtyard of UCLA's De Neve residential suites and down the main campus thoroughfare, known as Bruin Walk. The event is not university-sanctioned, though it is monitored by administrators and UCLA police.

The bashful get away with a T-shirt and boxers, but many show up with far less. Men wear boxers, briefs or — for the very self-assured — thongs. Women wear all varieties of lingerie.

Some skip the underwear altogether. Instead, they don palm fronds, beer boxes or a strategically positioned party hat. "One dude," recalled history major Chase Norfleet, 23, wore "just a sock." Running shoes are optional but recommended.

Originally, the run wound through apartments in Westwood, but when more than 1,000 people showed up in 2004 and people reported students running over parked cars, the UCLA administration took serious notice.

In March, administrators steered the route away from the streets of Westwood and onto campus in the hopes of keeping students safe while allowing them the "college experience."

The change, said Bob Naples, vice chancellor of student and campus life, also was made to stave off police intervention. For now, students are asked to monitor themselves.

"If we reach the point where something happens or, God forbid, someone is injured or assaulted," Naples said, "I think the university and the police would have no qualms about stepping in and doing something to end it."

The new route is far from perfect. Some students who live in De Neve suites have complained about the noise. During the June Undie Run, students jumped into Shapiro fountain outside Powell library, causing about $25,000 worth of damage. Tonight, the fountain will be turned off.

The new route takes away the run's rebellious and spontaneous quality, some students say.

"When there are rules, it loses some of the Undie Run essence," said Zoe Brown, 21, an anthropology major from Novato.

Police and administrators are still concerned about the number of gawkers who come from off campus. Brown is considering not doing the run this year because of the people who show up with video equipment. "I could be on YouTube right now," she said.

Whitehead, now an actor and singer in New York, founded the Undie Run on a whim. At the time, he recalled, he was disgusted at what he thought was an overbearing police presence in Westwood during finals week. So he started walking the streets at night, singing a "short and distasteful" song.

When police didn't cite him, Whitehead "started wondering: How far can I take this? Then someone said, 'Well, why don't you just run around in your underwear?' And I thought: 'Why not?'

"So I dropped the shorts and started running."

Whitehead printed fliers and encouraged his roommates to join in as he coaxed the Undie Run to life. Crowds grew from a handful to the hundreds, and by the time Whitehead graduated, the run "was definitely its own beast."

Whitehead is proud that the tradition has taken off, but he believes it will probably shut down some day, given the life cycle of student traditions. "It's kind of an inevitability."

Until then, students like Valkosky embrace the tradition that Whitehead blazed in his boxers. Valkosky's done the Undie Run every quarter since he was a sophomore. Last year, he wore a bandanna and a green Speedo.

"I'm going to go into a career where I have to keep my clothes on," he said. "So I might as well do it now."
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  #84  
Old Posted Dec 18, 2006, 7:16 AM
dragonsky dragonsky is offline
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UCLA students mark finals with 'Undie Run'
By Charles Proctor, Times Staff Writer
11:23 AM PST, December 14, 2006








In what has become a tradition at the Westwood campus, thousands of students marked exams week in the dead of night by running across campus clad in nothing but their underwear.

Turnout for the quarterly event, known as the Undie Run, has soared since theater major Eric Whitehead first dashed solo in his underwear through the streets of Westwood west of the campus four years ago. UCLA police estimated that as many as 4,000 people turned up last night, down from more than 5,000 who showed up last year to frolic and flaunt their most intimate apparel.

Administrators and UCLA police were on alert for potential property damage and injury as people from outside UCLA converged on the campus to watch, snap pictures and shoot video. Some administrators and students speculated that it was only a matter of time before the Undie Run gets too big for its britches and is shut down.

Last night, however, there were no reports of any serious problems, according to Nancy Greenstein, director of community services for the campus police.

UCLA is not the only university with student traditions that involve partial or even full-on nudity. A student group at UC San Diego called Students for a Sexier Campus has an Undie Run that was inspired in part by the UCLA event. Students at the University of Florida host The Great Underwear Dash. And UC Berkeley and Harvard, among others, have or had traditions involving students streaking during exams.

UCLA's Undie Run stands apart for its size, even though it has no formal leaders, except perhaps the runners at the head of the pack.

Word spread via online social networking sites, e-mail and old-fashioned word of mouth. At midnight, students gathered at Gayley and Landfair avenues. The half-mile route went from Gayley through the courtyard of UCLA's De Neve residential suites and down the main campus thoroughfare, known as Bruin Walk. The event is not university-sanctioned, though it is monitored by administrators and UCLA police.

The bashful got away with a T-shirt and boxers, but many showed up with far less. Men wore boxers, briefs or -- for the very self-assured -- thongs. Women wore all varieties of lingerie.

Some skipped the underwear altogether. Instead, palm fronds, beer boxes or a strategically positioned party hat are used in the event. "One dude," recalled history major Chase Norfleet, 23, wore "just a sock."

Originally, the run wound through apartments in Westwood, but when more than 1,000 people showed up in 2004 and people reported students running over parked cars, the UCLA administration took serious notice.

In March, administrators steered the route away from the streets of Westwood and onto campus in the hopes of keeping students safe while allowing them the "college experience."

The change, said Bob Naples, vice chancellor of student and campus life, also was made to stave off police intervention. For now, students are asked to monitor themselves.

"If we reach the point where something happens or, God forbid, someone is injured or assaulted," Naples said, "I think the university and the police would have no qualms about stepping in and doing something to end it."

The new route is far from perfect. Some students who live in De Neve suites have complained about the noise. During the June Undie Run, students jumped into Shapiro fountain outside Powell library, causing about $25,000 worth of damage. The fountain was turned off before the event.

The new route took away the run's rebellious and spontaneous quality, some students said.

"When there are rules, it loses some of the Undie Run essence," said Zoe Brown, 21, an anthropology major from Novato.

Police and administrators are still concerned about the number of gawkers who come from off campus. Brown was considering not doing the run this year because of the people who show up with video equipment. "I could be on YouTube right now," she said.

Whitehead, now an actor and singer in New York, founded the Undie Run on a whim. At the time, he recalled, he was disgusted at what he thought was an overbearing police presence in Westwood during finals week. So he started walking the streets at night, singing a "short and distasteful" song.

When police didn't cite him, Whitehead "started wondering: How far can I take this? Then someone said, 'Well, why don't you just run around in your underwear?' And I thought: Why not?

"So I dropped the shorts and started running."

Whitehead printed fliers and encouraged his roommates to join in as he coaxed the Undie Run to life. Crowds grew from a handful to the hundreds, and by the time Whitehead graduated, the run "was definitely its own beast."

Whitehead is proud that the tradition has taken off, but he believes it will probably be shut down some day, given the life cycle of student traditions. "It's kind of an inevitability."

Until then, students such as senior Mike Valkosky embraced the tradition that Whitehead blazed in his boxers. Valkosky's done the Undie Run every quarter since he was a sophomore. Last year, he wore a bandanna and a green Speedo.

"I'm going to go into a career where I have to keep my clothes on," said the 21-year-old sociology major before this year's run. "So I might as well do it now."
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  #85  
Old Posted Dec 18, 2006, 7:42 AM
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^For running around on campus in your underwear times, make it...UCLA time!

I wish they'd done this while I was still there (graduated in 2000).
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  #86  
Old Posted Dec 19, 2006, 8:55 AM
edluva edluva is offline
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I wish I went there now. Sounds so democratic and liberating. Now *that's* a tradition.
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  #87  
Old Posted Dec 21, 2006, 8:10 AM
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Putting the 'art' in party
At gatherings grand and humble, art makes for a potent mixer across L.A.

By Chris Lee, Times Staff Writer

Both literally and figuratively, Los Angeles is drunk on art.

Blame the Southland's vast brain trust of freethinkers and major league collectors, its panoply of new galleries and top-ranked art schools, and even a nascent "art bar" culture: The City of Angels has indisputably become this hemisphere's most overheated, over-hyped contemporary art boomtown.

But the art world social scene here has never exactly been what you'd call avant garde. At least not when it comes to feting homegrown talent and younger arts patrons outside established templates — black-tie institutional galas and Two Buck Chuck-fueled boho get-togethers being the perfunctory modes of celebrating modern art. And in terms of connecting it in any organic way to the entertainment industry, fashion, celebrity, indie rock and hipsterdom, L.A. still looks east for inspiration.

In recent weeks, however, several art-related events — in Hollywood, Elysian Park, West Hollywood and Culver City, respectively — have signaled an evolution in how Los Angeles will party in the name of art.

Each event derived a cerebral glamour from differing points on the pop-art continuum, crossing time-honored social divides in the process and raising both money for and awareness about Angeleno cultural life in the process.

In the view of York Chang, a figurative painter and multimedia installation artist who also happens to be a commissioner of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, changes in the art world social milieu may reflect a larger cultural shift.

"You're seeing more and more people tapping intersections between art and our civic culture," he said. "It's great for the city. And all the partying is great for art. It plays an important function. At the heart of great art is great social energy."

The November party "Baby's All Grown Up" served as a meta-narrative deconstruction of what an art opening is and isn't supposed to be, featuring the work of seven emergent local artists and the intrusive presence of surveillance cameras. Another event last month, pARTy 2006, distinguished itself from previous arts institution membership galas with a fresh infusion of Hollywood glamour: by commingling the glitterati (and many of their agents) with the city's culturati. "Free Money," a free weekly event at the Mandrake Bar in Culver City, manages to unite disparate Angeleno tribes — galleristas, fashion victims, starving artists and the skinny jeans set — by throwing casually outlandish theme parties. And earlier this month, the KCRW-sponsored fifth anniversary party for arts collective Create:Fixate, a bimonthly multimedia event, featured a cross-section of emerging lowbrow and fine artists, electronic musicians and purveyors of bohemian clothing and accessories, not to mention a troupe of dancing Santas.

"People communicate here through parties," said Bettina Korek, an influential contemporary-art marketing consultant. "But a lot of people are getting sick of just going out for the sake of going out. They're looking for an enriching experience. That leads them to want to make art a part of their lifestyles."

In a spoofing mood

At Marvimon House, a cavernous former car showroom turned chic event space located in the shadow of Chavez Ravine, guests entering "Baby's All Grown Up" were confronted first by a paparazzi-style photographer snapping pictures of everyone who entered the event, then by a boom-mounted digital video camera inside that swooped through the crowd in an effort to record the action — but also to "challenge the conventional definition of an art exhibition," according to curator/co-organizer Veronica Fernandez, a freelance curator and art advisor.

"It's a celebration of art but at the same time, it's poking fun at the entire thing," said Fernandez, who marked her 28th birthday that night. "It's cynical."

Art world grandees, a smattering of art school students and some big-ticket collectors — 150 people in all, most of whom paid $99 to attend — supped on a roundelay of gourmet hors d'oeuvres created from recipes by famous artists (post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne's seared albacore crudo with citrus marinated jicama salad was one of the highlights, as was the fifth course: meatloaf sandwich à la Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell). Music came courtesy of the alt-country band Pillbilly Nights and DJ Eddie Ruscha (whose namesake father, Ed, is a certified pop art superstar).

Many attendees seemed visibly out of their depth so far east of the 405. But it helped that they could sip a different designer cocktail with every course amid sculptural floral arrangements by artist Holly Vesecky and installation art by rising stars such as Tim Doyle, Franco Mondini-Ruiz and Chuck Moffitt.

The idea was to have everyone interact with, eat, sniff and drink in the art rather than regard it from a detached emotional distance. "It's a crazy environment," said Cathy Akers, whose sexy-naif nature diorama sculpture, "Natural Selection 2," was on display. "You're part of the performance even if people are supposed to be looking at your work."

A guest who identified himself as Johnny Radio added: "Everyone here is artsy and beautiful and — how can I put it? — hungry. There's a high possibility of an orgy."

Coming together

Sponsored by the New Yorker magazine and held at Gemini G.E.L., a venerable artist workshop and publisher of limited edition prints and sculptures, pARTy 2006 was nominally intended as a membership drive for young supporters of local cultural institutions: L.A. Opera's ARIA group, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's President's Circle Avant-Garde membership group, the Museum of Contemporary Art's MOCA Contemporaries, the Los Angeles Music Center's Proscenium Club and WOW, a nonprofit initiative of the Art Production Fund.

In application, however, the party was a perfect storm of cultural bigwigs and Creative Artists Agency suits, movie producers, socialites and demi-celebrities, artists and those wishing to bask in their reflected limelight at a time when nine-figure contemporary art sales (such as David Geffen's recent $140-million "de-acquisition" of a Jackson Pollock painting) have become the new normal.

Veteran club promoter-turned-DJ Brent Bolthouse spun Lou Reed and Creedence Clearwater Revival records just yards from a print workshop crammed with big-ticket works on paper by John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra. Model-actress-celebutante Devon Aoki rubbed elbows with the likes of MOCA chief curator Paul Schimmel and Rosette Delug, a board member for the Armand Hammer Museum. And a disparate group of boldfaced names, including actress Jordana Brewster, LAXART director-curator Lauri Firstenberg, celebrity interviewer Steven "Cojo" Cojocaru and model-turned-gallery owner Honor Fraser, could be spotted among the 500-strong throng of Angeleno jeunesse d'orée.

The seemingly effortless — yet far-reaching — social networking efforts of Bettina Korek, who organized the event, weren't lost on guest Erin Wright, a board liaison for LACMA.

"What she's done that's so interesting is to get together Hollywood with people who read and people who think," Wright said. "It's the arts and music in town coming together — a great amalgamation of interests."

Andrew Berardini, who contributes to Artforum's Scene & Herd column (artforum.com), assessed the scene more bluntly. "This event is the art world trying to crash into the entertainment world — or vice versa," he said. Operatic tenor David Lomeli began to serenade the crowd with a rendition of "No Puede Ser."

"Look around you," Berardini said, gesturing at the well-dressed crowd throwing back complimentary Don Julio Tequila margaritas and Reyka Vodka pomegranate martinis. "It's working!" Indeed, that night nearly three dozen new members signed on to the various patrons groups, in some cases at $1,000 a pop.

See art and be seen

Even further down the economic food chain, the crashing of worlds can be heard. The arts collective Create:Fixate may have begun life as a downtown loft venue showcasing emerging artists. But five years in, the bimonthly extravaganza — which is "freaky, like in a Burning Man kind of way," in the words of one repeat attendee — draws a crowd intent on seeing art but also on being seen while seeing art. Pajama parties, people on stilts, hot tubs and drag queens have historically been part of the equation.

No exception was its "Alive in Los Angeles" event earlier this month that commemorated Create:Fixate's wood anniversary. Sponsored by KCRW and the Onion, the event had more than 30 visual artists participate, including experimental sculptors, photographers, fashion designers, video artists and painters.

And unlike most pinkie-in-the-air, Chardonnay-in-the-gut arts soirees, this one had a family-friendly component: the so-called "Creativity Kids Zone," where the "Hannah Montana" demographic could finger-paint while their parents, ahem, created and fixated.

The Audio Lab involved live bands, spoken-word performers and nearly half a dozen DJs, including John Tejada, Der Kontraktor, Slang Min and Drifter.

On the edge of now

Along with the Mountain Bar in Chinatown, Culver City's Mandrake has become L.A.'s ranking art bar — a drinking hole situated on the La Cienega gallery corridor that's run by and for artists. The former gay leather joint regularly exhibits new work and hosts art talks in its cavernous back room.

But every Wednesday since September, the Mandrake has also been home to "Free Money," a casual, guest-list-free event that pulls in those on the cutting edge of now (fashion plate-actress Chloë Sevigny, for one) with "conceptual" iPod DJ-ing and outlandish themes — "proto rave," "John Peel night" after the venerable English indie rock DJ, and "the Kate Moss make-out party," intended as a woozy, sexy supermodel homage, rank among "Free Money's" more memorable nights.

According to Ezra Woods, one of the event's three "hosts" (part of a collective called Indole that resists being pigeonholed as party promoters), "Free Money's" unique chemistry is indivisible from its gallery-centric location. "The arty crowd here is definitely a selling point," he said. "The art world is definitely fabulous. And the gallery crowd attracts other creative people: writers, fashion designers, dancers, some actors."

Last week was "singles night" at "Free Money." And although no one would quite cop to being on the make — no Binaca blasts or Drakkar Noir here — an unmistakable Echo Park hipster contingent made its way to the Westside for the event. As did a clutch of local cultural shot-callers: among them, MOCA's assistant director of board affairs Ari Wiseman; Eugenie Joo, director of the gallery at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater; cultural commissioner York Chang and Andrea Feldman Falcione, curator of '80s power agent Mike Ovitz's powerhouse modern art collection.

As the night wore on, women with $2,000 purses mingled with scruffy artists whose street-savvy fashion style tended toward a look that can be described only as "post-grooming." People danced to the Brit-pop of Pulp and Morrissey beneath the "no dancing" sign in the back room, Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" flickered from a projector against a wall.

"The mix of people is really interesting," said Tiffany Tuttle, designer for the footwear line LD Tuttle. "It's cool but not too cool for school."

Which, when it comes down to it, seems to be the way L.A. likes to put the "art" in party.
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  #88  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2006, 3:16 PM
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Collectors' additions


L.A.'s cultural life, as measured by the catalogs of its museums and libraries, got a bit richer this year. Here are some of the things to be thankful for.


By Christopher Reynolds
Times Staff Writer

December 24, 2006

CUE the "Addams Family" theme. Now lay out that old leather-bound Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on a sturdy table, keep the Calydonian boar clear of the African elephant tusks, and step right this way to check out Charles Bukowski's crude scribbles.

Yes, from these attractions it may seem that the Ringling Bros. Library of Congress Aesthetic Pleasure Faire has come to town at last. But all of these wonders, along with reams of duller, more important scholarly items, have joined the collections of museums and libraries in greater Los Angeles this year.

The original score for the "Addams Family" theme? Composed 42 years ago by Vic Mizzy, who donated the original score to UCLA in May.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? That's the 19th century deal that added California to the United States. After two decades of searching for a first-edition copy, a USC librarian happily paid "four figures" for one this year.

The boar — actually, an oil painting of a boar, surrounded by hunters and nervous horses and painted by Peter Paul Rubens in about 1611 — now belongs to the Getty Museum, which bought it in April from a London dealer, price undisclosed. Rubens drew the image from an episode in Ovid's poetry, but the alarm in the animals' eyes seems immediate enough to provoke a PETA demonstration.

The tusks — real tusks, 8 feet long and 332 pounds together — were removed from their central African owner in 1897 and donated to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County last month by William Cherry, a dentist in the Lake Tahoe area.

As for the Bukowski scrawls, for now let's just say the stubbled bard of San Pedro never lived in a home as nice as the one now housing his papers.

Deals like these have made 2006 a lively year for donations and purchases throughout the region, curators and librarians say, but then, most years are. It's just that the rest of the world rarely notices.

Whether they are paintings, diaries, photographs, musical scores, old clothes or correspondence, most artifacts and archives land quietly, get swaddled in acid-free paper and alphabetically shelved, all without much public notice unless there's a big celebrity involved.

While you weren't looking, the Natural History Museum added not only the tusks but a rare 14.6-foot oarfish from Catalina, the "XX" armband from Charlie Chaplin's uniform in "The Great Dictator" (1940) and sundry mineral specimens from the mines of Bisbee, Ariz.

The Museum of Contemporary Art added more than 100 works, including half a dozen small Robert Motherwell ink-on-paper works, 13 Jennifer Bornstein prints and etchings, and Fred Tomaselli's "Hang Over," a contemporary work made with leaves, pills, acrylic and resin on a 7-by-10-foot wood panel.

The Hammer Museum added more than 100 sculptures, paintings, installations, photographs and drawings

The Norton Simon Museum added a pencil-and-ink portrait by Don Bachardy of, well, Norton Simon. (Simon died in 1993; this addition ties in with the museum's celebration of Simon's centennial in 2007.)

The Southwest Museum of the American Indian (now largely closed as its parent, the Autry National Center, shores up the bedraggled Southwest building and plans expansion in Griffith Park) added 37 Pomo baskets.



Reading the material

INDIVIDUALLY, Bisbee minerals and Pomo baskets may not inspire dancing in the streets. But a year's acquisitions, surveyed at once, can reveal plenty — not only about how culture endures, but about institutional ambitions.

For instance, the Getty — so mired in recriminations over its past deals that it has given four works back to Greece and offered 26 more to Italy — isn't buying so many ancient vases any more. And the Museum of the American West in Griffith Park, which was founded less than 20 years ago on the fortune and show-business artifacts of Gene Autry, hasn't been snapping up singing-cowboy memorabilia.

Instead, both institutions — the one with roots in Western civilization and the one with roots in western serialization — have lately turned to photography. Contemporary American photography in particular. In the last 12 months, in fact, both have bought works by living photographers John Divola and Jerry Uelsmann.

Of course, with the deepest pockets in all the museum world, the Getty could also afford the Rubens; a 14th century illustrated manuscript page by Pacino di Bonaguida; a 17th century Dutch drawing by Anthonie van Borssom; a 17th century painting by Spanish artist Juan de Valdés Leal; and a raft of further acquisitions by the Getty Research Institute.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, director Michael Govan arrived in April and spent much of his first three months on the job trying to quietly raise money to buy five Gustav Klimt paintings that had been seized by the Nazis in the 1930s, held by Austria for decades, then restituted to the surviving family of owner Adele Bloch-Bauer. But while the paintings were on view at LACMA, the behind-the-scenes bidding leaped beyond the museum's means. In the end, the works were sold individually to out-of-town or anonymous buyers, together fetching more than $325 million.

Still, LACMA's registrar had 320 acquisitions to log, the list topped by Jacques-Louis David's oil portrait of Jean-Pierre Delahaye, painted in 1815. With the Ahmanson Foundation footing the bill, the museum bought the painting at auction in Paris for $2.7 million from Delahaye's descendants in June. It went on public display for the first time in October.

Among the museum's other additions: a Tiffany lamp (donated by Richard and Nancy Daly Riordan), a 17th century Buddhist priest's mantle from Japan and a 1926 Johan Hagemeyer photo of grain elevators.

Sometimes, however, acquisitions aren't a matter of curators chasing down long-sought treasures. Acquisitions are also a matter of what's for sale, what donors have to give and what new possibilities a museum or library is ready to embrace. The result, especially at university special collections libraries, is a soup-to-nuts repast of artifacts to feed hungry grad students for generations.

Apart from the "Addams Family" score and its ripe-for-analysis lyrics ("they're all together ooky"), UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library department of special collections has taken on dozens of European Renaissance manuscripts; papers from painter R.B. Kitaj and writer Susan Sontag (who died in 2004); and some 1,500 documents, photos and scarves from modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan (but not the scarf that fatally snapped her neck in a 1927 auto accident).

From Massachusetts neurosurgeon and pain-research pioneer William H. Sweet (who died in 2001), there's a set of gold-tipped operating instruments. From novelist and screenwriter Sidney Sheldon, who created the TV shows "I Dream of Jeannie, "The Patty Duke Show" and "Hart to Hart," there's a stack of manuscripts.

And speaking of screen work, the Mizzy contribution didn't stop with the family Addams. UCLA now also has Mizzy's scores for "Green Acres" and such films as "The Reluctant Astronaut," "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" and "The Shakiest Gun in the West." Somewhere, the late Don Knotts is smiling.

Not to be outdone, the special collections librarians at USC have acquired photos of the Hungarian uprising of 1956; correspondence of 20th century Chinese novelist Eileen Chang (a.k.a. Zhang Ai Ling); and the archives of composer Elmer Bernstein, whose five-decade career included scores for "The Great Escape," "The Magnificent Seven," "The Man With the Golden Arm," "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Animal House," among many others.

But the USC acquisition with the most political resonance may be its newly purchased first-edition copy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That war-ending 1848 document — signed under duress by Mexican leaders with U.S. troops occupying Mexico City — formalized American annexation of not only California but Nevada, Texas and Utah, along with parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. For that territory, the U.S. paid about $18 million. For a first-edition copy of the document — one of just 17 known in American libraries — USC librarian for Iberian and Latin American studies Barbara Robinson was ready to pay up to $10,000.

"It's the document that establishes our border with Mexico," said Robinson, who began hunting for a copy for USC's Boeckmann collection almost immediately after her arrival at the university in 1985.

Alerted over the summer by a dealer to a copy coming up for auction, Robinson authorized the dealer to bid. He got it for less than Robinson's limit — she won't say exactly how much less — and today it rests under lock and key at USC, 55 pages, nearly mint condition, bound in leather and printed in English and Spanish.

"I think it's important for students who do a lot of online research to see what the actual documents look like, to see the artifacts themselves," Robinson said. "You see the paper, you see the print, and it transports you back to that time period."

As disparate as the additions at UCLA and USC may seem, however, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino may have taken an even more diverse cargo aboard this year.

On one hand, there is the meticulous: the Huntington's new Burndy Library, 67,000 books on the history of science and technology over four centuries. Amassed by inventor and industrialist Bern Dibner, the collection was a gift, the library's largest single acquisition since magnate Henry Huntington founded the place in 1919.

Then there's the sublime — the Charles Bukowski papers, from the late hard-drinking, plain-spoken poet and novelist of "Barfly" fame. His widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, donated a trove of his resolutely unrarefied writings (one manuscript poem considers farts and foghorn blasts), which now rests more or less alongside the library's Gutenberg Bible and its rare editions of Shakespeare and Chaucer and papers from Jack London and Christopher Isherwood.

"This would tickle my husband," said Linda Lee Bukowski at the June announcement of the donation. "It would crack him up."

christopher.reynolds@latimes.com
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2007, 8:29 AM
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Originally Posted by LosAngelesBeauty View Post
I find it almost unfathomable that 3 socal counties are in the top 5 (LA, OC & SD), with almost 500,000 millionares between them, and we don't have more philantropy.

And aside from philantropy and culture & the arts... with those numbers in mind, I'm dumbfounded that a Chicagoan bought our newspaper, a Bostonian bought our Dodgers, a guy from Phoenix bought the Angels... we still have no NFL team in LA. Where is the civic pride?

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Originally Posted by bjornson View Post
NYC has more billionaires.
I don't think that is true. I recently read an article (I've got to try and find it) that stated that LA also has the most billionaires. There is one stretch of beach in Malibu called "Billionaire's Row" because it has 10 or so billionaires living on the same beach.

Wealth always finds it's way into the hands of those who do the least with it.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2007, 8:33 AM
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I think it is the case with NY that many millionaires have their official residence in a lower tax state, that skews the ^^^ chart.
The same is true with California, especially socal. Many incorporate or keep residence in Nevada or Arizona because of higher taxes in here. The chart is accurate.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2007, 9:03 AM
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not sure how the list is tallied, but LA has an unusual number of millionaires with their money in overseas assets. some people might even appear under poverty for their lack of income.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2007, 9:15 AM
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I find it almost unfathomable that 3 socal counties are in the top 5 (LA, OC & SD), with almost 500,000 millionares between them, and we don't have more philantropy.

And aside from philantropy and culture & the arts... with those numbers in mind, I'm dumbfounded that a Chicagoan bought our newspaper, a Bostonian bought our Dodgers, a guy from Phoenix bought the Angels... we still have no NFL team in LA. Where is the civic pride?
I have the same exact feeling. I mention that there's no real philanthropy here for the arts or anything else to do with L.A. with the exception of Broad, Geffen, Burkle, and that one guy from Orange County.



Quote:
I don't think that is true. I recently read an article (I've got to try and find it) that stated that LA also has the most billionaires. There is one stretch of beach in Malibu called "Billionaire's Row" because it has 10 or so billionaires living on the same beach.

Wealth always finds it's way into the hands of those who do the least with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dcmcgov View Post
I don't think that is true. I recently read an article (I've got to try and find it) that stated that LA also has the most billionaires. There is one stretch of beach in Malibu called "Billionaire's Row" because it has 10 or so billionaires living on the same beach.

Wealth always finds it's way into the hands of those who do the least with it.
Really? I was referring to the city of Los Angeles only when I said New York has more billionaires. According to Forbes, NY has 45 billionaires and LA. has 23 (Forbes thinks the number is 19, but then they go on to list Holmby Hills, Bel Air, and Pacific Palisades which are a part of the city of LA). Also, Forbes states that Malibu only has two billionaires . If, however, we were to do the county or the metro, then perhaps it would have more than NY. Ed knows what the hell I'm talking about.



Oh, yeah, ed! I never really thought about that.
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Old Posted Jan 29, 2007, 10:20 PM
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Good to see a major local art collection actually remaining in LA for a change, although it would have been nice if it were a bit more accessible to the general public.

A museum that'll stay in move-in condition
By Suzanne Muchnic
Times Staff Writer

January 28, 2007

FRED WEISMAN couldn't help it. He just had to buy all that art and stuff it into his house and gardens.

During a decade of residence at his Mediterranean-style estate in Holmby Hills, he put Modern classics in the living room, Surrealist paintings in the dining room and an eclectic array of high-spirited contemporary art everywhere else.

A giant cat by Fernando Botero stands by the swimming pool. Pop paintings by Roy Lichtenstein grace the lanai. A sculpture of a sexy nude woman by John d'Andrea perches on a bedroom sofa. Startlingly realistic life-size figures by Duane Hanson — a woman with a vacuum cleaner, a dozing old man and likenesses of Weisman's parents — pop up in various settings. Even the mailbox is a work of art, a sculpture of a hand and forearm by Frank Fleming.

When Weisman ran out of space, he covered windows, mounted paintings on ceilings and built a spacious modern annex to display more art. At his death in 1994, he had amassed a 1,500-piece collection and installed about 500 of those objects in and around his home.

The point of collecting art, Weisman thought, was to enjoy it, live with it and share it — forever. His will decreed that the art-filled property be kept intact and maintained as a museum.

"He wanted this to be an example of living with art in the late 20th century," says his second wife, art conservator Billie Milam Weisman. She directs the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, overseeing the art holdings and lending works to museums worldwide. At the moment, a Weisman painting by Belgian Surrealist René Magritte is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a 125-piece show from the collection is at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

Many people have seen the fruits of Weisman's collecting, at his house and elsewhere — the foundation has quietly conducted tours of the highly unusual estate since his death. But now Weisman's wish is an officially sanctioned reality. The foundation has the approval of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission to operate the house as a museum in a single-family residential neighborhood.

"Fred thought people were intimidated by art in museums, but less so when it is in homes," Billie Weisman says. "We are making Fred proud by continuing to operate the way he wanted it."

The museum is open free, by appointment only, Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The first tour begins at 10:30 a.m., the last one at 2 p.m. Operating on a highly restricted basis, the foundation is prohibited from publishing its address or street name. Prospective visitors gain access by making reservations via e-mail at tours@weismanfoundation.org or by telephone (310) 277-5321. Guests must park their cars inside the walled compound.



Fortunate turn of events

THE job of turning the Weisman estate into a museum fell to attorney Elizabeth Watson of Greenberg Glusker LLP. The impetus was a complaint to the city Department of Building and Safety from an unidentified neighbor, Watson says. When city officials followed up with a visit to the house, they informed the foundation that it must stop operating the museum or get the necessary approval.

"What's fortunate in this case is that the city of Los Angeles actually has a very special provision for what they call 'public benefit projects,' " Watson says. "It hasn't been in place very long, and it's been used primarily for city projects, municipal buildings. We utilized that section of the code which allows public benefit projects like museums and libraries in any zone in the city if you meet certain requirements. It allows the city to impose special conditions to be sure the use is compatible with the neighborhood.

"The other aspect that worked strongly in our favor," she says, "was that the foundation was using an existing single-family home, so the appearance of the building and grounds are entirely consistent with the neighborhood. We weren't building something that looked different. And, of course, that's really the essence of the Weisman museum. It's first and foremost a single-family estate. The core mission of the foundation — to preserve Fred Weisman's home as he lived in it with his art — was very consistent with the values in the city zoning code."

Nonetheless, the approval process took about a year to complete. The foundation needed discretionary special approvals from the city, including a public benefit project approval and variances on parking and the height of the wall and hedge along the front of the property.

Watson also worked with the foundation to get community support, including an endorsement from the Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council, and negotiated operating conditions with abutting neighbors.

Steve Twining, president of the council, says the museum got the group's enthusiastic support.

"I think it's a cultural treasure," he says. "We wouldn't be thrilled to have a museum on every block, but because of the precise situation and parking restrictions, I don't see it as a disruption. I didn't hear any objections."

"The irony to all this," Watson says, "is that this museum has got to be the most popular neighbor in this area. If you have a single-family estate next door, you can have any number of events, any number of visitors, any number of staff. Who wouldn't want a neighbor that doesn't have anything happening on weekends except for occasional events?"

The foundation is allowed to conduct weekend tours only one day a month and to hold a maximum of eight special events a year, six of which may run past 7 p.m. The number of visitors per day must not exceed 90 and daily on-site staff is limited to 20. Attendance at special events is capped at 150 guests except for one event each year that can have up to 250.

The regulations don't signify much change. They essentially formalize operating conditions that the foundation had imposed on itself, Watson says.



Carving out his niche

THE man who built the collection was the son of Russian immigrants. Born in Minneapolis in 1912, he moved to California as a child. Weisman was involved in dozens of business ventures but made the bulk of his fortune as head of Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributors.

He began collecting art in the 1950s with his first wife, Marcia Simon Weisman, the sister of industrialist Norton Simon, also a major collector. While Simon focused on French Impressionism, European Old Masters and Southeast Asian art, the Weismans concentrated on modern and contemporary works, including Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. The couple divorced in 1981 and divided the collection. Some works displayed at Weisman's house are among those he retained in the settlement, but most are later acquisitions.

Shopping independently in the 1980s and early '90s, Weisman bought with great enthusiasm. Known for making quick decisions and snapping up the work of emerging artists as well as that of established figures, he indulged his taste for bright colors, bold statements, illusionistic tricks and cheeky humor. A sober Picasso painting of a mother and child hangs over the fireplace in the living room, but a Pop painting of a bare foot with painted toenails by Tom Wesselmann occupies a similar place in the music room. A portrait of Billie Weisman by Beau Bradford is reflected in a sort of hall of mirrors in the master bathroom.

"Fred liked uplifting art," she says. "He liked the bright side of things."

The collector bought the Holmby Hills house — a 1920s creation of architect Gordon B. Kaufmann — in 1982 and spent about 10 years filling it with art. Weisman attempted to establish a museum for his collection at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills in the mid-1980s. But he gave up on the plan after months of negotiations and decided to turn his home into a museum that would operate in perpetuity.

The furniture — much of it upholstered with Weisman's favorite flowered chintz — remains in place, surrounded by art. The modern annex, designed by architect Frank Israel and completed in 1992, provides a sharp contrast in a high-ceilinged, wide-open space. The relatively sparse installation offers portraits of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol and massive box-like sculptures by Donald Judd. In the center of the room, a life-size sculpture of a biker in a black leather jacket by Hanson stands near two motorcycles decorated by Keith Haring.

"Fred took risks in business and art," Billie Weisman says. "He lost a few, but he won a lot."
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Old Posted Feb 3, 2007, 9:08 AM
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Jeff Koons "Train" work in progress. An operational replica of 1943 Baldwin 2900 class steam locomotive in stainless steel and aluminum, and Liebherr LR 1750 lattice boom crane 160' x 140'-6" x 29'-2" (c) Jeff Koons.
(Los Angeles County Museum of Art)



MUSEUM

LACMA considers train sculpture

Museum studies possibility of a 161-foot Jeff Koons work that would hang from a crane.
By Diane Haithman
Times Staff Writer

February 3, 2007

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is studying the feasibility of erecting a huge sculpture by Jeff Koons that would dangle a 70-foot fabricated train from the top of a 161-foot-tall crane on its Wilshire Boulevard campus.

The yet-to-be-created work, which would be visible for miles, would turn its wheels, whistle and belch steam three times a day.

Director Michael Govan, in conversation with Koons at a Thursday evening museum event, said LACMA had received a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to explore placing the work, to be called "Train," on its grounds after the museum's current remodel is finished.

In an interview afterward, Govan said the grant, awarded in summer 2006, was for more than $1 million.

Should the project go forward, he noted, it would take years and wouldn't be ready at the opening of LACMA's $60-million Broad Contemporary Art Museum, tentatively scheduled for February 2008.

A museum spokeswoman said the sculpture would be paid for by LACMA fundraising.

Koons said that placing the artwork at the center of the LACMA campus would create a sort of "town square for L.A.," with the train essentially serving the purpose of a small-town clock tower. He envisions the train going through its "performance" at noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Govan said he hoped the piece would become a new icon for the city, much like the Hollywood sign: "I have a fantasy that when kids see it they will drag their parents to the museum — not just literally but that it inspires that kind of curiosity."

He said the train whistle would create "no more noise than traffic."

Govan and Koons spoke as part of the museum's "Director's Series" of talks about art.

Also scheduled are discussions with Robert Irwin on March 8, and Diana Thater on April 12. For more information, go to www.lacma.org.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Old Posted Feb 6, 2007, 9:46 AM
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The train crane will be seen from both the 10 freeway and downtown. It's going to be huge.
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Old Posted Feb 8, 2007, 8:37 AM
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GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS


Streisand, 3 others named to LACMA board
MySpace head Chris DeWolfe, journalist Willow Bay and investor Anthony N. Pritzker are also added to museum group
By Lynne Heffley
Times Staff Writer

7:01 PM PST, February 7, 2007

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has added four high-profile members to its board of trustees: actress and recording artist Barbra Streisand, MySpace Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe, journalist Willow Bay and investor Anthony N. Pritzker, the museum announced late today.Since 2000, 27 new trustees have joined the museum's board, bringing the total to 53. Other recent additions include author and producer Michael Crichton, philanthropist and technology entrepreneur David Bohnett and Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive of Yahoo Inc.

"This is a truly remarkable time to be part of LACMA. I am certain that our new trustees agree and will bring an added level of experience and engagement to the museum's transformation," board chairwoman Nancy Daly Riordan said in a statement.

Michael Govan, the museum's director, stated, "This new group of trustees will bring even more diversity of experience and community interests to the leadership of our continuing transformation of the museum."

Streisand, a supporter of humanitarian and environmental causes and a funder of the Clinton Climate Change Initiative, collected German Expressionist art by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Emil Nolde as a young art enthusiast, the museum said. More recently, she has acquired works by John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, William McGregor Paxton and others. Two pieces from her collection, Edward Hopper's "Summer in the City" and Thomas Hart's "Haying," were on long-term display in LACMA's American Art galleries.

Pritzker is a co-founder of the Pritzker Group. Since September 2004, he has served as chairman of AmSafe Partners. DeWolfe is the co-founder of MySpace.com, the social networking Web venue.

Bay, who collects photography, is a freelance anchor and reporter for MSNBC and NBC News. She was anchor for CNN's "Moneyline News Hour" and co-anchored ABC's "Good Morning America Sunday."

The new trustees join the board amid a major effort to expand and upgrade the museum's facilities. A new building, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, funded by trustee Eli Broad, is under construction, and plans call for extensive renovation of existing buildings.

lynne.heffley@latimes.com
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Old Posted Feb 8, 2007, 8:39 AM
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^ much much needed renovation since LACMA doesn't come off one bit as having a prestigious campus. It looks unkept and disorganized. I heard that they're getting rid of the Ahmanson as part of the exhibition space, and will become administrative.

I wonder how extensive will the renovation to the other wings be? Anyone have contacts into LACMA? Provide some insights? Much appreciated!
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2007, 10:01 AM
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MUSEUMS




Bowers' new space conquest
Chinese art from several millenniums and photographs by Ansel Adams inaugurate a wing at the Santa Ana museum.
By Scarlet Cheng
Special to The Times

February 16, 2007

Seven years ago, Anne Shih was visiting the Shanghai Museum, a stronghold of Chinese art and antiquities, when she tossed out a suggestion to Director Chen Xiejun: What about an exhibition loan to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, where Shih is a board member? All right, she remembers Chen saying, if you can build a new space to house the show, we'll arrange it.

Today, not only is that new space built — 30,000 square feet at a cost of $15 million — but "Treasures From Shanghai: 5000 Years of Chinese Art and Culture" highlights its opening Sunday, the first day of the Chinese new year. A photography exhibition, "Ansel Adams: Classic Images," inaugurates a second gallery in the new wing.

On Main Street in Santa Ana, the Dorothy and Donald Kennedy wing spans half a block in glass, metal accents and a cladding of troweled plaster painted to match the existing architecture. The city opened the original Spanish-style museum in 1936 to feature Orange County history. In 1992, the Bowers reopened after an extensive remodeling that greatly expanded the facility, and it broadened its mission to showing a wide variety of art and artifacts. Bowers President Peter C. Keller pushed for the latest expansion, both to gain more exhibition space and to improve existing facilities. To pay for it, the museum obtained $4 million in state funding, with most of the remainder coming from private sources, including $2 million from benefactors Dorothy and Donald Kennedy. The latter is First American Corp. chairman emeritus and chairman of the Bowers' board of governors.

As of Sunday, museum admission, except for students, seniors and children younger than 5, will become uniformly $17 on weekdays and $19 on weekends — eliminating a general admission fee of $5. The latter was only for viewing a few permanent collections anyway, says Keller. "We're trying to simplify matters," he adds.

The new wing was designed by Robert R. Coffee Architect + Associates of Newport Beach. "We wanted to use materials that were compatible and more or less carried forward what was done in the past," Coffee said during a walk-through of the space last week as workers were still adding display cases and other finishing touches. "There was an effort to give an updated image, that we're moving into a new century and the museum is making a great transition."

Changing entrance

Formerly, visitors entered the museum via a courtyard off a side street. Today, a steel and glass canopy announces the new entrance on Main Street, and several apertures signal the museum's contents to passersby. Art and artifacts can be glimpsed through the glass wall that flanks the long corridor leading from entry foyer to the new wing. Farther along, an outcropped display window exhibits an elaborately carved wooden sarcophagus from 19th century Indonesia.

At the end of the corridor is a central atrium — a lofty 6,000 square feet that can be used for exhibitions as well as dinners and presentations — and beyond that is an enclosed garden with wall-mounted fountains. Radiating off the atrium are two new galleries, which provide an additional 10,000 square feet of exhibition space, and an acoustically balanced auditorium with 300 seats. Mahogany floors — "from certified sustainable sources," Coffee said — were selected for their durability and warmth of tone in an otherwise crisp, minimalist interior.

Developing relationship

Chen Kelun, assistant director of the Shanghai Museum and curator of the Chinese exhibition, says his museum's relationship with the Bowers has been developing since 2000. Speaking by telephone recently from Shanghai, he mentioned an exchange program in which the Bowers sends Orange County high school students to visit the Shanghai Museum as part of their docent training.

Although the Shanghai Museum has often sent works to group shows — including the Guggenheim Museum's blockbuster "China: 5,000 Years" in 1998 — it has not had a solo show, so to speak, in the continental U.S. since the late '80s, when an exhibition titled "The Chinese Scholar's Studio" made several U.S. stops.

In 2002, the museum signed the agreement for the Bowers exhibition, in exchange for which the Santa Ana museum pays a fee. After the Shanghai show concludes, Chen Kelun will curate a permanent exhibition of Chinese art for the same space, but from the Bowers' own collection. (The Bowers also has an agreement with the British Museum to share expenses and income from shows from that London institution. "Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt," on view through Dec. 31, is part of that arrangement.)

The other new gallery will be used for rotating exhibitions. It launches with 75 Adams images that the noted photographer selected toward the end of his life and dubbed "The Museum Set." These are later prints of some of the dramatic landscapes that made him famous, including scenes from Yosemite and Sequoia national parks. In contrast to earlier prints, which had a softer look, "the more recent prints are less timid," Adams, who died in 1984, said. "I have sharply different vision now. The results are, perhaps, more dramatic." The collection is on loan from the Capital Group Foundation.

Chen Kelun said selecting the works for the Shanghai show wasn't difficult: "We got a brief from the Bowers — after all, they know what American audiences enjoy seeing — and then we went over the list together." The theme was art and culture in China over 5,000 years, "so we used these objects — bronze, ceramics, handicrafts, painting and calligraphy — to tell that story. Among Chinese museum collections, these are the areas we're quite strong in."

Shapes and eras

With the help of staff experts, he selected 77 sets of objects that represent historical eras as well as present a variety of shapes, patterns and sizes. "To have an art exhibition," he said, "we have to consider how the objects would display together."

Many prized and unusual objects were shipped, including Neolithic pottery and jade, bronze vessels from the Xia (18th to 16th century BC) to the early Han (206 BC to 8 AD) dynasties, ceramics from the Tang (618 to 907 AD) through the Ming (1368 to 1644 AD) dynasties, and a small sampling of paintings and calligraphy from the Ming and the Qing (1644 to 1911 AD) dynasties.

"The Bowers thought their audiences would be more interested in objects than in paintings and calligraphy," said Zhou Yanqun, a Shanghai Museum staff member in Santa Ana to install the show. To that end, two dozen exquisitely worked bronze pieces, dating back 2,000 to 4,000 years, are included. There is a complete set of bronze bells from the Early Spring and Autumn period (the 8th to the 7th century BC). They hang in descending order from a wooden beam and still produce pleasing tones, as Zhou Ya, the Shanghai Museum's curator of bronze, demonstrated. "Each bell was designed to play two notes," he said, striking one on two surfaces with his knuckles.

Elsewhere, a wine vessel dating from the same period is unusual for its prominent dragon-shaped handles. "This piece is extremely rare," said Chen Kelun. "It's quite large, so it's a wine server — wine would be put into it and ladled out." He adds that many of these ancient pieces are in such good condition because they were burial objects. The ancient Chinese believed in an afterlife, he said, "so they prepared for themselves the things they would need to have in the next world."

Kinds of appeal

Even works on paper were selected as much for their popular as for their art historical appeal. The two hanging calligraphy scrolls feature a free-flowing style one can admire for its energetic strokes without being able to read the characters.

A hand scroll depicting palace life in the Tang dynasty (but painted during the Ming) is unfurled to unveil an unusual but strangely familiar subject: Court ladies in diaphanous robes are shown swinging what look very much like golf clubs to get a little ball into a little hole in the ground. Apparently, Tang ladies had both the leisure and the freedom to indulge in the sporting life.

While discussing the dragon-handled wine vessels, Chen Kelun interjected a bit of contemporary history.

"Can I tell you an interesting little sidebar?" he asked. "There's a pair of these vessels — the other one is here at our museum. At the end of the 1960s, during the height of the Cultural Revolution, these objects were considered garbage from feudal times, so they were often sent to the scrap heap."

Fortunately, museum workers managed to salvage the body of the vessels, although they realized from the broken edges that the "ears" — the handles — were missing. Two years later, they found four dragon-shaped pieces from the same scrap heap. When they placed them onto the sides of the vessels, it was a perfect fit.

And what is the official opinion today of these objects from China's feudal past?

"Oh, now they're treasures!" Chen said with a small laugh.

*

'Treasures From Shanghai' and 'Ansel Adams: Classic Images'

Where: Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays; closed Mondays.

Ends: Aug. 19 for "Treasures From Shanghai"; May 13 for "Ansel Adams"

Price: $12 to $19; children younger than 5 free

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  #99  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2007, 1:06 PM
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...nes-california

As a twig is bent, so grows the art of bonsai
The ancient Eastern art of cultivating miniature plants is celebrated at the Huntington.
By Martha Groves
Times Staff Writer

February 25, 2007

The Bonsai-a-Thon at the Huntington had barely gotten underway Saturday morning, but Alex Marien had already dropped nearly $200 on pots and plants.

"It's an expensive hobby," said Marien, an engineer who lives in Upland and planned to spend the entire day in San Marino with his wife, Hedy, watching demonstrations by bonsai practitioners and browsing the bonsai bazaar, with its stacks of how-to books, hand-thrown pots and lethal-looking branch benders, shears and trunk splitters.

The Mariens were among more than 5,000 visitors who poured through the gates of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens on a dazzlingly sunny day to watch lion dancers and musicians noisily usher in the lunar Chinese new year and to marvel at pink and white blossoms that had burst from trees throughout the grounds, harbingers of an early spring.

Away from the clanging cymbals and banging drums, hundreds of the visitors made a beeline to the Huntington's Botanical Center to view displays of bonsai masterpiece trees and to watch local masters share their techniques. The event was part of a two-day fundraiser, continuing today, supporting the Golden State Bonsai Federation collection at the Huntington.

Bonsai (pronounced bone-sigh) is the ancient art of blending horticulture and imagination to create miniature plants that look like they would in nature. Through many years of painstaking pruning, bonsai artists train pines, junipers, hornbeams and other plants grown in pots to resemble old objects from forests and mountains.

"It takes on average five years to get [a] tree appropriate for a show," said Ted Matson of Pasadena, regarded as one of Southern California's finest practitioners. "It's the kind of art form where the breadth and depth of experience available to one is pretty limitless. Once you embark, you really do embark on a lifelong path of learning."

More than 1,500 years ago in China, early practitioners began collecting from mountainsides old trees with grotesquely twisted trunks and cultivating them in pots. The tradition came to be called penjing. A few hundred years later, the Japanese took up the practice, with creations that emphasized the harmony between people and nature. They called their form bonsai, and it is today far more influential than the Chinese style.

Bonsai has grown in popularity, with a diverse following that includes men and women, young and old, from all over the world. California has more than 5,000 practitioners in 72 clubs.

Juan Morales and Felipe Rodriguez, two bonsai enthusiasts from Tijuana, watched as Mel Ikeda, a former hair stylist, used familiar snipping techniques to shape three young junipers and wire their branches until they began to resemble a perfect miniature forest. He planned to add moss to give the new trees the aura of age.

"The bonsai is all about time," said Ikeda, who lives in Costa Mesa. "You see the tree, you see the man and you see the two come together."

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martha.groves@latimes.com
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  #100  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2007, 10:33 PM
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I went to this on saturday morning along with the chinese new year festival at the new Chinese garden. Both events were a lot of fun, though I was half asleep so I might have missed some of it

The new chinese garden is going to be great when its finished in 2008. The renderings of the upcoming teahouse pavillion that were shown look fantastic!

on a side note - the sheer diversity of people that these type of events attract is great! There were people from all over the greater L.A region in attendance and it was really cool to get a visual reminder of the city's multicultural population.
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