A panel of five City Council members — faced with a polite crowd of more than 200 people divided between those with “Yes!” decals urging approval of the Autry’s plans and others with multicolored paper “S.O.S.” buttons, for “Save Our Southwest” — voted unanimously to delay a decision for four weeks. It urged the Autry to provide legal assurances by then that the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Mount Washington won't become just an afterthought to a larger, more comprehensive Griffith Park facility.
One of the core objections to the expansion comes from a group of neighbors of the Autry-owned Southwest Museum who deeply distrust the Autry’s motives. They fear that it wants to strip the Southwest of its collection — a trove of Native American artifacts — so the Autry can provide a one-stop Griffith Park experience involving cowboys, Indians and all the other players in the history of the West. The expansion in Griffith Park would include a new section for exhibiting Native American objects.
The Autry, named for singing cowboy Gene Autry, took charge of the financially tottering Southwest in 2003 in a merger that allayed fears that its collection might be sent elsewhere and thereby be lost to L.A. Except for the museum store, open on weekends, the Southwest has been closed since 2006 as it awaits repairs.
Having won a $50-million battle in the Senate earlier this year, arts lobbyists plan another push in the upper chamber -- this time to pass $170-million operating budgets for the NEH and NEA.
The issue now: the Senate Appropriations Committee's budget proposal for the cultural agencies calls for $161.3 million each (President Obama's budget proposal included $161.3 million for the NEA and $171.3 million for the NEH).
So Americans for the Arts, the nonprofit advocacy group that helped lead the charge on Capitol Hill to convince senators that $50 million for arts jobs would have an economically stimulative effect, is again calling on arts lovers to send a message, this time for the $170-million operating budgets.
The House also approved $25 million for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an increase of $3.7 million, and $634.2 million for the Smithsonian Institution, a $40.8-million hike.
More than 500 artists, art leaders, city and county government representatives and potential arts funders convened today at the Japanese American Cultural Community Center for the 2009 LA Arts Town Hall.
This morning, Culture Monster reported on a chat that took place earlier this week with keynote speaker Robert L. Lynch, president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C., arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts.
And this evening, we caught up with a rather ebullient Lynch as he prepared to fly back to Washington after the day's activities.
"First of all, I thought there was a great turnout, lots of people — and that in and of itself is testimony to the value of the arts to this community," he said. Lynch was particularly pleased by the mix of people, which included not only the requisite representatives of arts organizations but also government officials and their staffers. "You also had folks from the private sector — a number of funders, which was absolutely terrific; it shows an interest in partnership with the arts community."
The first family of the United States is scheduled to welcome the first family of jazz to the White House on Monday, along with 150 youngsters who'll come to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. not for a tour, but for a blue-ribbon music lesson.
First Lady Michelle Obama will be the hostess for the White House Jazz Studio, the first in a series of three planned music education sessions this year at the White House, with the next two featuring as-yet unnamed country and classical musicians as guest instructors.
For the kickoff event, five members of the Marsalis family are on the bill as instructors for instrumental music students hailing mainly from music academies in Washington, but also from the Marsalises' hometown of New Orleans and other regions.
Brothers Wynton, Branford,Delfeayo and Jason Marsalis will be among the faculty (sharing their expertise on trumpet, saxophone, trombone and drums, respectively), and Semonti Mustaphi, the first lady's deputy press secretary, said that piano-playing paterfamilias Ellis Marsalis is expected to be on hand as well.
The rest of the teaching crew includes trumpeter Sean Jones, saxophonist/clarinetist Todd Williams and singer-pianist Eli Yamin, all from Wynton Marsalis' musical circle as artistic director of Lincoln Center Jazz, and Stephen C. Massey, chairman of the music department for the Foxborough, Mass., public schools.
Robert L. Lynch -- president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C., arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts -- always counts on trips to L.A. to add a burst of sunshine to his life. But when he hit town this week, he was instead met by our June gloom (which to Culture Monster always sounds like some glum Goth scenester).
Earlier, President Obama had proposed increasing NEH funding to $171.3 million in 2010, a bigger boost than he was seeking for the NEA, which he would increase from $155 million to $161.3 million. The newly approved bill would put the NEA on par with Obama's proposal for the NEH, although it would still not meet the federal arts agency's all-time high of $176 million in 1992.
Culture Monster caught up with Lynch at downtown's Omni Hotel, where he was still scribbling his notes for this morning's address to the town hall, a daylong event presented by Arts for L.A. and the Center for Cultural Innovation in partnership with the NEA, the James Irvine Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
--Aftermath: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington remains closed today after a security guard was fatally shot in the entranceway Wednesday by a gunman with neo-Nazi ties.
--Congress and the arts: A House subcommittee has advanced a bill
that sets the budgets for the NEA and NEH at $170 million each for
fiscal 2010, up from the current appropriation of $155 million each.
--Celebrity purchase: Brad Pitt buys a Neo Rauch painting at Art Basel, with a little help from Eli Broad.
-- Beauty in bathrooms: Shoji Tabuchi Theatre in Branson, Mo., Radio City Music Hall in New York and Tampa Theatre in Florida among contenders for best restroom.
-- Lisa Fung
Photo: Cirque Du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press
President Obama is now two-for-two in making somewhat unorthodox choices for the top spots in the agencies that help set and fund the nation’s cultural agenda. After recently tapping Rocco Landesman, a Broadway producer and theater owner, to head the National Endowment for the Arts, Obama today picked a longtime former Republican congressman, Jim Leach of Iowa, to head the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“I don’t look at it as a partisan circumstance at all,” Leach said when reached at Princeton University, where since 2007 he has been a professor of public and international affairs, recently teaching courses on “Congress and Foreign Policy” and “The Conjunction of U.S. and Chinese Foreign Policy.”
In a statement, Obama described Leach as “a valued and dedicated public servant” who can carry on the NEH’s “vital mission of ... giving the American public access to the rich resources of our culture.”
If confirmed by the Senate, Leach, 66, would succeed Bruce Cole, a former Indiana University art historian who served seven years after his 2001 appointment by then-President George W. Bush, making him the longest-tenured chairman the humanities endowment has had since it was created in 1965. Carole M. Watson is serving as interim director of the $155-million-a-year agency, whose grant-making casts a wide net in backing researchers, authors, documentary filmmakers, exhibitions and education in history, literature and arts.
-- Local troupes honors: Method Contemporary Dance Company wins outstanding achievement honors from Lester Horton Dance Awards.
-- A new type of toy story: Universal Pictures is in a deal with Mattel to create a live-action musical film based on a monster toy. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman ("Hairspray") will do the music.
-- In court: Chicano artist Frank Romero sues Caltrans over a painted-over mural on the Hollywood Freeway.
-- Financial turnaround: After a decade of financial uncertainty, Mass MOCA appears on track to breaking even.
-- Raising awareness: New York painter Eric Fischl organizes "America Now + Here," a planned cross-country exhibition of art, theater, music and poetry.
Frank Romero, a noted muralist and pioneering Chicano painter, is suing Caltrans for painting over a mural he created along the Hollywood Freeway downtown in conjunction with the 1984 Olympics.
Last year, muralist Kent Twitchell won a $1.1-million settlement against the U.S. government and others for painting over his portrait of fellow artist Ed Ruscha on a federally owned building in downtown L.A.
Romero's suit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, contends that sometime after June 1, 2007, a Caltrans work crew painted over his 102-foot-long, 20-foot-high mural, "Going to the Olympics," erasing it from a wall at Alameda Street. The episode took place, the suit says, without Romero having been given the advance notice required under a 1980 state law protecting artists' "moral rights." The notice provides 90 days for the artist to save or relocate works of public art before a building's owner can have them removed.
Romero, who could not be reached Friday, is seeking a court order to have the mural restored and then maintained at the transportation department's expense. If restoration is not possible, he wants the mural removed to another, presumably safer spot. The suit also asks for restitution and damages, including punitive damages that, under state law, the judge would award to a nonprofit fine arts organization.
Patrick Chandler, spokesman for Caltrans District 7,which includes Los Angeles County, said Friday that he could not comment on "something going through the legal process now." He also declined to say whether Caltrans is concerned it could be vulnerable to other "moral rights" suits by artists over freeway murals.
Fairey should be on probation for his pl...
Just the fact that Bravo Networks is doi...
This just confirms what has ben known fo...
best video ever RIP MJ...
This was the best show I have seen at th...
Love it - love Rufus - Bring the opera t...