Their body temperatures were almost the same as a human’s. Some had plumage and the ability to make noises. Some had footprints and tail shapes about which we were wrong until recently.

We’re fairly sure about what killed them (fallout from a meteor crash) and what they evolved into. (Hint: It has feathers).  But much of their 230 million years on the planet remains a mystery.

You could fill an encyclopedia with what scientists are still discovering about dinosaurs. But for the past several years, Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, has had something even bigger in mind.

This month, a newly renovated, 14,000-square-foot Dinosaur Hall will open, doubling the dinosaur display space at the museum. The permanent exhibition, which opens to members July 10 and to the general public July 16, will feature some 20 new major mountings from the museum’s expanded collection—from an extraordinary trio of young Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons to the smallest dinosaur ever discovered in North America. It also will reflect the ways in which technology has revolutionized paleontological research.

“This is not a chronological journey through time, and this is not setting animals in dioramas,” says Chiappe, who led much of the fieldwork responsible for the exhibit and curated it as an invitation to visitors to regard the towering fossils with a scientific eye.  

“This is, ‘How do we know what we know? How do we reconstruct the life and, in the end, the death of these animals?’ This is an up-to-date, state-of-the-art understanding of the lives of the dinosaurs.”

In other words, this is not your father’s dinosaur museum. The new Dinosaur Hall will fill two rooms with nearly 300 specimens collected over nearly a century, with at least a third of the major pieces never before having been shown to the general public.

Displays will include background on how technological advances such as CT scans and particle accelerators have, for example, helped scientists understand the internal organs of dinosaurs and deduce the original colors of their skin and feathers. Many of the pieces have yielded important new discoveries and resulted in published research.

“Some amazing things were unearthed in the course of doing this hall,” says John A. Long, vice president of research and collections at the museum, which operates not just as a showcase, but also as a major research institution.

And, Long adds, because of improvements in conservation methods, “you can see the bones better—they’re better prepared.”  

Among the showpieces will be the dramatic grouping of young T. rex skeletons—baby, early adolescent and teenager—that, taken together, make up the world’s only depiction of the famous carnivore’s growth pattern.

Also featured will be one of the most anatomically accurate depictions to date of the massive Triceratops, culled from several finds that included a completely articulated set of front leg, or “arm”, bones—a rarity that has contributed a fresh understanding of how the massive creature walked and lived.

Both the Triceratops bones and the oldest T. rex—a gangly, 33½-foot-tall teenager nicknamed “Thomas” that boasts one of the most complete skeletons in existence—were collected by Chiappe and his crews during field work in Wyoming and Montana. But the displays also include the museum’s very first specimen (a lower jaw from a Canadian duck-billed dinosaur that was collected in 1919), and a number of significant finds collected for the museum by the late Harley Garbani, a self-taught fossil hunter from Hemet who died at 88 in April.

 ”He toured the galleries a couple of months ago, but it would have been wonderful if he could have been around for the opening,” Chiappe says wistfully.

Additionally, there are killer sea reptiles known as Mosasaurs, who, upon closer inspection by Chiappe and his colleagues were recently found to have had flukes, not long, tapering tails as scientists once imagined. Chiappe and Long say the information was there all along, but no one noticed it because the fossils had been in storage since they were found in Kansas and acquired during the 1960s.

“We have one of the best specimens in the world,” Long says, “and it had been locked up until we dusted it off and prepared it for this gallery. In doing so, we found skin and pigments and bronchial tubes and a wealth of new information, including a big tail fluke, like a tuna or a shark, that changes what we know about the way they swam and hunted.” (Stay tuned for further developments on this front. Museum sources say another blockbuster announcement about this part of the exhibit could come within the next few weeks.)

The Dinosaur Hall is part of an ambitious plan to expand and modernize the Natural History Museum, which celebrates its centennial in 2013. A groundbreaking “Age of Mammals” exhibition opened last year; a new California history hall and several other permanent exhibitions, including a 63-foot-long fin whale specimen, are anticipated before the end of next year.

Chiappe, an internationally renowned paleontologist who was recruited 12 years ago from New York’s American Museum of Natural History to supervise Los Angeles’ dinosaur collection, says the permanent exhibit had been under consideration almost from the moment of his arrival, “but we’ve worked intensively in the last five or six years.”

A native of Argentina, Chiappe says he grew up as “a city boy” in Buenos Aires, but learned from his grandfather to love the outdoors.

“We’d go hunting and fishing,” he recalls. “For a while, I wanted to be a biologist, and I went to university with that in mind. But then I met a classmate who was into paleontology, and we started going out on weekends, collecting Ice Age fossils, like saber-toothed cats and mastodons, amazing animals that don’t exist anymore. I thought it was incredibly cool.”

Chiappe has since done extensive fieldwork and research, particularly into the evolutionary links between dinosaurs and their modern counterparts, birds. The Dinosaur Hall also will address those connections.

“We will have a taxidermy pelican in a glass case, and a swan, an ostrich and a pelican skeleton,” he says. We will have a mural featuring emus, and we’ll talk about hummingbirds as dinosaurs—the idea that dinosaurs are in your backyard, and if you want to see one today, they’re right outside their window. You only need to look.”

Chiappe’s favorite displays? Well, he says, his favorite dinosaur is T. rex, and his 4 1/2-year-old son’s is Triceratops. But No. 1 on his Dinosaur Hall hit parade is the “Fossil Wall,” a 43-foot display case with nearly 100 specimens, from dinosaur bones and droppings to dinosaur eggs and skin.

“It’s beautiful from an aesthetic point of view,” he says, “and it expresses the wealth of our collection—it’s really an art installation using dinosaur body parts.”

What does he hope the public will glean from the museum’s scientific take on his favorite subject?

“I’d like people to understand that they were living animals,” he says. “We know them as skeletons. We see their bones in museums. But they were alive once. They suffered and had illnesses and diseases, and found mates and reproduced and did everything we associate with living animals, whether they are our pets or ourselves.”

Long, a fellow paleontologist who came to the museum two years ago from Australia, calls the new Dinosaur Hall “one of the most exciting dinosaur exhibits in the world,” and says it has been “a dream come true to be part of a team presenting a gallery like this.”

But, he adds, “this really is Luis’ baby.”

“It’s obviously once in a lifetime that a curator is essentially setting the course on the steering wheel for a major exhibit like this,” agrees Chiappe. “I know I won’t have another opportunity like this.”

Posted 7/7/11

If you can’t wait for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s upcoming Tim Burton retrospective, just remember: Before there was “Edward Scissorhands” or “The Nightmare Before Christmas“, there was the French symbolist Odilon Redon.

Redon may not be as familiar as the director whose show opens May 29 at LACMA. But a special parallel exhibition there opening April 16 will confirm the suspicions of any art lover who ever saw a connection between the two. Entitled “Burton Selects,” the show was guest curated by Burton himself from the museum’s permanent collection and offers a glimpse of the inspiration behind his goth-whimsical point of view.

“It’s art that Tim Burton responds to visually,” says Britt Salvesen, the LACMA curator who is organizing both “Burton Selects” and Burton’s much larger main show, which drew record crowds when it opened last year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Running through November 13 at LACMA’s Rifkind Gallery, the sidebar show will feature 38 prints and drawings picked by Burton from a long list of art already housed at LACMA. (Check out a gallery of Burton’s art, and some of his art selections, below.)

“It’s an eclectic range of things,” Salvesen says. “You can see motifs—skeletons, figures transforming from one thing into another—that transition into his own work.”

Francisco Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters will be there, Salvesen says, as will important pieces from the 1920s by German artists Otto Dix and George Grosz. Burton made special mention, she says, of Redon’s “The Eye”, “Like A Strange Balloon”, “Mounts Toward Infinity”, which Salvesen calls “a great image,” and the museum was glad to supply it. More than 25 artists are represented, she adds, ranging from a huge poster for the 1931 Fritz Lang thriller “M” to tiny, 4-inch-tall caricatures by the 17th century baroque printmaker Jacques Callot.

“He seemed to be drawn most to work from the late 19th and early 20th century, which wasn’t entirely surprising. I knew he had an affinity for German Expressionism, of which LACMA has one of the world’s best collections,” Salvesen says.

Although the Burton retrospective, which features more than 700 pieces of his own art, has already traveled to Melbourne and Toronto, “Burton Selects” is unique to LACMA, Salvesen added. “We’re the only venue that’s an encyclopedic museum, rather than just a museum of modern art or the moving image.”

The show also will help bridge the gap between the fine art more commonly associated with institutions like LACMA and the work of someone like Burton, whose professional training was as an animator at CalArts and who is perceived more as a purveyor of popular culture.  “This is really a way to tie him into the broader museum context,” Salvesen says.

Burton is among an increasing number of Hollywood figures whose art has recently crossed over into museums, which have benefitted from the chance to attract more mainstream art lovers, but faced questions about the potential for the artist’s celebrity to trump the importance of the art works.

Last year, the Museum of Contemporary Art featured a survey of Dennis Hopper’s photography and paintings curated by the painter-director Julian Schnabel, and the Max Ernst Museum in Germany presented 150 paintings, drawings and lithographs by the director David Lynch.

Burton’s May show will feature more than 700 individual works from Burton’s own archives and those of his collaborators, including paintings, photographs, film and video. Running through Halloween at LACMA’s new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, it will include a giant topiary deer from the 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands”, a 21-foot-tall creature called “Balloon Boy” and a special room with a yet-to-be-announced installation by Burton.

Reviews of the New York show complained about the cramped quarters at MOMA. But LACMA is expected to easily accommodate its three sections—“Surviving Burbank,” “Beautifying Burbank” and “Beyond Burbank”—which were named for the community where Burton grew up.

LACMA also will present screenings of all Burton’s feature films in its Bing Theater during the run of the exhibition. And the director is expected to make an appearance, though it will be brief because Burton still has his day job: He’ll be shooting a new film version of “Dark Shadows“, the gothic soap from the 1970s.

Salvesen says the show “could be loosely compared to an exhibition we did at LACMA about the films of Salvador Dali—Dali did come to Hollywood for an intriguing period—and that project sort of gave us some experience with this kind of show. We’ll be looking at similar projects in the future. One in the works for 2013 is the avant-garde filmmaker Hans Richter. It’ll be a little bit different from Tim Burton, but it will bring film and experimentation into our galleries.”

Tickets to the main show go on sale May 2, but LACMA members get priority ticketing and admission, and can make reservations starting March 30. The museum also is offering new members two free tickets if they join today.

Here’s a gallery of Tim Burton’s art and some of his LACMA picks:

Posted 3/22/11

It’s been a real nail-biter for fans of LACMA’s beleaguered classic film program, but it looks like this saga may have a Hollywood ending after all.

Not the cavalry, but Film Independent and the New York Times are riding to the rescue, and in true cliffhanger fashion, just in the nick of time.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship, with Film Independent handling the film programming side of things and the New York Times underwriting the effort. The new arrangement comes as the museum’s film program has struggled in recent years to find its financial footing and build an audience.

Both organizations bring a lot to the table. L.A.-based Film Independent is the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival. LACMA’s tapping the outfit for its programming and curatorial expertise, its marketing and audience-building acumen, and its ties to prominent cutting-edge filmmakers (Film Independent’s president is Bill Condon, director of “Gods and Monsters” and “Kinsey;” its board members include actors Laura Dern, Forest Whitaker and Don Cheadle.)

Plans call for Film Independent’s programming department and a new lead programmer, yet to be named, to work with LACMA’s director and curatorial staff to assemble film series that both showcase artistic achievement and contribute to the cultural conversation about movies.

And, as the sole presenting sponsor of LACMA’s new Film Series, the New York Times will be bringing the national newspaper’s heft and prestige to the project while increasing the paper’s visibility in the world’s film capital.

Speaking by phone from London, Michael Govan, LACMA’s chief executive, explained that the Film Independent-New York Times partnership will be starting out as a one-year commitment, but that Film Independent already is busy developing a 3-to-5-year plan. “It’s been happening pretty quickly,” Govan said. “We’d been doing our analysis and looking at what we should be doing moving into the future. We’d talked to Film Independent early in the beginning, and lately we kind of circled around again and decided they were the perfect choice.”

Govan said the arrangement is “open-ended.” “The idea is to grow the program,” he said, adding that the New York Times has signaled its interest in expanding its initial first-year commitment into a longer relationship.

LACMA’s new partnership is effective immediately. Look for some new programming in September, set to include a wide variety of offerings including dramatic features and documentaries; rarities from the archives; themed series showcasing particular artists; conversations with filmmakers; international showcases; family films; and special guest-curated programs. LACMA is also laying plans for monthly post-screening receptions to create a salon-like setting in which aficionados, artists and the general public can mix and mingle.

LACMA’s current consulting curator in the Film Department, Ian Birnie, is moving on, but patrons will soon enjoy his final series for LACMA, a Tim Burton summer film festival offered in conjunction with a major exhibition and retrospective of Burton’s dark and droll art, sculpture and production design work that opens May 29.

The museum’s popular Tuesday film matinees and individual film programs keyed to special exhibitions will continue.

The new partnership comes as LACMA prepares to host an expanded version of a traveling exhibition and film festival, currently showing in Paris at the Cinémathèque Français, featuring the works of Stanley Kubrick, whose works ranging from “Dr. Strangelove” to “A Clockwork Orange” are widely considered among the most influential in the history of cinema.

LACMA’s longer-range film programming plans are gradually coming into focus. Govan’s goal is to develop “a larger footprint for film” at the museum, in which screenings and exhibitions are at the center of a rotating galaxy of related curatorial, scholarly and social activities.

The new venture situates LACMA in the heart of L.A.’s cultural scene, but as part of an ensemble, not as a soloist. “We’ve been thinking about it a lot, that as times have gotten tougher, non-profit organizations should be doing more collaboration, “ Govan said, calling it “ a viable and exciting strategy in a time when resources for the arts are shrinking.”

Posted 4/7/11

Will kids go wild for a machine that mimics the mouth of a pill bug? How durable should a soil sifter be if you want it to last for more than a field trip or two? Will people examine a compost pile without an invitation?

Inquiring minds at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County want to know.

In less than a month, the museum’s wildly popular Butterfly Pavilion will open for the spring and summer. In past years, the action has all been inside, in the fluttering realm of some 55 species of moths and butterflies.

But this April 10 when the Pavilion opens, the creatures with wings won’t be the only ones under observation. In an effort to perfect displays planned for the new North Campus gardens that will open in 2013 at the museum, an assortment of prototype gadgets and interactive science exhibits will be tested throughout the summer in the outdoor space around the greenhouse-like structure.

And museum workers are looking to visitors, young and old, for help.

“We’ll be making observations on how people use these interactive exhibits,” says Lila Higgins, the museum’s manager of citizen science and live animals. “We’ll be talking to visitors, listening to their feedback.”

New displays will be set up, one or two at a time, to see how visitors use them and to pinpoint aspects that need tweaking. Pint-sized focus group (aka kids) are especially invited to weigh in.

Museum officials hope the new garden—part of a sweeping renovation that began last year with the “Age of Mammals” exhibition and that this summer will double the museum’s dinosaur exhibits with a new Dinosaur Hall—will teach visitors more about Southern California’s natural environment and give the museum experience a novel outdoor component. Proposed areas include a Home Garden with vegetables and fruit, an Urban Wilderness featuring many native California flora and fauna and a “Get Dirty Zone” where kids can, for example, play in a dirt pile.

Interactivity, however, is considered to be key, and museum staffers have spent months brainstorming ideas for displays, Higgins says.

“I personally love looking through compost piles and finding little beetles and grubs in there,” she says, “but will other people want to do that?

Ideas that have made it to the prototype stage include a butterfly counter, a periscope that will give children a birds-eye view of the landscape, a gizmo that will let kids sift soil and—dear to Higgins’ heart—a heart machine that will demonstrate how pill bugs break down leaves to help create compost.

“Everybody knows that worms aerate the soil, but not everyone knows what pill bugs do,” says Higgins. “So we were all around the table, with ideas flying around, and we knew we were going to have this Get Dirty Zone, and so we started talking about what pill bugs do. Well, they shred leaves. So what if a kid could have the chance to be like a pill bug? Maybe turn a crank and see that a pill bug’s mouth is like a leaf shredder?”

Within a few months, they had a prototype from Cinnabar California Inc, the Los Angeles firm that designed and built the Age of Mammals exhibit. Devised so that children as young as 5 can access it, it’s a metal mechanism in a wooden box that demonstrates the mechanics of the bug’s mouth.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen anything like it anywhere in the world,” says Higgins. “Maybe it’s a bit wacky, but the first time I saw the mock-up—well, when I see a kid use it, I’m going to be so excited.”

Posted 3/22/11

Like many stars of a certain age, they no longer get out much. Still, as Oscar season approaches, they deserve their due. Some made history with Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. Some were themselves Academy Award-winners.

True, most have spent the past several years in a vault in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. But the 250 or so historic movie costumes—owned, improbably, by Los Angeles County—represent one of the most well preserved aggregations of stardom in Hollywood.

“The bulk of people don’t know about it, but it’s a very important collection,” says Glenn Brown, archivist at the MGM Corporate Archives. “Its pieces are from some of the earliest days of film, things from the ‘20s and ’30s, donated by the stars themselves. Things you hardly ever find anywhere.”

Chaplin’s “Tramp” costume is there. So are Fred Astaire’s tap shoes, Charlton Heston’s “Ben Hur” tunic and the green-sprigged dress (battered but unbowed) that Scarlett O’Hara wore in “Gone With The Wind” at the barbecue at Twelve Oaks. There’s also the pink Howard Greer ball gown that Pickford wore in her first talkie, “Coquette.”

The Natural History Museum has amassed not only many of the most important costumes from the earliest days of the movies, but also a trove of historic film props and other movie mementos, from Lon Chaney’s makeup kit to preserved locks of Pickford’s golden hair, lopped off when she famously bobbed it. Back in the day, such items were considered so insignificant that studios routinely burned, tossed or reused them.

Beth Werling, who manages the collection along with a wide range of three-dimensional artifacts for the museum, says it’s “the biggest collection of its kind in a public institution.”  That “public” qualifier is important, historians say, because in recent decades, Hollywood memorabilia has become increasingly privatized at institutions like the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and in individual collections, such as one owned by actress Debbie Reynolds.

“Things are everywhere,” says Shelly Foote, a longtime historian in the Smithsonian Institutions’ costume collection. The county’s collection is essential for pieces from the ‘20s and ‘30s, says Foote, who turned to the Natural History Museum in researching her forthcoming book on the designer Greer.

Of course, a public institution best known for dinosaurs and rock collections might be the last place most people would go digging for Hollywood glamour.

“But when the Natural History Museum was founded in 1913,” says curator Werling, “it was called the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. So we’ve collected Los Angeles history since the very beginning.”

The movie collection began in 1930, she says, after studios and stars in the nascent industry began donating items—some just to get rid of them, others because prescient museum officials felt they might be of historical significance someday.

“The then-curator simply contacted everyone and anyone in the industry at the time and asked for donations,” says Werling. Typically, she and others say, such requests elicited shrugs and amusement.

“Costumes were a means to an end,” explains Deborah Landis, director of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA. “The movie was all that mattered. Just as sets are broken up and props go back to the prop house, costumes were reused and re-dyed, and the hems were cut and remade, and nothing was kept because nothing was valued.”

Werling credits that benign disregard for the museum’s unparalleled cache of Chaplin memorabilia, donated for the most part by the actor himself.

“He was a very, shall we say, cautious individual when it came to money and I don’t think he would have ever given anything away if he had any idea what these items would later be worth,” says Werling.

“But the motion picture industry was only about 25 years old then, and it was the beginning of the studio era. It was still being argued whether it was even an art form. And I think people were just flattered to think that anyone saw what they were doing as something worth saving.”

As a result, the county’s collection ranges from the roller skates Chaplin wore in “Modern Times” to his burlap boots from “Gold Rush.” “He donated his Tramp costume from ‘City Lights’ and, as a result, we have the only complete one in still in existence,” Werling says.

Since then, she says, items have come from a variety of sources. Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal, donated a number of early items. A more recent cache came from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after curators there refocused their costume collection more on couture and fashion. Still others were donated by collectors who decided their items deserved museum-level care.

A motion picture costume is more than just clothing, says veteran costume designer Jeffrey Kurland, who designed the costumes from last year’s sci-fi thriller, “Inception”.

“It’s character-driven. It helps build a visual picture of a character,” he says. “Think of Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone With The Wind’ in that barbecue dress, that garden print, so young and frivolous and puffy. That’s how we meet her. And then watch the progression as war comes and her character changes.

“The clothes become slimmer and tighter, until there she is toward the end, in that garnet red dress with Rhett Butler. Think of the line, the fit, the silhouette. Look where she has finally traveled. The clothes show her character’s arc.”

Local museum-goers have seen little in recent years of the county’s collection, partly because of space constraints and partly because of the fragility of the costumes themselves. The barbecue dress from “Gone With The Wind”, for example—which came to the museum from LACMA—is undergoing extensive repair work because time has all but shattered the costume’s lining, says Werling.

But mostly the collection has remained backstage because of an ongoing rebuilding and transformation project leading up to the Natural History Museum’s 2013 Centennial. So far, the initiative has restored and seismically retrofitted the Beaux Arts museum building and added the new “Age of Mammals” exhibit. But construction has closed the small area where the costumes used to be shown, a few at a time, in glass cases.

A new California history hall is expected in late 2012, just before the museum’s centennial celebration. When it opens, the public can expect to see a lot more of Hollywood, says Werling. Until then, the public’s best hope is to look for the items that are frequently placed on loan to other exhibitions.

Or look for events like the one set for February 4-5 at William S. Hart Park in Newhall—a “ChaplinFest” celebrating the 75^th anniversary of “Modern Times,” whose closing scene, with its poignant rendition of the song “Smile,” was filmed nearby on the Sierra Highway.

It was one of Chaplin’s most important films, depicting the tragicomic breakdown of a factory worker beset by the dehumanization of the industrial era. At one point, in fact, the Tramp is swallowed up by the giant gears of the assembly line and run through the machine in his striped workman’s outfit.

On display at Hart Park will be those iconic overalls Chaplin wore—ready for their close-up, even now.

Contemporary art lovers can’t stroll through Eli and Edythe Broad’s collection just yet. But they can take an incredible early spin through the building that will house it. Architectural renderings of the new museum, to be built on Grand Avenue next to Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles, were released today and accompanied by a “fly-through” animated video conveying the look, feel and setting for the Broads’ renowned collection, which includes works by Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. The architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, envision a striking honeycomb exterior “veil” and a dramatic column-free top floor gallery for the museum, to be known simply as The Broad. Construction of the museum is expected to begin in late summer and take two years to complete. The board of governors for the new museum also was announced today.

Click on the image below to see the video from the Broad Art Foundation:

Posted 1/06/11

They grow up so fast, don’t they? But by this summer, the growth stages of the Tyrannosaurus rex—from the terrible twos of dinosaur toddlerhood to the menacing stance of the strapping young adult—will be on permanent display in the Natural History Museum’s new Dinosaur Hall.

Like some kind of prehistoric “My Three Sons,” the exhibit will showcase the life and times of a spectacular trio of T. rexes who once roamed what is now Montana. On display will be the fossil remains of the youngest T. rex ever discovered, a 66-pound, two-year-old dubbed Baby T. Rex; a rare 14-year-old 4,000-pounder known as Juvenile T. Rex; and 18-year-old “Thomas,” weighing in at 7,200 pounds and 33.5 feet long and boasting one of the most complete skeletons ever collected.

Officials at the Los Angeles County museum, who hosted a media preview of the “T. Rex Growth Series” exhibit this week, say it will be a “showstopper” that aims to surprise and enlighten visitors as it provides a fresh, imagination-stirring glimpse of dinosaur life back in the (Late Cretaceous) day.

The new hall, set to open in July, will double the museum’s dinosaur display space. It is part of an ambitious expansion and modernization plan for the museum as it heads into its centennial in 2013. The museum’s groundbreaking new “Age of Mammals” exhibition opened last year.

Posted 1/20/11

Brazilian dancers at the Music Center? Shepard Fairey deejaying after parties? Seminars for Westside photo connoisseurs?

If it’s January, then it must be Los Angeles Arts Month. And if you weren’t downtown last Wednesday for the lunch hour kickoff with Cirque du Soleil and the guys from Los Lobos, then there’s still plenty of culture to catch at once-a-year bargain prices.

Museum shops are offering discount coupons. The Pasadena Playhouse has orchestra seats for half-price. Tickets to upcoming performances of “The Turn of the Screw” are two-for-the-price-of-one at the Los Angeles Opera. And you can catch the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 20% off for selected concerts. Plus, admission to both Gettys, The Hammer and about a dozen other big museums will be free during the last weekend of the month.

Now in its third year, L.A. Arts Month was launched by city government and arts groups to promote local art and culture. It has since expanded to encourage patronage of the arts countywide.

“This is a way for families to get out and see what L.A. has to offer,” says Allison Starcher, taking a momentary break from her job as show manager for the 16th annual Los Angeles Art Show, an anchor event from January 19-23 that is expected to draw some 40,000 visitors to the Los Angeles Convention Center.  “L.A. has amazing museums, incredible theaters and wonderful galleries. There are very few cities where you can experience so much.”

The L.A. Art Show will, as always, run the gamut, opening with a gala benefit and that exclusive after-party hosted by Fairey, with free admission for kids under 17. The show will boast rare images by Henri Cartier Bresson, first-time exhibitions from galleries in China, a Sunday conversation with the punk graphic artist Robert Williams, and installations by street muralists Vox Humana, not to mention tours of the public art in L.A.’s own Metro stations.

Also in town this month will be the 20^th annual International Los Angeles Photographic Art Exposition, the Brazilian dance troupe Grupo Corpo, a Films 4 Change documentary and food tasting at the Broad Stage, and a vast array of ongoing exhibitions and shows.

And that’s not even counting the buildup to the much-anticipated “Pacific Standard Time” exhibition—years in the making—about L.A.’s role in the post-World War II art world. Culture fans will have to wait until October for that one, but it’s already a looming presence. Massive and region-wide, it’s planned as a sort of collaborative blitz of art shows on a single subject, spanning Southern California and involving more than 50 art institutions.

Posted 1/12/11

Arachnophobes, you can skip this story.

For the rest of you, the Natural History Museum’s annual Spider Pavilion is set to open September 26. The six-week exhibition features hundreds of spiders inside the long greenhouse on the lawn outside the museum.

But when it comes to spider season, the museum knows no bounds—including your backyard. Once again, museum scientists are asking the public to participate in its “Spider Survey.”

The survey was launched in 2001 as one of the community science projects the museum uses to engage the public in gathering scientific information about Los Angeles’ ecosystem. Over the years, the museum has received 5,000 specimens from citizen entomologists, who’ve mailed or hand-delivered spiders they’ve found around their homes or schools.

Along the way, a few rarities have been discovered, including the dangerous brown widow spider, which is native to South Africa but was first found locally by a survey participant in Torrance. Los Angeles is a hotspot for such exotic species, says entomology curator Brian Brown, because they sometimes hitch rides on cargo coming into L.A.’s ports.

(If you’re new to the survey, click here for a how-to guide from the Natural History Museum.)

This year’s survey comes with a new request to spider hunters. Brown and his team are asking volunteers to create “pitfall traps” to capture “micro spiders” that have been overlooked in past surveys.

Although the museum plans to post detailed instructions on its website in the days ahead, the basic idea is to bury a plastic cup up to its lip and then pour in a little anti-freeze to immobilize unsuspecting itsy-bitsy spiders that fall inside—spiders that are nearly impossible to see, let alone capture by hand.

“It’s quite possible we can find some species that are new to science,” Brown says.

Beyond the potential of scoring new kinds of spiders, the goal of the survey and the pavilion is to teach visitors how beneficial and harmless these creatures actually are, according to the pavilion’s creator, Brent Karner, manager of invertebrate living collections, who’s popularly known as “Brent the Bug Guy.”

Dealing with human fears and mistaken beliefs about spiders is a big part of the project, Karner said. Inside the airy greenhouse-like pavilion visitors can get up close and personal with the giant wood spider from Malaysia, as well as two species of spiny-backed spiders from the Southeast U.S.

“I’m surprised at the number of people who say they have a very strong fear of spiders but who come anyway so they can work to overcome it,” says Karner, adding that full-blown arachnophobia is actually pretty rare. A mild to medium fear of spiders is common, with adults tending to be more scared than kids.

The Spider Pavilion is replacing the summer exhibit Butterfly Pavilion, a transition that represents a circle-of-life moment as the old tenants give way to the new.

“The butterflies are being eaten as we speak,” Karner said rather scientifically.

Tickets for the exhibition are included with museum admission. For those, who just want to see the pavilion, the rate is reduced—$3 for adults, $2 for seniors and students and $1 for children ages 5-12.

Posted 9/16/10