Lincoln Heights Vs. Sony

The 'Urban' or 'Corporate Public Art" I reported last week has now hit the local TV news. You can watch a clip from CBS 2/KCAL 9.

James Hahn is Still Mayor (In Hiding)

UPDATE on yesterday's post about DCA's webpage. The confusing thing is that there are TWO homepages for DCA. There is the one I happened upon last night at http://culturela.org/index.html and the one at http://culturela.org/index.htm. Confused?

Notice the last word in the URL. The latter says .htm (Villaraigosa) and the former is .html (Hahn). And with that, I'll let you conspiracy theorists go at it.



































These two men think alike!

James Hahn is still Mayor?

The City of L.A.'s Cultural Affairs Department webpage has a mission statement attributed to James Hahn, who is credited as Mayor. Now that's a good way to increase your funding and resources under the Villaraigosa administration - just pretend he doesn't exist!

Corporate Public Art in L.A.

Curbed LA reports on the "Public Art" that is actually an advertisement for Sony's PSP. Then LAist chimes in too. Lots of links within those links, happy reading.

Warren Beatty - The Governor for Arts

"{Annette} Bening declined to speculate after her appearance Friday on what arts and education funding might be like under a Gov. Beatty," reports the San Luis Obispo Tribune back in October. On October 7th, Beatty's wife spoke at the State Capitol about
Arts Education.

Assemblyman Paul Koretz (WeHo, Studio City, Hollywood, BevHills) blogs about this: "Each day we don't devote funding for the arts in our public schools is a missed opportunity to keep education interesting and exciting for our students."

11-28-05 Briefs: Arts in L.A.

Like I said earlier, I'm still trying to break out of the L.A. Times mold. Please e-mail relevant articles from your local press.

• L.A. libraries have been improving with a "70% explosion in library usage over the last decade."


• The Geffen Playhouse re-opens tonight.


• The Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation is focusing on Arts Education with Inner-City Arts.


• Tyler Green, writing in a L.A.Times editorial, is angry with LACMA for the pending future of some of its art.


• In another L.A. Times editorial, Sony BMG is lambasted for privacy issues on their CDs.

Vegas Vs. Los Angeles

Today, the L.A. Times displays an ominous portrait of Las Vegas juxtaposed against Los Angeles. It almost feels like the Times is sleeping with The Strip. After all, they have a blog dedicated to it. The article made me feel like L.A.'s economy is going to rumble and the city will be deserted. That means culture too:

Los Angeles also lost out on at least two popular Broadway shows. This year, billionaire hotel mogul Steve Wynn is leading the city's efforts to bring first-run Broadway productions to Vegas permanently.

Thanks to his exorbitant offers - $5 million for "Avenue Q" and $10 million for "Spamalot" - the shows won't tour the region, blacking out theaters in the L.A. area.

Of course, in the broader picture, none of this sense of panic is true. Los Angeles is already quite an astonishing city that is in an infancy of a wonderful flourish of things to come. Within the Culture industry, we are strong and only getting stronger. While City of L.A. Cultural Affairs Department may be seen as weak these days, other efforts in the works are on its way. Vegas' success can only help Los Angeles...especially when Vegas will be a suburb of L.A.

Arts High School Passes

"LAUSD passed the grant agreement! The school moves forward…" as reported by Andre Pineda on his blog.