Monster Mash: Darren Criss fuels 'How to Succeed' box office

How to succeed on Broadway: Actor Darren Criss helped the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" bring in an impressive $1,386,065 at the box office for the most recent week. It was the "Glee" actor's first week in the Broadway show, having replaced Daniel Radcliffe. (Variety)

Domingo honored: Tenor Placido Domingo has been named one of the winners of Israel's prestigious Wolf Prize. He is the first vocal artist to ever win the award, which includes a $100,000 prize. (Associated Press)

Digging deep: A new multimillion-dollar project will study the seismic stability of 46 museums in Italy, and is scheduled to run until 2014. (The Art Newspaper)

Leadership role: Barbara Slilfka, a former fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar, has been elected to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's board of trustees. (Art Forum)

Monetary motives: Some recent Broadway revivals are being driven by heirs to musical estates. (New York Times)

Making music: ArtistsWorks offers musicians a new way to make money and enables students to carry on a regular dialogue with well-known instructors through Web video exchanges. (Los Angeles Times)

Rarities: A museum in Cambridge, Britain, is drawing record crowds thanks to a show dedicated to Vermeer. (Guardian)

Children will listen: Talks are underway to bring a revival of the musical "Into the Woods" to New York's Central Park this summer. (Playbill)

Ambitious: The world's first online contemporary-art fair, VIP Art Fair, is planning to expand this year. (Bloomberg)

Disturbing: A new opera on the issue of human trafficking is scheduled to debut this spring in Liverpool. (Guardian)

Passings: Miguel Terekhov, a dancer with the Ballets Russes, has died at age 83; violinist Israel Baker has died at 92.
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Also in the L.A. Times: The Blue Whale in downtown is turning over its Wednesdays to the L.A. Jazz Collective.

-- David Ng

Photo: Darren Criss and Beau Bridges at a curtain call for a recent performance of "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in New York. Credit: Stephen Lovekin / Getty Images

New L.A. art fair firms up galleries and VIP program

Nobody said it would be easy to launch another contemporary art fair in L.A., at a time when the economy is sluggish and the city’s leading galleries have already committed to a full calendar of art fairs nationally and internationally. But Adam Gross, the energetic director of Art Platform Los Angeles, reports that more than 70 galleries have signed up for his new fair to debut Oct. 1 to 3, with a few  more to be confirmed.

As reported previously, the fair will run during the opening weekend of “Pacific Standard Time,” a region-wide celebration of art in Southern California that now involves some 60 local museums. The fair will take place in the L.A. Mart, a building downtown owned by the fair’s parent company, Merchandise Mart Properties Inc.

Gross reports that many fair participants will, in a loose “Pacific Standard Time” spirit, focus on art made in California. Dwight Hackett from Santa Fe is featuring work by Jay DeFeo, a Bay Area-based artist famous for her Beat/assemblage aesthetic. New York gallerist Bruce Silverstein is bringing photographs taken by Aaron Siskind in California during his travels here. Santa Monica dealer Patrick Painter is planning an installation of the lyrical and mystical Dutch-born, L.A.-based artist Bas Jan Ader who, very much the Hart Crane of the art world, is believed to have died at sea.

As for the list of confirmed galleries, the largest concentration is local in origin. And some mainstays of the Armory Show in New York, another MMPI fair, are notably absent. But Gross says he is happy with the quality of the galleries, adding, "Our real vision is a three-year vision.”

He adds that the fair’s success can’t be judged by sales alone, noting that his mission is to help make the art scene here more "visible and accessible." Among other things, Art Platform is helping to develop the VIP program for “Pacific Standard Time.” VIP visitors can expect, Gross says, a mix of artist studio visits, museum tours and private collection tours, including “access to some of L.A.’s most important and impactful collections—and not just the Broads and Nathansons, the world-class collections everybody knows.”

“We are all working together,” he adds, “to give people a very good excuse to visit the city and experience one of the world's great art capitals.”

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--Jori Finkel

www.twitter.com/jorifinkel

Image: "California 5, 1975" by Aaron Siskind, one of the works that the Bruce Silverstein Gallery is bringing to Art Platform Los Angeles.

Bombing with yarn in Santa Monica on Saturday, by Arroyo Arts Collective

If you’ve ever thought, “Hey, that tree could use a sweater,” or “Wouldn’t that light pole look good with some hand-knit sparrows hanging from it?” then the art exhibition of your dreams awaits you this weekend.

One week after the textile mayhem of International Yarn Bombing Day, the L.A.-based Arroyo Arts Collective invites nimble-fingered knitting enthusiasts to check out “Yarn Bombing 18th Street,” an exhibition comprised of site-specific yarn-based installations and a gallery of hung work on the grounds of the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Saturday.

What is yarn bombing? For the uninitiated or the crocheting-impaired, yarn bombing combines the art of street installation with needlework, creating vibrant, unexpected graffiti infused with anything from Muppet humor to political messages in a venue shared by everyone. For an avid yarn bomber, adorning a park bench or a parking meter with some fuzzy tactile graffiti is just another day at the office.

For the Arroyo Arts Collective, founded in 1989 by writers and performers who live and work in northeast Los Angeles, the event has been in the planning stages since February. After the event, the knit graffiti installations will remain on public view until July 8.

In addition to yarn bombing the outside area around the Art Center, at 1639 18th St. in
Santa Monica, the event features a more conventional exhibition in the gallery, featuring mostly recycled knit and fiber materials. After all, these knitters may qualify as urban graffiti artists, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about the environment.

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International Yarn Bomb Day on Saturday

— Nate Jackson

Photo: A woman puts knitted yarn on a street pole during a 'yarn bombing' in Sydney last week. Photo credit: Tracey Nearmy.

Pulse aims to bring Miami magic to new L.A. art fair this September

A rotten economy is not enough to stop contemporary art fairs from expanding to L.A.

First, the Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. (MMPI), organizers of the New York Armory Show, announced plans for a new art fair in downtown L.A. at the end of September. Now, the powers-that-be behind Pulse in New York and Miami have scheduled their first L.A. art fair for the same time, Sept. 30 to Oct. 2.

Like the MMPI, Pulse is planning a midsized operation, with 60 to 70 gallery booths. Unlike the MMPI, which is using one of its own properties downtown (the L.A. Mart), Pulse has just secured an outdoor, tent-based venue: the L.A. Live "event deck," home to the ESPN X Games and assorted Hollywood after-parties.