L.A. Opera's summer camp: Putting on a show

This month, 50 children ages 9 through 17 have been learning a complete opera and will perform it four times this weekend at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre. The budding performers are preparing "Brundibar" at L.A. Opera's two-week Opera Camp. This summer marks the return of the camp after a two-year hiatus due to funding issues.

The students also are learning that the 35-minute "Brundibar" was performed 55 times by many of the youths at the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin, Czechoslovakia, –- before most were transported to their deaths. The camp interned 15,000 children from 1941 to 1945; only 100 survived, according to most estimates. 

"A Czech Jew named Hans Krasa wrote the opera that was smuggled into the camp Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt," said Samuel Bindschadler, 12, of Venice, an avid opera fan. "The Nazis made it look like a nice place. They painted the place and planted flowers."

Read the full story on L.A. Opera's Opera Camp

In reality, Terezin was a "transit camp" for Jews, dissidents and others thought to be "undesirable" -- a holding area en route to Auschwitz and other death camps. In accommodating musicians and artists, Terezin was intended to create the impression that the internees were well-treated.

Gregorio Luke to talk about controversial murals

The 12th annual "Mural Under the Stars," narrated by Mexican art expert Gregorio Luke, gets underway Sunday at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach.

This year's series features artists David Alfaro Siqueiros (on July 31), Diego Rivera (Aug. 7) and Jose Clemente Orozco (Aug. 14). The trio are regarded as the founders of the modern school of Mexican mural painting, all having created frescoes on structures and buildings throughout the world and California.

Siqueiros, the most controversial of the muralists, was a member of the Mexican Communist Party, and his art was reflective of a Marxist political ideology. In 1940, he participated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky.  After his expulsion from Mexico, he spent a brief time in California in 1932. This is when he painted his large-scale "Tropical America" on the exterior of Italian Hall on Olvera Street, which will be reopened to the public in 2012. The mural depicts an Indian peon, representing oppression by U.S. imperialism, crucified on a cross capped by an American eagle.

For the series, images of 10 to 15 murals are flashed on an 1,800-square-foot white wall in the museum's parking lot as Luke narrates, providing historical context and biographical background. The former director of the museum got the idea for "Murals Under the Stars" when working in Washington.  A planned Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at Corcoran Galley was canceled because the content was thought to be obscene. Protesters projected the censored images on the side wall of the museum at night.

"This season, we are able to add a new interactive visual component of the lecture," Luke said. "We can zoom in and enlarge important details of the mural. In the Diego Rivera show, I talk about his Rockefeller Center mural, which was destroyed because it contained a portrait of Vladimir Lenin; I can now zero in on that part." 

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Murals Under the Stars, 7 p.m., Museum of Latin American Art, 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach, 562-437-1689, www.molaa.org. Tickets: $20 general seating, $30 priority, $10 students and seniors.

Upper image: Diego Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads." Credit: Museum of Latin American Art

Lower image: David Alfaro Siqueiros' "America Tropical." Credit: Museum of Latin American Art

L.A. County arts education program wins national award

As the governor of Kansas eliminates his state's government arts agency, America’s top arts-support organization has tapped a government arts initiative by Los Angeles County for its annual award for excellence in arts education.

Arts for All, a project of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, is due to receive a plaque Thursday from Americans for the Arts at the national group's annual convention in San Diego. Launched in 2002, Arts for All has served as a kind of think tank and limited grant maker, whose mission is to help the county’s school districts devise and implement coherent plans for teaching the arts to public school students.

 “Particularly at a time when school districts face dire fiscal circumstances, Arts for All’s steady commitment has kept arts education at the forefront of school and community leaders’ consciousness,” said Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts.

Art history doctoral candidates favor 20th century art

So what are America's doctors researching?
No, not the research scientists — the newly minted Ph.D.'s in art history. What kinds of art, past and present and from around the globe, are of pressing interest?

The answer is: mostly Modern art, mostly from North America and Europe. The 21st century is scrutinizing the century that preceded it.

According to lists compiled by the College Art Association, a venerable professional group whose membership includes the vast majority of American academics in the field, the most-studied area for doctoral candidates in the U.S. and Canada last year — by a long shot — was art made in roughly the last 100 years. Paul Klee, Eduardo Paolozzi and Kazimir Malevich were among the subjects of 67 doctoral dissertations in the category.

The 29 categories listed by CAA range alphabetically from "African (Sub-Saharan)" to "World Art," a cross-cultural, transnational discipline. Twentieth century painting, sculpture, design and other art had 50% more doctoral dissertations accepted in 2010 than the next most popular field.

In 2002, the earliest listing on the CAA's publication review website, the most popular field for study was Europe's Renaissance and Baroque era, from the 15th through the 17th centuries (34 dissertations).

Charles Desmarais, former Laguna Art Museum director, will lead San Francisco Art Institute

This post has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details.

Charles Desmarais, the Laguna Art Museum director from 1988 to 1994 until his sudden firing by a museum board that gave no public reason for its action, will be the next president of the San Francisco Art Institute, a 140-year-old university-level school that trains artists, art historians and museum professionals.

Since 2005, Desmarais has been deputy director for art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City; after Laguna, he was director of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center from 1995 to 2004, heading a campaign to fund and build a new $20-million facility that opened in 2003 and was the first American project by the British architect Zaha Hadid. The following year, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, the top career award for architects.

The San Francisco Art Institute's board chairwoman, Diane Frankel, said in Thursday's news release announcing Desmarais hiring that he was chosen for his "significant management, financial, and fundraising skills," and for having "played a major role in American and international art through the institutions he has led and through his writing and curatorial work.”

He succeeds Chris Bratton, a video artist, who resigned a year ago after six years in the post to become deputy director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in charge of its own university-level art school.

Federal arts grants include $2.5 million for Southern California groups

Southern California arts organizations and arts educators will get $2.5 million from the latest round of federal grantmaking announced Tuesday by the National Endowment for the Arts.

California’s state arts agency, the California Arts Council, will get $1.1 million. But unlike the other grants announced, which are reviewed by panels of experts and decided on a competitive basis, state arts agencies get their money just for showing up –- as long as they can match the NEA grant with an allocation from state revenue.

The NEA’s match may well be the only reason California legislators and governors budget any tax-generated money at all for the arts; since mid-2003, on a per-capita basis, they’ve allowed the California Arts Council to remain securely in last place among state arts-grantmaking agencies, allocating just the minimum needed to gain the NEA match.  For most of its $5.3-million budget, the arts council depends on voluntary support from motorists willing to pay extra for special license plates whose purchase or renewal benefits the agency.

The NEA announced $88.7 million in grants altogether, with $52.4 million going to state and regional arts agencies to redistribute via their own grants, and the rest awarded competitively, including $24.9 million in "artistic excellence" awards supporting arts programming, $7.4 million for arts education and $4 million for arts broadcasting.

The totals reflect the beginnings of belt-tightening at the NEA, in keeping with last month's deficit reduction package from Congress and the Obama administration, which compels the agency to absorb a $12.5-million budget cut by Sept. 30. The artistic excellence awards for 2010-11 are down $2.6 million from last year, and the education grants reflect a $1-million reduction.

White House report aims to boost arts education while LAUSD's programs face ax

Hoping to reverse steep declines in arts education in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities has issued a report aimed at giving arts-education advocates better ammunition as they try to persuade school boards, legislators and philanthropists to stop treating the arts as a frill or an afterthought.

“Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools” offers model arts education programs that local districts can copy, and cites studies that indicate arts education helps students do better in other subjects. For the full story, click here.

The report is already being referenced in Los Angeles, where the teachers’ union has begun an arts-specific component of its bid to stem drastic across-the-board cuts. Anticipating a $408-million drop in state funding, the Los Angeles Board of Education has adopted what one member called a "doomsday budget."

The picture could brighten if the state budget's $15-billion deficit isn't eliminated solely with spending cuts -- Gov. Jerry Brown's plan calls for erasing it with a combination of cuts and a tax increase.

According to United Teachers Los Angeles,  the adopted district budget calls for slashing the arts instruction staff from 1,065 to 722 full- and part-time positions, a 32% reduction.  Elementary school students would bear the brunt, losing almost 60% of their arts instructors -- from 210 to 91. Secondary school arts staffing would drop 26%.

Record executive Mo Ostin gives $10 million to UCLA for new music center

Mo Ostin, a record executive and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who sent the likes of Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young and Paul Simon into the recording studio, now will send students at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture into a studio that bears his name.

The university is announcing Wednesday that Ostin has given $10 million for a new two-building facility called the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center, which will include a state-of-the-art recording studio in one building and offices, classrooms, a rehearsal room, a café and a place for students to meet and relax in the other.

“This is a very big step for us,” said Christopher Waterman, the arts school dean, who characterized the current on-campus recording facilities as “small, informal and frankly not very good.”

The gift from Ostin, who as Morris Meyer Ostrofsky earned a 1951 economics diploma from UCLA, will cover half the $20-million cost of the project, with the rest to be raised from other donors.

CalArts robots are ready to jam

Meet “Maha-Devi Bot,” a two-headed, 12-armed performing “percussion robot” adorned with Himalayan bells, an Indian tambourine and circuit board strips, among other things. She hangs from the ceiling, suspended in midair, like a hovering, long-legged spider

“Maha,” as we’ll call her here, is not a solo artist by any stretch. She performs onstage with eight other robots, programmed for improvisation to jam with humans. There’s “Tammy,” a tall, regal-looking vertical marimba-robot with a steel Cyclops eye for a head; and “String Thing,” who’s made of skateboard wheels, steel rods and inspired by a slide guitar. He tends to sound a little panicky and nervous at times.

The cutting edge, futuristic endeavor — called KarmetiK Machine Orchestra (after karma and kinetic) — was created by Ajay Kapur and Michael Darling, both instructors at California Institute of the Arts. It combines elements of artificial intelligence/robotics, electronic music and theater. And the robots -- which were designed and built by students who play with them on customized computerized interfaces -- are ready to jam.

On May 12, the orchestra will perform a mix of world fusion, modern electronic, experimental, groove-oriented beats and Indian classical music during an immersive audio-visual installation concert.  

“It’s about new ways of making noise,” Darling says. “There’s things you can do with them that humans can’t do.” 

The upcoming performance will be fully interactive, complete with miniature ‘bots flying through the air and brightly colored, sound-activated animation dancing overhead. It’s sure to be a sonic and visual treat – in a “Frankenstein goes to his first rave” kind of way.

Read our full  Arts & Book story here.

--Deborah Vankin

Twitter.com/@debvankin

 

Photo: The CalArts Robot Orchestra is the creation of Michael Darling, right, and Ajay Kapur and will be performing in May. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

L.A. arts philanthropist Austin Beutner takes first step toward a run for mayor

Austin Beutner, who announced Thursday that he has filed papers to begin raising money for a possible run to succeed Antonio Villaraigosa two years from now as the mayor of Los Angeles, can't match the $18.1 billion net worth of New York City's famously arts-loving mayor, Michael Bloomberg (the estimate comes from Forbes magazine, which ranks Bloomberg as the world's 30th-richest inhabitant, and the 13th-richest American).

But if he were to run and win the March 2013 election, Beutner, 51, a former investment banker who now serves as first deputy mayor and economic policy chief under Villaraigosa, would bring substantial arts connections and arts-philanthropy credentials to the table. He chairs the boards of the Broad Stage in Santa Monica and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

At CalArts in 2009, Beutner and his wife, Virginia,  established a $1-million scholarship fund that picks five students annually to receive a full ride of up to $50,000 during their graduating year. The idea is to help the recipients begin their professional careers less saddled with college-loan debt.

The program is intended to last for four years. Last month, CalArts announced that the Beutners had found it impossible to winnow the field of finalists for the scholarships' second year to just the five scheduled recipients, so they awarded eight scholarships instead.

The Beutners donated an additional $400,000 to provide scholarships for Los Angeles-area high school students to attend CalArts, and they are the primary sponsors of the annual International Children's Film Festival at the CalArts-affiliated REDCAT.

Also being watched to see if he'll jump into the mayoral race is Zev Yaroslavsky, who has been a consistent advocate for the arts and government arts funding from his seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. In one memorable instance, Yaroslavsky came close to using his clout in the pugilistic rather than the political sense when trying to quiet a heckler who started haranguing Los Angeles Opera's music director, James Conlon, during a Conlon lecture on Richard Wagner at the Museum of Tolerance.

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Photo: Austin Beutner. Credit: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times