Arts | 89.3 KPCC

RIP Lou Schreiber, 80: Dance instructor taught 50,000+ to 'Walk in, Dance Out'

Debra Kaufman | Off-Ramp — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:40:51 -0700

Dance instructor Lou Schreiber stood out from the crowd.; Credit: Jerry Hernandez/USA Dance

In his 62-year career as a ballroom dance instructor, Lou Schreiber held sway over a studio aptly named “Walk In Dance Out.” Schreiber estimated conservatively that he had taught 50,000 Southern Californians to fox trot, rhumba, salsa and swing. His specialty was teaching people who had never danced a step in their lives to feel confident on the dance floor.

Keith Gayhart, Lou's student for six years in the early 1990s, was one of them. “He was the perfect dance instructor for someone like me — a guy with no natural sense of rhythm. He taught people to dance by simplifying popular ballroom steps and reinforcing them through constant, cheerful repetition. I wouldn’t last long on 'Dancing with the Stars,' but at a wedding or a bar mitzvah, I feel like Fred Astaire ... at least after the second glass of wine.”

Schreiber died on June 8 at age 80. Just days before, he'd taught his last dance class and danced a rhumba with his long-time partner, Luz Diaz, at an event held by USA Dance to honor him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Lou Schreiber was a masterful teacher who brought the joy of ballroom dance to thousands in the Southland by creating a warm and friendly atmosphere in his classes, making it fun and easy to learn, help build confidence and giving people an avenue to meet one another through the common denominator of dance,” says Jerry Hernandez, president of the Los Angeles chapter of USA Dance and a ballroom dance instructor. “He was admired by his peers and mentored many in the industry on his methods of teaching, and maintained the awareness and importance of ballroom dance.”

Schreiber gave a start to the careers of many Southland dance teachers, including Debbie D’Aquino, a popular social dance instructor in the South Bay, and Francisco Martinez of Dance Family Studio in Pasadena.

“It was Lou who launched my teaching career as a dance instructor,” says D’Aquino. “I worked along side of Lou three nights a week, every week, for nine years, and we were teaching over 1,200 students every week. He had an amazing system developed to get people dancing who had never danced before and believed less in proper dance technique and more in having fun on the dance floor. Lou was a dear friend and certainly my greatest mentor, and I will miss him greatly.”

Schreiber started his career as a ballroom dance instructor at Arthur Murray’s when he was 18 and rapidly moved to the position of Master Trainer of Dance Instructors, winning First Place in Arthur Murray’s National Dance Teacher’s competition when he was 20. He went independent in 1959, opening Walk In Dance Out. And he had a day job, as professor of psychology and business management at Los Angeles Harbor College for several decades.

Tall and imposing, Lou alternately cajoled, joked and chastised his students. And it worked. He taught a veritable ballroom dance corps of more than 50,000 people, most of whom, like Gayhart, still feel like Fred Astaire on the dance floor. “I have no doubt there are thousands of people spread across Southern California who feel exactly the same way,” Gayhart says. “Not a bad legacy.”

Gary Baseman's 'Door is Always Open' at the Skirball Center

Take Two — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:01:20 -0700

"Beverly (In Memoriam)," 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 16 x 28 in.
; Credit: Gary Baseman

Gary Baseman has been making art of all kinds for more than four decades. He got his start in the commercial art world penning colorful, cartoon like illustrations which graced the covers of major magazines.

He's delved into the world of pop culture as the Emmy-award winning creator of the Disney series "Teacher's Pet" and as the designer for the characters in the Hasbro board game Cranium. Recently, the LA-based artist has been finding deeper meaning in his work as he focuses on his parents' past as Holocaust survivors.

The various stages of Gary Baseman's life and career are now on display at the Skirball Cultural Center until August 18. Alex recently spent some time with the artist there and brings us this report.

Interview Highlights:

On how having much older siblings inspired his art:
"I don’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t draw. It's the way I've always communicated and got out my emotions and feelings and views of the world…I felt like at first, I was so bombarded by pop-culture and everything and being around all these teenagers, the Beatles, the Who, Animals and — boom — they all left. I had so much I needed to get out and this coffee table, where I would sit down and I would be drawing all the time. In fact, one of my cousins Shirley said she thought I had an emotional problem because she saw me sitting by myself drawing all the time and I didn’t think so. I thought I was a very social kid, outside and playing."

On his concept for the bedroom exhibit:
"When people would come to my real home, its like a mini version of Disneyland because I have a lot of costumes, heads, and old mannequin heads and advertising displays and wood-jointed toys. I like having my inspiration around me and people would come with such a big smile and I was like this is what I want. "I want to create a home where people can come through and feel relaxed and they can sit on my sofas and engage with the work. I want people to understand the artwork, I don’t want them to feel like they need 200 years of college to be able to comprehend a little bit of what this is all about. To me art is important because it is about us, its about the human condition, its about our frailties, our beauty and for me all my art I s about celebrating the bitter sweetness of life."

On dedicating the exhibition to his late parents:
"My mom just passed away in October, but I was hoping that she would be around to see this show. My parents were married for 63 years. I have this exhibition called “The Door Is Always Open," and this is the first time in my life that my parents home isn’t open. That with my mom passing, that home that they lived in 43 years is no more, so I took their furniture, not knowing what to do. It's all very kitschy '50s furniture and I said I'm bringing it into here as a way to honor them. Besides the last couple years, a lot of my body of work is about telling their story."

RIP Fran Bascom, 86. Worked on 'Days of Our Lives,' 'Lou Grant,' 'Designing Women'

Barry Cutler | Off-Ramp — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:18:02 -0700

Actor Barry Cutler; Credit: John Rabe

Actor and Off-Ramp contributor Barry Cutler sent this email to friends this weekend, about the death of veteran casting director Fran Bascom, Sunday, June 2, at the age of 86. According to welovesoaps.net, she was nominated for 15 Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America, including nine for Days of Our Lives, for which she worked from 1992-2007.

I'm jumping to the conclusion that, if you are or were an actor in Los Angeles, especially if you've performed in theatre, you encountered and, at the very least, appreciated this wonderful and supportive woman, Fran Bascom. I know of no other casting director who went out of her way to attend theatre, search out new talent and encourage those she already knew.

Personally, she seemed to show up at just about every play in which I ever performed in the greater Los Angeles area. Most of the time, when I encountered her after a performance, she was kindly flattering and supportive. But I most fondly remember her approaching me after one play, for which I'd sent invitations, and said, "Barry, you know I love you as an actor and I appreciate your invitations. But please don't invite me to anymore plays as bad as this one."

She seemed to remember everybody, no matter how many years may have passed. Once, after I'd moved back to NYC for a few years, she contacted me through my last LA agent, offering me a day-player role on the soap Days of Our Lives, but encouraging me to return because she believed it would become a recurring character. And it did. When the salary wasn't enough to cover keeping places in New York and L.A, she - not my meek agent - talked Days' producers into raising my pay.

I'm sure those of you who knew her have more such stories of her kindness and generosity of spirit.

Sadly, Fran passed away last week. Yesterday, I was told that there will be a memorial for her at 10am on Friday, June 14, at St. Charles Church, near Moorpark and Lankershim in North Hollywood. It was suggested that, in Fran's memory, one might contribute to an animal shelter.

Plans for LACMA's multi-million redesign unveiled in new exhibit

Hayley Fox — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:45:22 -0700

The third section of the new exhibit will feature a model of the proposed new building. This expansive, horizontal design will be made mostly of glass and include a roof covered in solar panels.; Credit: 2013/Museum Associates LACMA

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is poised for a massive redesign, and what more appropriate way to put it on display than through an exhibition at LACMA itself?

The exhibit, titled “The Presence of the past: Peter Zumthor reconsiders LACMA,” debuts Sunday and takes a look at the history of the museum and its surrounding neighborhood.

Going back as far as 50,000 years, the new installation will include fossils from the Pleistocene era, as well as decades-old photographs, drawings and architectural models of some of the museum's unrealized plans.

The exhibit's three sections feature the history of the Hancock Park area, a look at architect Zumthor's previous work, and a peek at what LACMA's future may look like. This portion of the show includes a concrete model of Zumthor's plans for the museum's massive (and expensive) redesign. The multi-million project includes demolishing four older structures and replacing them with one-new, mostly glass, building.

From above, the proposed building looks like a splattered water droplet that wraps around the Pavilion for Japanese Art and hovers partially over the La Brea Tar Pits. In a statement, Zumthor described the new building as being an "organic shape, like a water lily" as well as having "a unique, urbanistic energy."

"It really has no front, no back," said LACMA CEO Michael Govan. "It's a continuous curving facade of glass."

Govan said the sprawling structure will have a black roof covered in solar panels.

"The idea is that the building is horiztonal and can soak up the California sun," he said. "It will give back more energy to the city than it uses."

Although multiple media reports estimate the cost of the new building at $650 million, Govan said this number was "premature." He said erecting a new structure may be expensive, but it fixing the problematic older buildings would also cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“If you need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in either case, toward what would people be willing to contribute?" said Govan. "And that’s part of the question: Can we present an idea that’s exciting enough, energy efficient, art efficient, educational, fantastic atmosphere, gives back the park? Is that what will draw support? And I think it will.”

Govan said in a statement that he and Zumthor began brainstorming transformations for the museum in 2006, and have since developed a preliminary plan that would create a new LACMA that would be "responsive to its existing environment" and had "the potential to inspire its future."

This isn't the first time in recent history that the museum has considered a design change.

About 11 years ago, the LACMA board proposed a $300 million redesign that would feature the work of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

That plan sputtered and stalled a few years later.

Govan said LACMA decided to present the "mid-stream" idea for the redesign after the organizers of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative asked the museum to be part of their "Modern Architecture in L.A. series." He said this will allow LACMA to get feedback from the public.

"Everybody has a stake in LACMA. It's a community museum," said Govan.

“The Presence of the past: Peter Zumthor reconsiders LACMA," opens Sunday, June 9 and runs until September 15.

Photos: 'Golden Rule' Instagram challenge winner captures Holland's countryside

Maya Sugarman | Off-Ramp — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:36:47 -0700

Linda Heidema took this picture of her son on the beach at sundown in May. The photograph is the winning image for our most recent challenge with Instagram Lovers Anonymous with the theme, "Golden Rule."; Credit: Linda Heidema

Angelenos would be jealous of the sights Linda Heidema passes during her Netherlands work commute.

Heidema's job as a social worker often takes her through Holland's northern countryside.

When she sees a beautiful scene through her car window, Heidema pulls over to take a picture.

See more pictures from Linda Heidema's Instagram feed on AudioVision.

You can find her on Instagram as @lindalaughs.

Heidema is the winner of our most recent Instagram challenge with Instagram Lovers Anonymous. The theme was Golden Rule.

Linda Heidema didn't have an interest in photography until joining Instagram less than a year ago. Now, she has more than 3,700 followers. She has two different accounts for her 1:1 and 16:9 cropped pictures of snow-dappled trees and herds of swans.

In captions and comments, Heidema refers to her followers as "friends."

"Sometimes they are friends, really," Heidema said. "I've met some really cool people through Instagram who also live in Holland and we visit each other."

She lives with her husband and three sons in Groningen, a city two hours north of Amsterdam.

"Holland has a lot to offer," she said. "It has beautiful cities, beautiful culture, beautiful nature and agriculture."

"I like living here, but I also would like to visit the states and California," she said. "That would be great."

'It's taped?!' Off-Ramp releases script of supposedly ad-libbed fundraising spot

John Rabe and Commentator Dylan Brody | Off-Ramp — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:13:05 -0700

Commentator Dylan Brody reading a radio script in the Off-Ramp studio.; Credit: John Rabe

DYLAN: I’m Dylan Brody, humorist, storyteller and head commentator for KPCC’s Off Ramp.

RABE: You’re not the head commentator.

DYLAN: Fine. Long before I started appearing on KPCC I was an avid listener, a genuine fan of the informative news and talk programming during the week and the wonderfully funny stuff that runs on the weekends. That’s why I was KPCC’s favorite listener.

RABE: You weren’t the favorite.

DYLAN: I might have been the favorite.

RABE: We don’t have favorites. We love all our listeners equally.

DYLAN: Fine. My point is, the station provides a lot of great programming and it does it all without running commercials. So take a minute to do your part to keep it on the air. As control over the commercial media outlets continues to consolidate, we need public stations like KPCC more than ever. And remember, I’m not only the president of KPCC, I’m also a member.

RABE: You’re not the president of KPCC.

DYLAN: Fine. Can I say “Chanteuse?”

RABE: Do you sing?

DYLAN: No.

RABE: Then, no.

DYLAN: Can I say, “Call now and make your contribution?”

RABE: Yes. You can say that. But add the website.

DYLAN: Become a sustaining member of KPCC at kpcc.org, or by calling 866-888-5722.

RABE: And say thank you, Dylan.

DYLAN: Thank you, Dylan.

Cheech Marin: getting Chicano art the respect it deserves will mean Chicanos opening their wallets

John Rabe | Off-Ramp — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:30:26 -0700

Cheech Marin with artists Einar & Jamex de la Torre and Susana Smith Bautista at Artifex at Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City.; Credit: Koplin Del Rio Gallery

On Wednesday, May 29 at the Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City, Cheech Marin, the comedian, actor, and Chicano art advocate, led a fascinating and provocative panel discussion about the tidal wave that is Chicano art. It included Dr. Susana Smith Bautista and artists Einar & Jamex de la Torre, Shizu Saldamando, John Valadez, and Harry Gamboa Jr.

We'll be airing an excerpt this weekend on Off-Ramp, but meantime, here's the whole recording, plus an essay on the exhibition by Dr. Bautista. Artifex is up through July 6.

Five Latino artists that come from different generations, geographic conditions and cultural influences, but all with one thing in common; a commitment to artistically explore cultural artifacts that signify identity. These artifacts can be anonymous remnants from second-hand stores, found and used by Einar and Jamex de la Torre, or more personal artifacts such as the clothing, jewelry, and tattoos on the figures drawn by Shizu Saldamando, or John Valadez’s cautious use of Chicano artifacts like the low-rider car and the Virgin.

Harry Gamboa Jr.’s characters in his photographs, films, and performances have become artifacts of a new Chicano culture that is being constantly (re)created through the organic evolution of Chicano artists themselves. These five artists both appropriate cultural artifacts and create new ones through their artistic vision that reflects their immersion in contemporary culture as well as their desire to contribute to the global visual discourse.

Notions of identity, culture, and community emerged in the 1960s and ‘70s during the civil rights movement with the Brown Berets and the Chicano Moratorium. Today in 2013 the world has changed. Artists are no less conscious of their identity, but that identity is a much larger assemblage of where they were born, where they have lived, where they exhibit, where they travel, and who they meet.

To say that the de la Torre brothers are Mexican artists says nothing about their formative years in Orange County or their current experience of the U.S./Mexico border region that they cross regularly between their San Diego studio and their home in Ensenada. Younger artists like Saldamando don’t approach identity as monolithic, but rather as a remix of pop culture, fine arts, west side, east side, Mexican, Asian, and more. Gamboa Jr. started to use his camera in the 1970s to document the urban Chicano experience in his subversive style, and continues to do so as that same experience changes, even as means of subversion and assumptions of normalcy change. Valadez created a cultural iconography drawn from his neglected world to empower Chicanos, but today that world is no longer confused and angry, and creates its own iconographies.

Latino culture in the 21st century is about reflection, creation, and contribution of new ways of thinking, new ideas, and new media. The artists participate concurrently in a local and a global world, on a Latino and an American field, and in high and low cultural spaces. We cannot negate the continued presence of identity, social issues, ethnicity, history, and culture, but we can try to go beyond to focus on what really matters; the work as contemporary arte factum.

Picture This: A laid-off Chicago Sun-Times photographer moves on

Take Two — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:00:50 -0700

"Day 5 - daddy’s gonna need that later," from former Sun-Times photographer Rob Hart's Tumblr, Laid Off From The Sun-Times.; Credit: Rob Hart

The Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire photography staff last week, leaving nearly 30 people out of a job. These included Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, many of them had been at the paper for years.

One of those people was photojournalist Rob Hart. He may no longer have a job with the paper, but that hasn't stopped him from taking photos. The second Rob left his job he began a new photo project, a Tumblr called Laid Off From the Sun-Times.

"I was sitting in my basement office next to my old dryer and I had all of these photos. I wanted to put a face on this layoff and put attention to the other 27 people," said Hart. "We've gotten a lot of love and support and a lot of people have contacted me through the website."

The tagline for his Tumblr explains, "Rob Hart was replaced with a reporter with an iPhone, so he is documenting his new life with an iPhone, but with the eye of a photojournalist trained in storytelling."

Hart and his colleagues were told that the company was shuttering the photo department and that reporters would be trained on how to take photos and video using iPhones. The paper will still use freelance photographers on a case-by-case basis.

"The technology has made it easier to shoot and send photos across the world quickly. To do what we do takes a lot of experience," said Hart. "You can make a really nice photo after a couple of days learning how to be photographer, but when you're in a breaking news situation (think about the incredible photos from the boston bombing), [professionals] know how to turn it on a react in moments. It's instinct and it's experience."

Interview Highlights:

On what he plans to do next:
"I freelance and I'll do a lot more stuff and spend time with my baby and tell the stories I didn't have time for when I had a job. Maybe I'll start for somebody else. You never know what's going to happen. There are plenty of people hiring people to tell stories."

On the first image he took for the Tumblr project:
"That was the carpet on the 14th floor of the holiday. When I walked into the Sun-Tmes building, there was an extra security guard standing out on the floor… That's when I knew we were all gone. That carpet was a visual representation of what it feels like to be suckerpunched. To have your job ripped out from underneath you, that's what we do as photojournalists. We're not there to show what happened, but what it felt like to be there."

On using his iPhone to take pictures for his Tumblr:
"It was taking something really horrible and making something that was amazing. I love taking photos with my iPhone. It's not about the camera, it's the human being that's behind that camera and their heart and what they value and who they are. It all comes across in photographs…Most of my students are graduate students who are going to be reporters. It's not because we are giving them a camera, they're learning how to feel what's important. It's not the camera, it's the person."

Detroit museum not the first to consider selling out

Alan Greenblatt | NPR — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 13:21:45 -0700

Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Postman Roulin is part of the collection in the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts. The financially troubled city of Detroit is eyeing the sale of its prized artworks.; Credit: aPic/Getty Images

Detroit doesn't have to wait for Antiques Roadshow to come to town to know the city owns priceless treasures. The city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts holds works by van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir and other artists that could bring in tens of millions of dollars each.

And they just might sell. With the city more than $15 billion in debt, Kevyn Orr, the state-appointed emergency manager trying to straighten out Detroit's finances, has asked the museum to inventory its works with an eye toward potentially selling them off.

It's a scenario that has people in the art world up in arms. When Edsel Ford commissioned Diego Rivera to paint murals for the museum back in 1932, he wasn't thinking they might be sold in 2013 to pay for pensions.

"To sell off artwork to pay for a city's general debt is unconscionable," says Kathleen Bernhardt, an art dealer in Chicago. "It's a short-term sell-off of a magnificent part of their heritage."

Museums sell works all the time, but typically not their best stuff. When they do sell, it's to get rid of pieces that don't suit the collection. They use the money to buy new works that are a better fit. They're not supposed to use the money to buy computers or pay down debt, according to industry standards.

But when museums aren't free-standing institutions, as is the case in Detroit, the larger entities that control them sometimes can't help but see dollar signs. The van Goghs are just hanging there, waiting to be put up for auction.

"A lot of institutions are gun-shy about trumpeting what the size of their assets [is], so that a trustee is not tempted to sell them off," says Kris Anderson, director of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington.

Some Universities Want To Sell

All museums have to inventory their works for insurance purposes. But Anderson says the bottom line has been more closely held information ever since Brandeis University talked about selling off the entire collection of its Rose Art Museum back in 2009.

"In the case of Brandeis, you had a truly visionary president who did so much good for the university, but got caught up in a very short-term temptation to look at an easy fix," says Michael Rush, who then served as Rose's director. "To our way of thinking, the university was really selling its birthright by even considering selling its collection."

It was a common consideration during the depths of the recession. Faced with financial problems and endowments battered by the stock market plunge, a number of museums thought long and hard about selling off works.

The temptation was especially strong for universities, which aren't shy about selling off art galleries, campus radio stations or other assets they don't view as part of their prime mission.

In 2005, Fisk University began a seven-year legal battle to shed a number of its works, including a famous painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. In 2008, Randolph College in Virginia sold a Rufino Tamayo painting for $7.2 million and put three other major works in storage at the auction house Christie's, waiting for the market to improve.

But it's not just universities. The Field Museum in Chicago over the past decade has sold off numerous works by noted Western artist George Catlin. An internal report this year suggested that the museum's rare book collection might fetch $50 million on the open market.

Putting Money Over Sentiment

Last year, Fisk University reached an agreement with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, which was founded by Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heiress. Crystal Bridges paid Fisk $30 million to share the rights to a collection of 101 pieces that had been donated by O'Keeffe back in 1949.

In essence, Crystal Bridges bought a time share. The museum will hold and display the works for two years out of four, while Fisk keeps them the other two years.

"We do think that we have the best of both worlds," says Edwina Harris Hamby, Fisk's vice president for institutional advancement. "We still have a 50 percent share in the collection and all of our students will have access to it."

She says many more people will be able to see the works, since they are also available for viewing at Crystal Bridges.

"Ironically, we did not have a lot of people coming to view the collection, before it became the great issue in court for seven years," Hamby says.

Selling Off Assets

It obviously hurts a museum's reputation when it sells off — or is forced to sell off — its greatest works. It's kind of like a baker who decides to sell off his oven to satisfy his debts. Once the oven is gone, what's left for the baker to do?

"Your collection is from a strategic point of view one of the most valuable resources you have to generate excitement among the public and among donors who will help support the museum," says Russell Lewis, executive vice president of the Chicago History Museum. "Once you go down that path of selling something that has a high value and is part of the legacy collection, you're going to have a hard time attracting donors."

And, once the van Gogh is gone, it can't help you sustain payments for staff salaries or medical care. "Overcoming budget problems by selling art collections seems all too easy, but it's all too shortsighted," says Rush, the former Brandeis museum director who now directs the Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

Still, he notes, in the case of Brandeis, preventing proposed sales really came down to the question of whether a state attorney general thinks the museum is violating donor intent or is somehow in breach of its tax-exempt status.

"The truth with Brandeis is the university would have gone on its merry way if the board hadn't brought suit and gotten sympathy from the attorney general," Rush says.

In the end, Brandeis settled a lawsuit and decided against selling its artwork.

Can free photos save the art business? One gallerist hopes so.

Lilly Fowler | Off-Ramp — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:28:12 -0700

Gallerist Jennifer Schwartz and her 1977 VW bus. She's driving around the country to promote art collecting, as part of her "Crusade for Art" tour.; Credit: Lilly Fowler

The economy is slowly recovering, or so they say. But that doesn't mean people aren't having a hard time selling certain things. Take, for example, art. Just this past month a gallery owner named Jennifer Schwartz drove from her home in Atlanta to Los Angeles in a 1977 blue Volkswagen bus so that she could literally give away art.

Off-Ramp contributor Lilly Fowler visited Schwartz to find out why.

On a warm, sunny afternoon, 37-year-old Jennifer Schwartz made her first West Coast stop for a nationwide tour she's dubbed "The Crusade for Art," camping out on the streets of Venice's Abbot Kinney neighborhood. Alongside busy shops and restaurants, Schwartz and a handful of local artists vied for the attention of passersby. "Free photos," she shouted. "Artwork for your walls!"

Schwartz said she's giving away art to lure everyday consumers into art collecting. "We're seekers and we're curious and we care where our food came from and how our coffee is roasted," said Schwartz. "Art is a natural fit into that."

For Schwartz, getting people interested in fine art is a battle against the ordinary. "If I could stand at the register of every IKEA, when someone came up with a big gallery wrapped canvas of a tulip that matched their throw pillows, I could say, well, here's an original piece of art that also matches your throw pillows," she said. "I really felt that most people would choose the original, all things being equal, and since I couldn't stand at the register of every IKEA, I was like 'I'll just drive a bus around the country and talk about it.'"

Schwartz says that while the photography focused gallery she left behind in Atlanta is doing well--not everyone is that lucky. Outside the top tier of artists and collectors, many artists and galleries are still struggling, especially those stuck somewhere in the middle of the art market. So people like Schwartz keep thinking of more and more inventive ways to push art.

Local photographer Aline Smithson says she's seen that struggle first hand. "What's been successful in the last few years are sites that are selling their photographs at greatly discounted prices" she said. "I think it's just a really hard time to sell art."

At the boardwalk, Long Beach artist Jeff Rau hands a prospective patron a print. "The series that I have a print from today is from a project where I photographed the LA Basin from Signal Hill down near Long Beach, which is where I live, every day for a year," he said. "And then I would take each month's worth of images, so 30 days worth of images for each month, and splice them together into singular landscape to show the variation in the kind of smog cover and the way the city is kinda appearing and disappearing into the smog day after day."

Artists like Rau talked to people on the street about art, hoping that just maybe, maybe, they would gain a new fan or two. Ruzica Vuskovic, a visitor from Croatia, was stunned "It's amazing, stunning, so cool. LA is just an amazing city," she said. "This was such an uplifting, surprising cool thing starting with this cool van."

Schwartz says she tries to be realistic about what a road trip like hers can do. The folks she encounters on tour might not turn to art collecting the very next day. But Schwartz hopes by having the opportunity to connect with artists personally, they may more clearly see the value of art, which could lead to art buying. Someday at least.

Schwartz just rounded out the West Coast portion of her tour. She heads out East after that before returning home, and to her gallery, in June.

From the heart of Egypt's revolt, The pulse of artistic life

Leila Fadel | NPR — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:46:21 -0700

Egyptian folk singer Dina El Wedidi performs at Qasr El Nil Theater during the Downtown Cairo Arts Festival. Wedidi says efforts to revitalize venues like the Qasr El Nil are important because there aren't enough places for musicians of the post-revolution explosion to perform.; Credit: Mostafa Abdel Aty/Courtesy of Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival

Egypt's capital, Cairo, is now synonymous with protests and sometimes violence. Late at night, the once-bustling downtown streets are largely empty these days. People worry about getting mugged or caught up in a mob.

Cairo is a city that needs a lot of dusting," says Ahmed El Attar, director of the Downtown Cairo Arts Festival. Efforts are underway to try to restore the city's past cultural glory."

But the recent Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival is an attempt to revitalize the area with music, art and culture in the old and forgotten venues of downtown Cairo, like the Qasr El Nil Theater.

Its candle-shaped lights and dusty red velvet curtains hint at it glorious past — never mind the curtains' missing tassels or the smell of smoke and urine in the lobby.

After years of sitting unused, the Qasr El Nil Theater echoes once again with music. It was the site of the art festival's final concert. The decision was deliberate: to breathe new life into Cairo's decrepit architecture.

"Cairo is a city that needs a lot of dusting," says Ahmed El Attar, the festival director. "It's almost an unloved city."

He chose the venues to highlight Cairo's trove of theaters and hotels that languish dusty and unused.

"It's a city of a lot of things hidden and because of neglect and a general feeling of apathy over the last 50 years of military rule and dictatorship and oppression and a general feeling of not valuing your own self as individuals and also of society," he says. "So the city is abandoned."

Downtown Cairo is filled with beautiful architecture. Built during the brief French occupation of Egypt under Napoleon, it's Parisian with an Egyptian twist: stunning window arches; delicate iron-wrought balconies overlooking the streets; apartments with high ornate, ceilings. But now, dust masks the beauty, the architecture lost in decay.

Since the revolutions that swept through Egypt, Tunisia and beyond, the arts scene has exploded. Artists are freer to express themselves publicly, and there's a willing audience searching for something new.

Egyptian folk singer Dina El Wedidi shot to fame after the revolution. Tunisian singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi is known as the voice of Tunisia's revolution. They made up the double bill of the festival's final musical performance.

In her song "On My Mind (Fe Bali)," Mathlouthi sings about Mohammed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian man who set himself on fire, an act that sparked what was called the Arab Spring.

"What I see in the audiences, they feel in a way my music gives them some power, some hope, some strength," Mathlouthi says. "There aren't so many people that sing about freedom, about human beings, about society, about problems."

At the heart of festival director Attar's efforts is a hope.

"Egypt is the heart of the Arab world, culturally, intellectually and artistically," Attar says. "There is a revival now and it's important that we believe in that and start putting it back."

Inside the theater, Mathlouthi wows the crowd. By the end of the night, the audience is weeping as she sings songs about continuing a struggle for freedom.

Mike Sheehan's Sketchbook: LA Opera rehearsing 'Tosca'

Mike Sheehan — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:12:15 -0700

; Credit: Mike Sheehan

Artist Mike Sheehan has been sketching Los Angeles for Off-Ramp, including the Shuttle parade, the opening of Grand Park, and most recently, a weekend alongside Wendy Greuel's campaign for mayor. These are his notes from his day at rehearsals for Los Angeles Opera's rendition of 'Tosca.'

I always wondered how they put a big opera production together. I had it in my mind that it was always big, even in rehearsals. It was the opposite.

I arrived at the rehearsal room on the 4th floor of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I got there as they were assembling. Next, I met director John Caird who gave me a prime seat next to prompter Nino, Pianist Jeremy Frank, and Conductor (for the May 26th performance) Jordi Bernàcer. The piano was the only accompaniment. Until that moment, I had no idea what a prompter was. A prompter is the person in the box at the front of the stage. They call out the first lines of a phrase to the performers and have a lot of prep work throughout the production.

I sketched performers Sondra Radvanovsky and Marco Berti as they worked through scenes. I was surprised by the looseness of the rehearsal. John Caird would occasionally stop the performers and give direction. Placido Domingo also showed up and made comments and offered encouragement. He's conducting this production.

Sketching while listening to them sing was amazing - I could do that everyday. Absolutely beautiful music and voices. When it's pared down to just piano and voices without all of the ornamentation, you hear it in a different way.

After that, I took my sketchbook down to the main stage where they blocked out a scene on the scaffold. It was too big (about 15 feet tall) to have in the regular rehearsal space.

Next, everyone took a break and later reconvened at 7 pm for the second half of rehearsal. Now, there were more performers and a really casual vibe permeated the room with lots of joking and playfulness. A few props were added with stacks of crates and a table and chairs.

The show opens May 18th and they were blocking with minimal props, no costumes and all in a very short time frame. It was difficult to imagine this all coming together in less than two weeks. When I asked about the time frame, Gary Murphy, the Director of Communications and Public Relations at LA Opera told me (paraphrasing), "It's different than theater. These people come in and know it as opposed to theater where the actors want to find the character and so forth. Short time frames are typical for them."

At around 10 p.m. director John Caird wrapped it up. It's an amazing world to get a close up view of. I can't wait to see the final production.

Picture This: Donna DeCesare gets inside the world of Central American gangs

A Martínez with Michelle Lanz | Take Two — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:02:46 -0700

Watts, Los Angeles, 1994. Three-year-old "Esperanza" named her pet pigeon after her wheelchair-bound teenaged uncle. He was shot by a rival gang member in a drive-by shooting. ; Credit: Donna DeCesare

Warning: Some images are graphic in nature.

Central American immigrants flooded into the United States throughout the 1980s and '90s after fleeing brutal civil wars. Though the States provided a safe haven from the systematic violence of places like El Salvador and Guatemala, many of these new Americans carried with them the trauma of the violence they witnessed back home.

Award-winning photojournalist Donna DeCesare spent years traveling to Central America — El Salvador in particular — to capture the lives of those affected by civil war. She witnessed the aftermath of a government firing squad enforcing a curfew, the execution of Jesuit priests and images of young children unfazed by the violence around them.

Later, DeCesare focused her lens on Los Angeles, a city where many Central American immigrants settled after fleeing war, and found that the scars of their youth translated into their new lives as Americans. These conflicts and their aftermath are the subject of DeCesare's new book, "Unsettled."

DeCesare joined the show to tell us how her work took her from the war zones of Central America, to the ganglands of Los Angeles, starting with her first trip to El Salvador in 1987.

Interview Highlights:

On why she decided to focus on El Salvador:
"I had covered conflicts in Northern Ireland, I'm part Irish, i'm Italian. I was doing a story for a newspaper in Ireland and met some Salvadoran refugees who were living in sanctuary in Berkeley, California in 1984. That's what got me really interested in El Salvador. I thought, I really should go there."

On the image of Esperanza, the 3-year-old with a pet pigeon (Image 1):
"This was a moment that occurred when I was talking to her grandmother. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the child was jumping on the bed. The door they lived in a very tiny apartment in Watts, and the light was flooding in and I thought I saw out of the corner of my eye a gun on the bed. That alarmed me. She was jumping, and as she went down on the bed the gun got closer to her from that movement and then she grabbed the pigeon that was in their house. She told me afterward that the pigeon was named Giovanni for her uncle who was paralyzed in a drive-by shooting. But she also asked me if I wanted to see the other guns. And I said no."

On the image of the young girl and the man killed for violating curfew (Image 2):
"That was the morning after and that man, according to the people who I had talked to, had been killed by a military death squad the night before. That little child standing there looking down the street, I think what got me most about it was the expression on her face, there's a kind of wary look on her face. Not a shocked look, so she's already seen a lot of death, so that's first of all what that tells me, but that she's more concerned about what's happening out of the frame than what's actually in front of her. It makes you feel that there's a sense of danger still. That she's concerned about what else might happen."

On the most shocking thing about photographing child soldiers:
"That there were child soldiers in the insurgency wasn't so shocking, children were orphaned and often if their parents were killed by the army, the only family they would have were the guerillas. To see children involved was tragic, but it wasn't surprising to me as to see children involved in the army. These were young boys who hadn't joined voluntarily, they'd been taken off of buses. One child came up to me and told me that his mother must be worried about him because he never came home from visiting his grandmother."

On Frankin Torres, an LA gang member from El Salvador:
"Franklin grew up in a very, very conflicted area of El Salvador, and his mother decided for his safety that they should leave. So they went to Los Angeles, and when he got here, he said when he went to school he got made fun of, he came to school in a white shirt, tie, his mom dressed him up the way kids in El Salvador dressed in their very best. The kids at school made fun of him. He was living in a neighborhood where gangs were very prevalent and he ended up joining the 18th Street Gang."

On how young Salvadoran immigrants in LA are carrying the scars of war:
"Many of the children who came here witnessed human rights abuses, some of them saw their own parents killed in front of them, sometimes they had histories of being involved as child soldiers as well. So that traumatic legacy is something that people carry with them. Anyone who experiences war carries the impact of that for the rest of their lives, but the kids didn't have anyone they could talk to about this stuff, and most of the parents didn't want to talk about it. So it was among themselves, the gang members together, that was the place where it was safe to talk about their experiences to each other. Many of the kids that I met when I started doing this work were that first generation who had experiences of tremendous childhood trauma."

See Donna DeCesare speak on May 9 at the Annenberg Space for Photography for the Iris Nights Lecture Series, from 6:30-8pm.

In France, a renewed push to return art looted by Nazis

Eleanor Beardsley | NPR — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:00:31 -0700

A photo taken by the Nazis during World War II shows a room filled with stolen art at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris. Using improved technology and the Internet, the French government is making a renewed push to track down the rightful owners of art looted by the Nazis.; Credit: /Courtesy of Archives des Musees Nationaux A Paris

During World War II, the Nazis plundered tens of thousands of works of art from the private collections of European Jews, many living in France. About 75 percent of the artwork that came back to France from Germany at the end of the war has been returned to their rightful owners.

But there are still approximately 2,000 art objects that remain unclaimed. The French government has now begun one of its most extensive efforts ever to find the heirs and return the art.

French law states that at art pillaged during World War II must be publicly exhibited, if its condition permits, so that it can be recognized and claimed.

"Up until now, France put the maximum information at public disposal and waited for reaction. For people to come forward. Now we're proactively tracking down the descendants and families of those who had their art stolen," says Thierry Bajou, who is coordinating the French government's efforts.

A team of government historians, regulators, archivists and curators is working full time, searching for missing art as well as heirs. Catalogs of art auctions before and after the war are being combed for possible looted art now on the market.

Decades Of Work

This is the latest effort in a process that dates back to the war itself. At that time, a French curator, Rose Valland, kept secret notes on everything the Nazis stole, and this helped return art to its owners after the war.

Any sale that took place during the war and Nazi occupation of France is null and void. That means all subsequent sales are invalid. Bajou says it gets complicated when a piece of art is located and the current owner, who is perhaps five or six times removed from and unaware of the original theft, believes he legally owns the piece.

Bajou brings up the Culture Ministry's website for looted art. The Jeu de Paume museum in Paris was the clearinghouse for all the art the Nazis collected around Europe.

A photo taken by the Germans in 1942 shows a room crammed with paintings. Using special software technology, the full, frontal view of a painting can be seen, even if only a side sliver of the work is visible in the photo.

"You see, now you can even read the signature on this one," says Bajou. "It's signed 'Picasso.' "

A Recent Success

Bajou says it was easy for big collectors to get back their works after the war; everything was well-documented.

"What's complicated is if you were just a normal guy and had maybe one valuable artwork that was in your family," says Bajou. "It's difficult to link the work of the person because most times during the war the families lost all their records and any photos or insurance claims — any proof that the art was theirs." The government's activism has already produced results. In a ceremony at the French Culture Ministry in March, six paintings were returned to 82-year-old Tom Selldorff of Boston.

Selldorff was just 6 when he saw his grandfather's prized art collection for the last time in Vienna in the 1930s.

"I only wish my grandfather were here to be able to be part of all this. But I'm sure he's watching from somewhere upstairs. So that's fine. Thank you very much," said Selldorff.

Selldorff's grandfather, Jewish industrialist Richard Neumann, fled to France in 1938. But he was soon forced to flee again, selling off his collection for a song. He made it to Cuba, alive but penniless. Records show his paintings were destined for a German version of the Louvre that Hitler planned in the Austrian town of Linz.

French Senator Corinne Bouchoux, a major force behind the new initiative, calls it France's moral duty for France to find the rightful owners of the art.

"This problem was sort of left in the freezer of history after 1950," she says. "It was the conjunction of two events that revived it: the fall of the Berlin Wall, which gave us access to the Soviet archives, and the Internet. Before the Internet, if you lived in Brazil and your family had missing works, you couldn't search the French collections of stolen art. Now you can."

But even with the Internet, it's still difficult, says Bajou.

He points to three paintings on the website by artist Fedor Lowenstein. They were considered "degenerate art," and Nazi records showed they had been destroyed. So no one ever looked for them, says Bajou.

He then saw them in the digitized Nazi photo of the looted paintings. Later he discovered the actual works in storage at the Pompidou Center. Now the French government is trying to return the paintings.

Lowenstein had no children, says Bajou, but he may have had a sibling, who may have had a child.

Will LACMA's new blueprint be grand, or 'glass underpants' — and does it matter?

Marc Haefele | Off-Ramp — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:13:07 -0700

LACMA's newest/oldest attraction: 'Levitated Mass,' which rolled into the museum in 2012.; Credit: Grant Slater/KPCC

Off-Ramp commentator and contributor Marc Haefele checks in with a commentary on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's plan to undergo a $650 million makeover.

The most trying thing about covering L.A. for an entire generation is seeing things that went badly the first time come around again. Like, the execs at the Department of Water and Power sneaking Sparkletts dispensers into their headquarters. Or, more recently, LACMA’s leader deciding it’s his duty to tear the place down.

The plan is to demolish two-thirds of the museum and build a new one — for a mere $650 million.

Last time it was a mere $300 million the LACMA board wanted to redo the place. That was just 11 years ago. The board proposed to reduce to rubble the original 1960s William L. Pereira galleries, as well is the Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer neo-Deco building of 1986. The $300 million would have spread Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’ parasol roof over a collection of new galleries. It failed to impress the critical public, of whom some —including me—wondered if that kind of funding mightn’t have been better applied to arts programs in the local schools, colleges and universities.

So the county cooled to Koolhaas. Now the demo sparkplug is Museum Director Michael Govan who, according to the Los Angeles Times, has been working ever since 2006 to accomplish what his predecessor failed to do.

Now, of course, we are talking a full two-thirds of a billion dollars, to be raised from people just like you and me — except with millions more to spend. Again, the Pereira and HHP buildings will get the chop. This time the favored architect is the Swiss Peter Zumthor, who’s kind of the Terrence Malick of his field: He’s done few projects, many of them thoroughly controversial — one recently was rejected by its intended Bavarian recipients, who called it “The Glass Underpants.”

Zumthor has done only two museums, both of them small, in Germany and Austria. I’ve never seen his work in person (I expect most of us haven’t), but from the photos on the web, Zumthor seems to like conventional modern exterior surfaces of concrete and glass, but does some really interesting interiors. We will have to wait for next month to see what he’s planned for our Museum Row. Maybe it will be tremendous, maybe it’ll be another Glass Underpants.

But that’s not the point, is it? The point is: Should our key museum be spending this kind of money on what is, after all, appearances, rather than content? According to the Times, there seems to be quite a lot of vacant space in the current museum, which that kind of money would do a great deal to fill up with worthy acquisitions or exhibitions on just about any scale. Donations on said scale to the above-mentioned nurseries of artistic learning would do more for Los Angeles as an arts center than would even a new museum designed by a reincarnated Michelangelo.

For that matter, what is wrong with the old museum? The Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer section got raves when it opened 27 years ago. The old Pereira buildings got panned, but they do a perfectly functional job of keeping the rain off the art and that art off the floor—and nowadays, the architecture of the '60s is coming back into fashion. What Govan and his ilksters seem to mind about our County Museum is its ragged sum of architectural parts, representing well over half a century of the diverse creativity of one of the world’s most stimulating cities.

But when you stop and think about it, what kind of museum could better represent the sprawling City of the Angels?