L.A. photographer documents U.S. military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy

Why would you want to take a portrait of someone without showing his or her face? The essence of portrait photography, after all, is to capture the spirit of the subject and to reveal some crucial aspect of his or her identity.

But in the case of L.A. photographer Jeff Sheng's latest project, capturing his subjects' faces would almost certainly put their careers in jeopardy. That's because Sheng has set about to photograph U.S. military service personnel who are gay but closeted in their work lives. Titled "Dont' Ask, Don't Tell," the ongoing project consists of a series of stark, sometimes sad, portraits of U.S. soldiers who are forced to hide a part of who they are.

"I want to give an invisible community some visibility, but at the same time, to keep them invisible," said Sheng on the phone from Vancouver, where he is working on another project.

"There's already a lot of journalistic work on gay people in the military who have been discharged. My project is more about people who are still serving."

To conceal the identities of current military personnel, the photographer has used lighting and shadow effects to mask part or all of their faces. Sometimes, the subject will conceal his or her face with a hand, as in the photo above, titled "Jess, Bend, Oregon, 2009." (The names and towns of the titles are fictional for the protection of identity.) In certain cases, the entire subject is hidden in the shadows. The photographer sometimes meets them in a hotel near the base where they are serving.

Monster Mash: LACMA's red ink; Charlie Chaplin museum in Switzerland; Galileo's fingers

-- Financial trouble: LACMA loses 23% of its investments in the last fiscal year. One victim is Jeff Koons' dangling train project, which was scheduled to arrive at LACMA in 2011-12, and is now delayed for three more years. (Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg)

-- Little tramp: A long-planned museum dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, pictured, will be constructed at the site of the actor's former home in Switzerland. (Radio Suisse Romande)

-- Discovery: Two severed fingers and a tooth belonging to Galileo have been identified by a museum in Florence, Italy. (CNN)

-- Landing on their feet: Two actors from the recently closed Broadway revival of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" have landed roles in the upcoming revival of "A View from the Bridge." (New York Times)

-- Major project: A $208-million concert hall in Helsinki, Finland, is intended to improve on the existing Finlandia Hall, but it's already 50% over projected costs. (Bloomberg)

-- Winner: Jez Butterworth's "Jerusalem" was named best play at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards. (Playbill)

-- Operatic great: Swedish soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom has passed away at age 82. (Telegraph)

-- Moving up: "Enter Laughing," which has had two runs off-Broadway, is aiming for a Broadway engagement in the fall of 2010. (Variety)

-- And in the L.A. Times: The L.A. Philharmonic's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival begins; a look at the Broadway production of "Fela!"

-- David Ng

Photo:  Charlie Chaplin with Virginia Cherrill in a scene from "City Lights." Credit: Los Angeles Times

Art review: 'Kandinsky' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Just over a year ago, New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum completed a three-year restoration project for its great landmark building by Frank Lloyd Wright. Among much else, the beautifully done project put a grayish white skin on the original corkscrew building, visually separating it from the undistinguished annex added in the rear in 1992.

The renovation was done in time for the Guggenheim's 50th anniversary celebration -- and, happily, in time for the celebratory Vasily Kandinsky retrospective, on view now. Kandinsky (1866-1944) was among the small handful of authentic revolutionaries in Modern art. The big retrospective draws heavily on the incomparable Kandinsky collections at museums in Munich, Paris and New York, but the relationships between his achievements and Wright's remarkable building are one of the unique pleasures of seeing the show at the Guggenheim.

I'll have a full review of the Kandinsky retrospective in Sunday's paper.

-- Christopher Knight

Photo: Vasily Kandinsky, "Impression III (Concert)" 1911. Credit: Guggenheim Museum

LACMA loses 23% of its investments in meltdown year

No arts nonprofit is apt to show a rosy balance sheet for the year of the great economic meltdown, unless by rosy one means red ink.

In the case of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which recently posted on its website the audited financial statement for the 2008-09 fiscal year ending June 30, the bad news includes a 23% decline in the value of its cash and investment portfolio, from $254.7 million to $196 million.

Barbara Pflaumer, the museum's chief spokeswoman, said that by quickly reining in spending when the economy tanked, including a hiring freeze, canceling some exhibitions and postponing a $50-million segment of its ongoing expansion and renovation program, LACMA avoided "any major hiccups that kept us from operating on a normal basis" and managed to escape the large-scale layoffs that have hit many other big museums, including L.A.'s J. Paul Getty Trust and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

With L.A. County footing nearly a third of the bill, LACMA's expenses -- including such mandatory costs as depreciation and interest on its $385-million debt -- came to $74.1 million for the year, down a tick from $74.4 million in 2007-08.

Eight jobs were lost, however -- six by layoffs, and two via retirement vacancies that won't be filled  -- leaving a LACMA staff of about 350. An additional 16 openings won't be filled until finances improve.

Of greatest concern, LACMA saw donations shrink from $129.7 million to $29 million. This is while the museum is trying to reel in major gifts to fund the $450-million campus "transformation" campaign that's in the second of three planned phases, with about $134 million still to go.

On the positive side, LACMA was able to acquire new art valued at $42.8 million via purchases and donations, down slightly from $45.7 million the previous year. And attendance grew to 853,000 from 825,000, Pflaumer said. Maybe $12 general admission for a day looking at art -- and free for those 17 and under -- has its appeal in a rotten economy.

Click here for the full story.

-- Mike Boehm

Monster Mash: Shroud of Turin controversy; Green Day revisits hit single; new curator at Whitney

-- Real or fake?: A researcher claims to have discovered text that authenticates the Shroud of Turin. (Forbes)

-- Back in the studio: The rock band Green Day is recording a new version of its hit song "21 Guns" with the cast of the stage musical "American Idiot." (Playbill)

-- New job: Scott Rothkopf will leave his position as senior editor of Artforum to become a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. (New York Times)

-- Tooting his horn: Composer Edward Elgar ("Pomp and Circumstance") was apparently a terrible trombone player. (The Independent)

-- High-tech: Two instruments that were aboard the Hubble Space Telescope go on display at the National Air and Space Museum and are scheduled to tour California. (BBC News)

-- Antitrust: Ambassador Theatre Group’s purchase of Live Nation’s UK theaters is being investigated by Britain's Office of Fair Trading. (The Stage News)

-- For the kids: Oxford will be getting a new children's museum dedicated to the art of storytelling. (The Guardian)

-- Art in motion: New York's Metrocard becomes art, sort of. (New York Times)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Times music critic Mark Swed reviews Philip Glass's latest opera; theater critic Charles McNulty reviews "Equivocation" at the Geffen Playhouse.

-- David Ng

Photo: an image of the Shroud of Turin. Credit: Ellen Jaskol / For The Times

Digital map reveals Israeli archaeology

A searchable map detailing 40 years of Israeli archaeological work in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, developed for the USC Digital Library, has won the 2009 Open Archaeology Prize from the American Schools of Oriental Research.

A nonprofit organization founded in 1900 and located at Boston University, the American Schools of Oriental Research support the study and public understanding of peoples and cultures of the Near East. The prize, to be presented today at a professional meeting in New Orleans, recognizes “the best open-access, open-licensed, digital contribution to Near Eastern archaeology by an ASOR member.”

Project leaders Lynn Swartz Dodd of USC and Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University are expected to accept the award on behalf of an international team composed of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians.

Artist Jeanne-Claude, co-creator of 'The Gates,' dies at 74

The artist known as Jeanne-Claude, who along with her husband Christo made wrapping famous structures their artistic calling card, died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, according to reports. She was 74.

Recognizable by her orange-dyed hair, Jeanne-Claude was a fixture of the international art scene and was a highly visible New York personality. Along with Christo, she created "The Gates," a 2005 public art project consisting of 7,503 orange rectangular structures draped with fabric and erected throughout Central Park.

Jeanne-Claude, who was born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon to a French family in Casablanca, met Christo in 1958 and soon started collaborating on art projects. Their signature style involved wrapping public structures in fabric. In 1964, they moved to New York, where they have been based ever since.

Among the outdoor structures and buildings they wrapped were the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Pont Neuf in Paris; and the Reichstag in Berlin.

One of their most recent projects was "Over the River," which involved fabric panels suspended horizontally above the Arkansas River.

The couple have a son, Cyril, who was born in 1960. 

When asked in a 2002 interview what her favorite among her creations is, Jeanne-Claude replied: "We always say that each one of our projects is a child of ours, and a father and mother who have many children will never tell you which one is their favorite. If people insist that we have to have a favorite one, then we say, 'Okay, you are right, we do have a favorite one and it’s always the next one.'"

-- David Ng

Photo: Christo and Jeanne-Claude answer questions at a LACMA event last year. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Monster Mash: Metropolitan Museum of Art in the red; Shubert's Broadway deal; Thom Mayne's Dallas museum

-- Red ink: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has reported an $8.4-million deficit for the fiscal year that ended in June. (CultureGrrl)

-- Broadway deal: The Shubert Organization has entered into an unusual, three-year deal with producers Robert Cole and Frederick Zollo, which guarantees Cole-Zollo projects one of the Shuberts' 17 Broadway theaters. (Variety)

-- This old house: Britain's National Theatre is planning an $83-million renovation of its London home. (The Stage)

-- Massive project: Groundbreaking has occurred in Dallas on the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, designed by architect Thom Mayne. (Dallas Observer)

-- Financial trouble: The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is trying to cut its current deficit of $2.8 million, the highest ever in its history. (Indianapolis Star)

-- In the works: A proposed museum honoring the Negro Baseball League in Baltimore would cost about $4.1 million. (Baltimore Sun)

-- Winner: New York landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh has been selected to redesign the northeast corner of Grant Park in Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)

-- Controversial: A dance artist in Britain plans to induce an epileptic seizure on stage. (BBC News)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne examines the designs for the proposed Bush presidential library; Santa Monica vies for Eli Broad's contemporary art museum.

-- David Ng

Photo: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Credit: Daniel Acker / Bloomberg

Shaquille O’Neal, art curator?

Basketball great Shaquille O'Neal could never be accused of sticking to one thing. The 7-foot-1-inch athlete has dabbled in acting (remember "Kazaam"?), recorded a handful of rap albums and earned a master's in business administration.

Now, O'Neal is branching out yet again by taking on the art world. The Cleveland Cavaliers athlete is curating a gallery show in New York that is appropriately titled "Size DOES Matter," which explores the idea of scale in contemporary art, according to a Bloomberg report.

The show is scheduled to open in February at New York’s Flag Art Foundation, an exhibition space in the Chelsea neighborhood.

“It was a little harder than I thought it would be," O'Neal told Bloomberg. "When you think about what each of the artists put into their work, what they are expressing and want to share with the world, you feel bad about having to narrow it down.” 

"Size DOES Matter" will feature 52 works by 39 artists, including five special commissions. One of the featured pieces will be the large-scale sculpture "Big Man" by Ron Mueck, pictured above. The show will also feature work by Jeff Koons, Chuck Close and Tim Hawkinson.

Monster Mash: Kander-Ebb musical to debut off-Broadway; Andrew Lloyd Webber in hospital; UC Berkeley scraps museum plan

-- Eagerly awaited: "The Scottsboro Boys," a new musical from John Kander and Fred Ebb, will begin performances February at off-Broadway's Vineyard Theater. (Variety) 

-- Scrapped: UC Berkeley has abandoned its plan to construct a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in downtown due to a shortage of funds. (San Francisco Chronicle)

-- Speculation: Did David Mamet hurt business for his "Oleanna" on Broadway by refusing to participate in post-show audience talk-backs? (New York Post)

-- Health scare: Andrew Lloyd Webber is back in the hospital because of an infection after his surgery for prostate cancer. (Playbill)

-- Iconic art: The Dia Art Foundation considers documenting Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" as part of a conservation effort. (New York Times)

-- Well-endowed: The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center has received a large donation that is believed to be as much as $25 million. (St. Petersburg Times)

-- Photo finish: The Tate in Britain has selected Simon Baker as its first photography curator. (The British Journal of Photography)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne discusses possible sites for Eli Broad's planned museum; Hollywood's composers and lyricists seek to join the Teamsters; architects in the U.S. received more contracts in October.

-- David Ng

Photo: Fred Ebb, left, with writing partner John Kander. Credit: V. Richard Haro / For The Times