Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron to build Serpentine pavilion

Four years after collaborating on the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will reunite to build a temporary construction that will be connected with the end of London's Cultural Olympiad.

For the last several years, the small Serpentine Gallery (a former tea house) has been commissioning pavilions, built as a temporary adjunct to their space, from some of the world's most renowned designers, including Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Oscar Niemeyer.

A few details about the Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron commission -- the 12th so far -- have been released, the most notable being that the floating platform of a roof will barely be five feet off of the ground. The idea is that it will collect rainwater on the surface, perfect for reflecting the moody London sky, or it can be drained for dance events. The trio also plans to dig a few feet deep into the soil below so that visitors can walk beneath the roof, which will be supported by 12 columns, 11 representing past pavilions and one for the current.

James Turrell on Burning Bridges, part of January's PST festival

In his first week of teaching at the Claremont graduate school in 1971, James Turrell created a rather loud false alarm. He was planting road flares and aluminum reflectors in alcoves behind the columns of Bridges Auditorium (above) in a performance art piece in which the building appeared to have caught on fire.

“What happened is it was so effective that the fire department was called out,” he said, telling the story by phone Monday. "All of a sudden I heard the sirens approaching." He said he left Roland Reiss, the new head of the program, holding the bag; he had to rush off to join his students at another performance.

Although he is now best known for his light-based installations and earthworks — and his epic, seemingly never-ending Roden Crater installation in Arizona -- Turrell says he did many short-lived, time-based performances early on. One driving force was his interest in light, he said, describing early work at his studio on Main Street in Santa Monica (now a Starbucks) in which he blocked windows and controlled the flow of light in the rooms not just as an installation but as a performance that played out differently for different visitors at different times of day.

Monster Mash: National tour planned for gay-marriage play '8'

Hitting the road: The American Foundation for Equal Rights is co-sponsoring dozens of productions across the country of Dustin Lance Black's play "8,"which deals with the court battle over Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage in California. (Associated Press)

The Bard banned: Shakespeare's "The Tempest" is among the books barred in Tucson schools as Arizona lawmakers purge ethnic studies. (Salon) 

A date with Tony: The 66th Tony Awards are set for June 10, returning for a second year to the Beacon Theatre, after many years at Radio City Music Hall. (The American Theatre Wing)

Ladies man: "The O.C." alum Adam Brody lands the lead in the film adaptation of Neil LaBute's "Some Girls." (Variety)

Wanted: audiences: A new musical based on Craigslist ads is scheduled to open at Vancouver's PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. (Ad Week)

New gig: Jaap van Zweden, who is in his fourth season as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, has been appointed to a new role, music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic. (Dallas Morning News)

The music stops: An examination of what was behind the demise of Opera Boston. (Boston Globe)

Crumbling theater: A woman's mission is to save Brooklyn's 32-year-old Paul Robeson Theater. (New York Daily News)

Banana split: The Velvet Underground is suing the Andy Warhol Foundation for allegedly licensing the famous fruit on the rock band's 1967 album cover (Bloomberg)

Also in the L.A. Times: Margaret Gray reviews the TV-turned-stage show "MythBusters: Behind the Myths," and British comic Stephen Merchant, co-creator of "The Office" and “Extras,” returns to stand-up. 

-- Jamie Wetherbe

Photo: Lawyer Ted Olson, played by Gavin Creel, questions plaintiff Kris Perry, portrayed by Celia Keenan-Bolger, in a scene from the New York performance of "8." Credit: American Foundation for Equal Rights

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George Clooney joins L.A. cast of Prop. 8 play

December 14, 2011 |  5:00 am

   

 

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George Clooney is throwing his considerable star power behind the fight against Prop. 8 by signing on to appear in a reading of the  play "8" in Los Angeles. The play, by Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, is scheduled to have a staged reading at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on March 3.

Suzanne Lacy: One artist, three weeks, 40 events

Watching Suzanne Lacy in action on the Los Angeles Police Department campus, where she kicked off her anti-rape campaign "Three Weeks in January" this week, you could see a set of skills that not all artists have.

She was guiding various volunteers during the installation of a "rape map," the centerpiece of her project, with the confidence of a film director. And she was chatting with a stream of police officers and administrators who happened to walk by -- sussing out their interests in sexual violence issues like a politician building support for a cause.

This is par for the course for Lacy. A pioneer in the field of socially engaged art work, called "public practice" in art lingo, she meets a lot of strangers, collects a lot of business cards and writes a lot of follow-up emails to officials. She tends to interview her interviewers. And she has a knack for identifying the goals and obstacles that motivate people, like any good grass-roots activist.

Suzanne Lacy kicks off 'Three Weeks in January' at LAPD headquarters

Artist Suzanne Lacy is holding a press conference Thursday afternoon to mark the start of "Three Weeks in January," an anti-rape campaign she is organizing based on her landmark 1977 project "Three Weeks in May."

The centerpiece of her original work was a L.A. city map on which she stenciled and stamped the word "RAPE" wherever one was reported over a three-week period. She plans to do that again, but there are striking differences between the new project and the original, and she is the first to admit the social context has changed dramatically over the last three decades.

The incidence of rape in L.A. is down. Public awareness is up. Lacy credits groups like Peace Over Violence and the Rape Treatment Center with making great strides in anti-rape work while acknowledging the work that remains to be done in terms of awareness and prevention both.

Monster Mash: New Shroud of Turin theory; 'Rent' protest in Idaho

 

Sacred cloth: Italian researchers are reviving the idea that the Shroud of Turin's image of a Christlike figure could have been created only by a powerful flash of light. (MSNBC)

"Sets a bad example": A regional production of the musical "Rent" in Idaho that is set for January is already drawing local criticism. (Broadway World)

Called off: A Swiss art prize has been canceled after an artist claimed she was taken off the shortlist for being "too pro-Palestinian". (BBC News)

Accused: A man in Britain has denied ripping a piece of Banksy artwork from a hotel wall and trying to sell it on EBay. (The Sun)

New way of thinking: The financially troubled Colorado Symphony Orchestra has unveiled a new business model that emphasizes earned income rather than donations. (Denver Post)

Resurrected: New York's Dance Theater of Harlem is being revived after having shut down in 2004. (New York Times)

Precautionary measures: Insurers in Britain are advising owners of valuable metal artworks to radically "rethink" their security measures following the theft of a valuable piece of public art by Barbara Hepworth. (Telegraph)

Innovative thinking: Cities are finding new ways to protect works of public art. (USA Today)

Coming soon: A trailer for the new documentary "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry." (Art Info)

Crowd pleaser: A new stage musical based on the 2010 movie "Made in Dagenham" is aiming for London's West End. (Daily Mail)

Survivor: A 19-year-old ballet dancer who was badly injured during an assault has miraculously recovered. (BBC News)

Meditative: A 10-piece sculpture garden is being created for the planned branch of the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert. (Desert Sun)

Also in the L.A. Times: John Chamberlain, the American sculptor who used crushed automobile sheet metal, has died at age 84.

-- David Ng

Photo: The Shroud of Turin. Credit: Agence France Presse

Monster Mash: Getty Museum exit; Nicole Scherzinger and 'Phantom'

Abrupt exit: David Bomford, who has served as the Getty Museum's acting director for nearly two years, is leaving the museum Feb. 1. (Los Angeles Times)

Pop sensation: Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger will perform selections from "The Phantom of the Opera" on a telecast in Britain celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. (Broadway World)

Early closing: The Broadway revival of Noel Coward's "Private Lives," starring Kim Cattrall, will shutter Dec. 31, earlier than expected, due to sluggish ticket sales. (Entertainment Weekly)

Unconventional: A museum in Iraq is attempting to recover stolen artifacts by paying smugglers to return the items. (CNN)

Big easy: The New Orleans Jazz Festival has announced its 2012 line-up. (New York Times)

Unsigned: A painting believed to be by the street artist Banksy has appeared in Liverpool. (BBC News)

Not popular: A proposed public statue depicting a freed slave holding a flag representing the African diaspora has been withdrawn after it stirred controversy in Indianapolis. (Indianapolis Star)

Honored: Billy Joel has become the only non-classical performer to be honored with a portrait at Steinway Hall in New York. (BBC News)

Promise: The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has received a $10-million pledge from the Country Music Assn. (Los Angeles Times)

Passing: Chicago architect Gene Summers, the former dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has died. (Chicago Tribune)

Also in the L.A. Times: George Clooney is joining the L.A. cast of Dustin Lance Black's Prop. 8 play.

-- David Ng

Photo: Nicole Scherzinger. Credit: Peter Kramer / Getty Images

Henry Segerstrom's mall hosts exhibit on his public art patronage

By definition, public art is a form that requires no throwing back of curtains.

But a behind-the-scenes look at the public art of one extremely busy Southern California neighborhood -– Costa Mesa’s South Coast Metro commercial and arts district -– is what's being offered in an exhibition opening Wednesday at South Coast Plaza, the shopping center that led the district’s transformation from lima bean fields to the sort of place it makes sense to festoon with major pieces of sculpture.

“On Display in Orange County: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture” runs through Jan. 2 in a pop-up gallery at the South Coast Plaza Penthouse, a third-floor niche for luxe retailers.

The show includes photographs, preliminary artist renderings and models, videos and other archival items documenting the creation of 13 works. All but one was bought or commissioned by Henry T. Segerstrom, managing partner of the family firm that owns and operates South Coast Plaza and developed the surrounding properties. (The exception is a 1981 Henry Moore sculpture purchased in 1984 by Angels of the Arts, a support group of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.) One piece, Alexander Calder’s 1966 mobile, “Pekin,” will be part of the exhibition, having been temporarily relocated from its usual perch in the lobby of one of the district’s commercial buildings.

Doing good while doing well, the Segerstroms donated the acreage for the Segerstrom Center for the Arts -– a title that applies both specifically to the two-building performing arts center at its core (formerly known as the Orange County Performing Arts Center) and more generally to the overall arts district. That district also encompasses South Coast Repertory and a vacant parcel set aside for the Orange County Museum of Art, which faces the challenge of raising money so it can build there and eventually vacate its cramped quarters in Newport Beach.

Pomona close to requiring 1% public art fee from developers

Pomona is close to enacting a new Art in Public Places law that would require private developers to ante up 1% of a project’s cost to commission artwork for each building site.

The city council voted 5-2 in favor of the new law on Monday, with Mayor Elliott Rothman and Councilwoman Paula Lantz dissenting, spokesman Mark Gluba said. If approved on a second reading that hasn’t been scheduled yet, the law is expected to go into effect in mid-January.

The ordinance text says the aim is to “enrich and enliven the community … enhance the economic vitality of the city [and] develop community pride and identity.”

The council also approved an ordinance aimed at encouraging art murals in the city, subject to a government permit.

In drafting the 1% law, Pomona officials looked at what they deemed to be successful public art programs in L.A., Brea, Culver City, Long Beach, Pasadena, Palm Springs, Palm Desert and San Mateo. As a hypothetical, they applied the arts ordinance to a 202-unit residential building for graduate students that developer Hanover Pacific has planned near the campus of Western University of Health Sciences. Under current rules, the $36.5-million project would be subject to about $1.66 million in city development and permitting fees. With the public art add-on, the tab would come to $2.03 million — a 22% increase that’s comparable to the amounts developers pay to offset projects’ impacts on public schools and sanitation.

Monster Mash: Art auctions start slow; Christo project in Colorado

Slow start: Sales were slow and low at Phillips de Pury & Co.’s auction of contemporary art, the first of this week’s big-money art auctions. (New York Times)

It's a wrap: The federal government approved a $50-million art project by the artist Christo over the Arkansas River in southern Colorado. (New York Times)

Fixing a hole: Center Theatre Group director Michael Ritchie is scouring New York for a replacement production for the postponed revival of "Funny Girl." (Los Angeles Times)

Statue toppled: Police and politicians were scratching their heads over why someone tried to topple a memorial bronze of Ronald Reagan in a Newport Beach park. (Los Angeles Times)

New frontier: The Cleveland Orchestra is exploring establishing a regular presence in Europe, especially in Paris. (Plain Dealer)

Bye to the Blues: Patrick Willingham, the former COO of the Blue Man Group's Blue Man Productions, is the new executive director of New York's Public Theater. (Broadwayworld.com)

Summer vacation: Some West End theatrical productions, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's, are considering going dark during next summer's Olympic Games in London. (Guardian)

Expanding horizon: The producers of "The Mountaintop," Katori Hall's play about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., may extend the hit play beyond January.  (playbill.com)

Concessions: In the midst of volatile contract negotiations with the struggling New York City Opera, union choristers and orchestra members are offering to work for free. (Wall Street Journal)

Also in the L.A. Times: Mark Swed reviews "Romeo and Juliet" at L.A. Opera and Lang Lang at Disney Hall; Charlotte Stoudt reviews "Blues for an Alabama Sky" at the Pasadena Playhouse.

-- Kelly Scott and Sherry Stern

Image: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait; it sold for $4,002,500. Credit: Phillips de Pury & Co.