Why? Well, the previous owners sold the building to a development corporation – which asked for a $1 million per month increase in rent after the lease expires June 30. So, according to new owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, “the Los Angeles Times this summer will move from its historic Art Deco headquarters in downtown Los Angeles to a campus currently under construction in El Segundo.”
Blog
Watts Tower Arts Center Director Is Suspended, And No One Will Say Why
Rosie Lee Hooks has been director of Los Angeles’ Watts Tower Arts Center since 2010, and she has grown programs, attendance, and attention by leaps and bounds. Now, supporters say, there’s an art program at the heart of her three-week suspension. They claim it’s “related to the mural that local artist Jacori Perry had started to paint depicting jazz musician and Watts hero Charles Mingus on the side of the campus’ Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center building.”
As Britain Freaks Out About Invading Americanisms, Some U.S. Hipsters Are Importing Britishisms
Yes, there’s even a name for this phenomenon. “In recent years, so-called Anglocreep, the subtle adoption of British phrases into everyday American speech, has become a tic (or some might say an annoyance) among star-spangled strivers, particularly coastal creative types — otherwise known as the ‘chattering class,’ to invoke another Britishism.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.16.18
Let’s move before they change the parking rate
No, I cannot quit writing about economic-impact-of-the-arts reports. Let’s try something a little more focused, and talk about … parking. Parking is part of the cost of attending a show, if it takes place in … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2018-04-15
Fixing the Actual “Glass Ceiling” at the Metropolitan Museum: My Q&A with Keith Christiansen
With all the recent pushback against the supposed “glass ceiling” at the Metropolitan Museum (occasioned by the naming of an eminently qualified male, Max Hollein, to assume its directorship), let’s take a look at another glass-ceiling problem there, which is unambiguous and needs immediate remediation: … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-16
West Side Story and Leonard Bernstein at 100
CultureCrash’s guest columnist, Lawrence Christon, remembers the Broadway roots of the film West Side Story, and has this to say about the forces that made it all possible. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2018-04-16
Music by the Second
Sometimes I’m amazed when I realize the number of clocks I encounter every day: on the wall, on the stove, on the phone, on the screen I’m typing on now. … Unlike the clocks I grew up with – clocks with faces and arms and reference points around a circle – the clocks that surround me now designate only the moment I am in, without context, without motion. … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2018-04-16
Monday Book Recommendation: Lilian Terry’s Jazz Friends
Lilian Terry, Dizzy Duke Brother Ray And Friends (Illinois)
Lilian Terry’s book is full of anecdotes about her friendships with the musicians mentioned in the title – and dozens of others. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-16
Jerry Saltz Of New York Magazine Wins Pulitzer Prize For Criticism
“Known for an accessible and punchy writing style that decodes the complexities of contemporary art for a wide audience, Saltz is, perhaps, the most famous art critic in America. … [His] winning essay, ‘My Life As A Failed Artist,’ published last April, chronicles his pain and regret over an art career that never quite got off the ground – and what his experience as an art-school dropout taught him about being a critic.”
Pulitzer Prize For Drama Goes To Martyna Majok’s ‘Cost Of Living’
“The Pulitzer board called Cost of Living ‘an honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.'”
Andrew Sean Greer’s ‘Less’ Wins Pulitzer Prize For Fiction
“The novel centers on a struggling San Francisco author – Arthur Less – who, nearing age 50, decides to tour the world to escape himself. ‘The tragicomic business of being alive,’ he says, ‘is getting to him.’ … Greer is the author of five other books of fiction, including The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli.”
A Full-On Rant About The Essence Of Being An Artist
“As the world becomes more hostile to us all as artists, you must find that thing in making art that brings you as much peace as reifying my deeper self does for me. Not the thing about theatre that makes you feel ecstatic and high, not the thing you would suffer and die for like artists do in all those stupid movies that romanticize us. Find the thing or idea or core value in your artistic practice that brings you peace. Because when the show is a hit, that peace is what will carry you through self-doubt and self-sabotage. And when the show is a failure, that peace will hold off self-destruction. And when there is no show at all, which is most of the time, that peace is what will remind you that it doesn’t matter.”
Future V. Past: The Stakes In The Netflix V. Cannes Battle
By putting its movies online immediately, the streaming service represents an existential threat to the French theater industry’s business; the Cannes rule change is just the latter’s mode of resistance (as the festival director, Fremaux is under tremendous pressure from French exhibitors). In announcing his decision to pull the company from Cannes, which is widely viewed as the world’s most prestigious film festival, Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, framed it to Variety as a battle between cinema’s past and future.
Did We Just See The First Cracks In The Big Data Bust?
The disorienting and thoroughly unsatisfying Cambridge Analytica saga is a preview of what trailing indicators of the collapse of the data boom might look like: revealing signs, evident years later, that something was rotten with these arrangements, arriving too late to be actionable but soon enough to foster resentment against companies and services on which we’ve come to depend.