Artist who created TV 'Bonanza' map dies at 98

Artist Robert Temple Ayres died Feb. 25 at his Riverside County home at the age of 98, but not before making one last pilgrimage to the Ponderosa two days before his heart finally gave out.

In his career as an artist for MGM, Paramount and the Walt Disney Co., Ayres created his most famous work, officially called “Map to Illustrate the Ponderosa in Nevada.” It was created in 1959 so it could burn up weekly on television screens for the ensuing 13-plus years.

While the immortal “Bonanza” theme music played at the start of each episode, Ayres’ map appeared, then dissolved in flames, revealing the Ponderosa ranch’s inhabitants on horseback –- the Cartwright clan played by Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker and Pernell Roberts.

The map had hung for decades in the home of “Bonanza” creator and producer David Dortort before his family donated it to the Autry National Center of the American West after his death in 2010. When the Autry Center announced last June that the Ponderosa map had gone on permanent display, The Times contacted Ayres to get his thoughts on his TV icon that was now a museum piece.

Many Southland museums are open on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Celebrations for Martin Luther King Jr. Day began locally on Sunday with a parade, music, poetry and a talk at the Autry National Center that featured two Buffalo Soldiers, all detailed here. Many cultural institutions around Southern California are open for the holiday.

Here is a list of some of those organizations, with information on hours and admission.

Museum of Tolerance: The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is hosting holiday activities for both children and adults. At 1 p.m. there will be a screening of the documentary "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement." At 4 p.m., there will be a family art activity. General admission is $15.50.

Autry National Center: The museum is usually closed on Mondays, but will be open for the holiday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. General admission is $15.

California African American Museum: The museum's doors remain open Monday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free; parking is $10.

Getty Villa: The museum, located near Malibu, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. As always, admission is free but timed tickets for entry are required. Parking costs $15 per car. (The Getty Center in Brentwood is closed as usual on Mondays.)

PST, A to Z: ‘Art Along the Hyphen’ at the Autry

Pacific Standard Time will explore the origins of the Los Angeles art world through museum exhibitions throughout Southern California over the next six months. Times art reviewer Sharon Mizota has set the goal of seeing all of them. This is her latest report.

Chicano art has been defined as a mix of murals, posters, and graffiti that accompanied the rise of the corresponding political movements of the 1970s. At least that’s the stereotype lambasted by conceptual art collective Asco in their cheeky performances. But while Asco forecasted the future of Chicano art, the Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the Autry, “Art Along the Hyphen: The Mexican-American Generation,” looks at the work of six artists who were “Chicano” not only before it was cool, but before it existed.

Eduardo Carillo, Roberto Chavez, Dora de Larios, Domingo Ulloa, Alberto Valdés and Hernando G. Villa were part of a generation of Mexican American artists educated or working in Los Angeles during the post-WWII era. It is one of the failures (or perhaps just the slowness) of multiculturalism that most people haven’t heard of them. Perhaps because they worked in more traditional modes — painting, drawing, and sculpture — they were not taken up by the Chicano movement, even though they often dealt with similar themes of racism and cultural hybridity.

Still, even in their own time, they knew they were “uncool.” A poster for a 1964 exhibition at Ceeje Gallery, a space dedicated to then-unfashionable figurative art (and one of the few spots on La Cienega’s gallery row committed to the work of ethnic minorities and women), reads: “6 Painters of the Rear Guard.” And indeed, many of the works in the show seem to invoke the early 20th century more than the turbulent decades of the post-war era. The paintings of Villa in particular, who died in 1952 at age 71, hark back to the pastoral traditions of the late 19th century, depicting a mix of “Spanish” street scenes, dancing girls and stoic Native Americans. This is the stuff of kitsch and cliché nowadays, but Villa’s work does shed some light on the limited options available to an ambitious painter whom the press described as of “Spanish heritage.”

Southwest Museum supporters sue city, fearing site's extinction

Years of wrangling over whether the Autry National Center has a right to shed a costly and inconvenient subsidiary, the Southwest Museum, has spilled, perhaps inevitably, into the courts.

Southwest backers are asking a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to overturn two recent decisions  by Los Angeles city officials allowing the Autry to undertake what it has characterized as a routine gallery renovation at its Griffith Park museum. Opponents say the remodeling would be the first step in an irreversible sequence that would end the Southwest’s nearly hundred-year run in Mount Washington as the home of a prized collection of Native American artifacts.

The Southwest backers say it’s vital to the neighborhood’s economic and cultural life that the museum be resurrected. Under the Autry, which took over the financially beleaguered Southwest Museum in a 2002 merger, public access to the museum narrowed to a trickle before it was closed entirely in January 2010.

Autry's 'Bonanza': TV show's opening image on display [VIDEO]

[Updated: 3:40 p.m. June 21]

  From the Autry National Center of the American West comes news that it has acquired and hung what we at Culture Monster are willing to bet is the most likely artwork this side of the Louvre to inspire humming.

The artist is Robert Temple Ayres, whom you probably don’t know.

The title, “Map to Illustrate the Ponderosa in Nevada,” may not ring any immediate bells.

But if you were among the millions of Americans whose Sunday nights throughout the 1960s and early 1970s included a mandatory hour with “Bonanza” and the Cartwright clan — well, we can almost hear you humming the theme song’s immortal clopping-hooves cadence right now.

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, Ba-bah-BAAH! Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, Ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-Bah.

The map appeared at the start of each episode, while the theme music played, then burned away to reveal Lorne Greene, as paterfamilias Ben Cartwright, riding the range on the Ponderosa Ranch with sons Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker) and Little Joe (Michael Landon).

Autry museum gallery renovations face hurdle: A City Council review

Charles Dickens had "A Tale of Two Cities," and Los Angeles has "A Tale of Two Museum Buildings" -- the Autry Museum of the American West in Griffith Park, and its sister site (some would say its stepchild), the historic, nearly 100-year-old Southwest Museum in Mount Washington (pictured).

The Autry National Center, which runs them both, acquired the Southwest and its prized collection of Native American artworks and artifacts in a 2002 merger. While the Autry sees the future unfolding at its Griffith Park headquarters, advocates of the Southwest, which is closed indefinitely, don't want it shunted aside.

A Los Angeles City Council decision on Tuesday raises the question once more of whether it's OK for the Autry to pursue renovation plans in Griffith Park that would carve out permanent exhibition space for some of the Native American artifacts while leaving the Southwest Museum in limbo.

In an unusual move, the council invoked its authority to review a May 20 decision by the Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners that would have let the renovations go forward.

Meanwhile, Autry president Daniel Finley says that in addition to trying to find a nonprofit partner to become a tenant at the Southwest Museum, as it has done since last year, the Autry is now willing to donate the building outright to another organization. The collection, however, would stay with the Autry and be shown in Griffith Park. The proposed gallery renovations, costing an estimated $8 million, would permit about 700 Native American works to be displayed.

For the full story, click here.

Related

Autry Museum's new sheriff has big plans

Autry to remodel, creating Native American galleries in Griffith Park and annex in Burbank

Autry National Center withdraws expansion plan

-- Mike Boehm

Photo: Southwest Museum. Credit: Kirk McCoy/Los Angeles Times

 

SoCal nature, science and history museums reap $30 million in state bond money

Southern California museums this week received a $30-million blast from the past –- those long-gone though not so distant pre-recession days of 2006, when Golden State voters thought their now-pauperized state was still golden enough to afford a $5.4-billion bond issue.

The Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006, which appeared on that November's ballot as Proposition 84, included $93 million for a Nature Education Facilities Program, and the Department of Parks and Recreation announced this week who’ll get the money. Nonprofit organizations and municipalities were eligible; parks department spokesman Roy Stearns said that 44 of the 370 applicants were successful. In all, more than $41 million was awarded for projects in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The winners include:

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which will get $7 million for the North Campus Learning Gardens and Nature Lab that’s part of its overall renovation project. The 150,000 square-foot area will harbor gardens, a bridge, pond and stream, a 500-seat outdoor amphitheater and, perhaps best of all for the average elementary-school-age museum-goer (although perhaps not for his or her parents), a “Get Dirty Zone.”

Also receiving $7 million each are the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, toward construction of a 21,000 square-foot wing for exhibits on air quality, solar energy, California natural resources and sustainable design, and the San Diego Natural History Museum, to renovate and install an 8,000-square-foot gallery tracing the path of the San Diego River through mountain, desert and coastal habitats.

The Autry National Center of the American West gets $6.6 million for renovations that will carve out a Native American section on the first floor of the museum in Griffith Park. The project includes two galleries labeled “First Californians” and “Dreamers, Doctors, Basketweavers,” and an outdoor teaching garden with native plants.

Carpinteria State Beach will get $3 million for parkwide environmental education facilities; the Ocean Institute in Dana Point will receive $2.3 million for a floating (but fixed) teaching platform, renovations for its lobby and courtyard, and new exhibits; and California Science Center in Exposition Park will get $1 million for seven interactive exhibits in its Ecosystems galleries.

L.A. County’s parks department will get $1 million for indoor and outdoor exhibits at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center; the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants in Sun Valley will get $930,000 for gardens, an amphitheater and trailside exhibits and signage; $780,000 goes to the City of Riverside for a nature center in Sycamore Canyon; $714,000 to the City of Torrance for a viewing platform and nature and cultural exhibits at the Madrona Marsh Preserve; $648,000 for Ventura County for marine education exhibits in Oxnard; and the Orange County Coastkeeper environmental group will get $597,000 for a native plant botanical garden at Santiago Canyon College in Orange.

The City of San Juan Capistrano will get $498,000 to restore the Blas Aguilar Adobe historic site and add interpretive information on Native American culture; the City of Whittier gets $500,000 for a garden and exhibits on the Greenway Trail; Heal the Bay gets $440,000 for a new exhibit at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium; and $337,000 goes to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History for exhibits on local marine life.

RELATED:

Natural History Museum to build $13-million whale of an entrance

Autry to remodel, creating Native American galleries in Griffith Park

Exploring the world's ecosystems in the California Science Center's new wing

-- Mike Boehm

Photo: Artist's rendition of new north campus at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Credit: Natural History Museum and CO Architects.

Theater review: 'The Frybread Queen' at the Autry National Center

In "The Frybread Queen," playwright Carolyn Dunn sifts the conflicts between tradition and modernity in the post-millennial Native American landscape into an ambitious yet over-stuffed saga of three generations of women and the beloved dead man who haunts them all.

Using the titular tribal foodstuff as all-purpose metaphor, Dunn frames both acts with a recipe monologue for each character, easily the play's best writing. The prologue introduces Jessie Burns (Jane Lind), a deceptively chipper Navajo matriarch preparing for the impending funeral of Paul, her firstborn, whose recent suicide raises the heat on a rapid-burning narrative oven.

Cue the daughters-in-law. Quiet-spoken Carlisle (Shyla Marlin), wife of Jessie's second son, arrives from Los Angeles, armed with self-rising flour, modern Indian attitudes and a tacit agenda. She plans it in tandem with foul-mouthed Annalee (Kimberly Norris Guerrero), Paul's ex-wife, whose portable oxygen tank portends the soap-edged fireworks ahead.

Enter disaffected Lily (Elizabeth Frances), Paul's teen daughter, the focus of Carlisle and Annalee's gambit, and revelations fold upon reversals. 

Dunn is a writer of talent and imagination, gifted at exposition and the telling detail, but her plot grows so over-seasoned -- spousal abuse, incest and spectral possession are but three complications -- that it cannot really breathe, and the explosively abrupt ending sorely needs an epilogue.

That said, each player has her tickling and/or arresting moment. Director Robert Caisley's staging certainly holds attention, as smoothly presented and flavorful as anything the Autry National Center's  Native Voices series has yet housed. It suggests what "Frybread" might yet become with remixed ingredients.

-- David C. Nichols

"The Frybread Queen," Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry National Center, 4700 Western Heritage Way, L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 27. $20 (323) 667-2000 ext. 354. or www.NativeVoicesattheAutry.org. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Photo: Elizabeth Frances, left, and Jane Lind. Credit: Tony Dontscheff.

The Spotlight: Food and family secrets in 'The Frybread Queen' at the Autry National Center

Ghosts. Secrets. Self-rising flour. Native American tradition clashes with modern life — in and out of the kitchen — in Carolyn Dunn’s new play, “The Frybread Queen,” opening Saturday at the Autry National Center as a production of Native Voices at the Autry.

Dunn (Muskogee Creek, Cherokee), a playwright, poet and San Francisco State University professor, talks about putting food and family on stage. 

What is fry bread?

It’s basically the pizza of Native Americans.  The modern version comes out of powwow culture: You’ll see Indian taco booths, or Navajo tacos — they think they invented everything! It’s a staple. You serve it with beans, meat and cheese as a meal, or sprinkle it with powdered sugar. 

But there’s a history: Much of the government food commodities given to Natives were substandard. The flour often had bugs in it — my husband remembers his mother picking out weevils with her fingernails. So women took to making fry bread. It killed the germs. Fry bread originally represented colonization. Now it’s become a cultural identifier. 

How does fry bread figure in the play?

When the play opens, the matriarch, a full-blood Navajo, is making fry bread. The daughter-in-law comes in with groceries and the mother says, Did you get “your” flour? The teasing starts right away.  Underneath, of course, there’s a deeper question: Who is a good mother? Who is not? 

The four female characters are all dealing with the death of the mother’s son, who was separated from his wife. There’s also a generational and cultural gap: The wives are from other tribes. They’ve come into this Navajo family where things have been done a certain way. There’s tremendous tension. There are secrets. It’s very explosive. All the men are offstage; the women are the center of the play.

You give each character a “fry bread monologue.”

The play’s three adult women are competing to be the fry bread queen. Their monologues live outside of the action; they serve as each woman’s chance to plead her case. Why her culture is the best. Why her fry bread is the best.

How’s yours?

I’ve been told my fry bread is pretty darn good. One of the fry bread monologues is my recipe, but I’m not going to tell you which one.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

Through March 27 at the Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry National Center.

Photo: Jane Lind, left, and Lily Gladstone at the 2010 developmental production of "The Frybread Queen." Lind will reprise her role for the 2011 world premiere presented by Native Voices at the Autry. Credit: Terry Cyr.

Margaret A. Cargill Foundation to pump money into Native American art and culture and folk art

Folk art and Native American art and culture figure to receive a huge boost with the establishment of a new foundation whose multiple missions include funding those two genres. Both typically have lacked the glamour -- and the philanthropic support -- that adheres to art forms more likely to benefit from those common currencies of today's world, publicity and celebrity.

The Margaret A. Cargill Foundation may not bring celebrity power to folk and Native American art -- its creator and funder, a La Jolla resident who loved weaving and jewelry-making, lived unobtrusively and gave anonymously until her death in 2006 despite being a perennial on Forbes magazine's list of billionaires. But when it comes to hard currency, few charities will be able to match it -- including the foundations for art, education reform and scientific research set up by L.A.'s most lionized philanthropist, Eli Broad.

A plan announced recently to settle Cargill's estate promises to yield more than $9 billion to be divided between two grantmaking funds she established. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that at the Jan. 18 price of shares of the Mosaic Company, a publicly-traded agricultural concern whose shares will endow Cargill's foundations, their combined clout would place them behind only the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation as the nation’s biggest grant-makers.

Half of Cargill's bequest will go to the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, the branch that will fund folk art and Native American art and culture along with environmental causes, disaster relief and infrastructure for developing countries. The rest goes to the Anne Ray Charitable Trust, named for Cargill’s mother, which restricts its giving to a handful of specific charities, among them the Public Broadcasting Service, the Nature Conservancy, the American Red Cross’ international efforts and the YMCA.