It's been more than two years since we explored the sublime pleasures of San Pedro Bay culture.
By Paul Duclos
Published: October, 2015
It’s been more than two years since we explored the sublime pleasures of San Pedro Bay culture. This easy getaway for Bay Crossings readers deserves another look.
Virgin America provides frequent daily flights from SFO to LAX, but you may wish to opt for another airline this fall. We suggest this chiefly because LAX Terminal 3 is crowded and unpleasant, and still haunted by the murders committed there in November 2013. Virgin’s “Loft” lounge, however, can offer some respite for the those willing to pay for it.
SFO’s new Terminal 3, meanwhile, has been getting raves in the travel press, and appears to popular with passengers too. United Airlines also seems to be getting its act together, seasoned travelers tell us. American Express card holders should also check out the Centurion Lounge. “Thank you, Roman Soldier.” For more info, visit thecenturionlounge.com.
Two major attractions in downtown L.A. this season inspired our visit: The opening of the Broad Museum and the Los Angles Opera’s season kickoff with Gianni Schicchi and Pagliacci.
Plácido Domingo starred in Woody Allen’s offbeat staging of Puccini’s comic masterpiece, and then Domingo conducted the conclusion of the double bill—Franco Zeffirelli’s epic production of Pagliacci.
Critics for the Los Angeles Daily News rightly called this “one for the record books.” We suspect that Moby-Dick, by San Francisco composer Jake Heggie, will be equally impressive. Performances begin on October 31. www.laopera.org
For the first time in its 40-year history, the postwar and contemporary art collection assembled by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad was shown to the public in its most comprehensive installation when the Broad Museum opened late last month.
Although many of the artworks in the internationally renowned 2,000-piece collection have been seen by the public in relative isolation through the Broad Art Foundation’s 30-year lending library to museums around the world, the inaugural installation at the Broad’s new landmark building on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles features a sweeping, chronological journey through its contemporary art collection that has never before been possible in such depth.
Founding Director Joanne Heyler, who is curating the inaugural installation, has selected more than 250 works—by over 60 artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger and Kara Walker—that best represent the Broad collection’s view of a half-century of contemporary art.
The three-story museum, designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, features 50,000 square feet of exhibition space on two floors. The inaugural installation will begin on the third floor, with its soaring 23-foot-high ceiling, filtered natural light and 35,000 square feet of column-free gallery space, giving visitors a constant and unobstructed view of the 318 skylights overhead. The third-floor installation presents a chronological journey from the 1950s through the 1990s, punctuated throughout by single-artist galleries. The installation will begin with classic 1960s works by Andy Warhol, as well as a luminous gallery of Cy Twombly painting and sculpture, and will track the Broad collection’s extraordinary strengths through its many decades.
The installation continues in the first-floor galleries, bringing the journey through contemporary art to the present with some of the most recent acquisitions and artworks, including Yayoi Kusama’s immersive Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away and a colorful, epic 82-foot-long painting by Takashi Murakami, a meditation on the recovery of Japan from the catastrophic 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
“This installation is an incredible opportunity to highlight the collection’s breadth and demonstrate in full force the Broads’ nearly five-decade engagement with art,” Heyler said. “We are not only able to present exciting moments of the collection’s well-known depth in artists like Twombly, Lichtenstein, Koons, and Warhol, but we also have explored interconnections between artists, and are showing works not previously associated with the collection and shared for the first time with Los Angeles audiences, including many of our most recent acquisitions.” www.thebroad.org
While we enjoyed our stay at the downtown Millennial Biltmore last time in L.A., we headed for another legendary hotel in Hollywood this time: Chateau Marmont. Like the Biltmore, this is an old structure, and not particularly “family friendly”—something Cultural Currents prefers. Even smoking is permitted on the porticos and patios. In a word, civilized.
Modeled after an infamous royal residence in France’s Loire Valley, Chateau Marmont caters to a highly discriminating, international clientele desiring an experience at once luxurious and unique.
Promoters here also speak of the “tarnished patina” as part of its charm, but others insist the place may be haunted. The list of guests damaged and or departed can be found on a routine search, but we did not witness any dark doings on our trip.
Poolside cocktails and cigars, and no crying babies. www.chateaumarmont.com
Follow Paul Duclos’ Cultural Currents online with his blog at: paulduclosonsanfranciscoculture.blogspot.com
