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Towering Voices at 9/11 Flight 93 Memorial
This Sunday September 9, 2018, The National Park Service will mark the dedication of "The Tower of Voices," a 93-foot high tower of wind chimes that stands in Pennsylvania, at the entrance to the 2,200 square National Memorial Park dedicated to the 40 heroes of Flight 93 who perished on 9/11. View Original Article -
The Getty Museum's Freakin' Amazing Ancient Hebrew Manuscript
"Freakin" Amazing!"Those are words I never expected to hear from Rabbi Steven Leder, the senior Rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles (the congregation to which I belong).Rabbi Leder was marveling at the Getty Museum's latest acquisition, The 13th Century Rothschild Pentateuch (which is also the first Hebrew manuscript in the Getty's collection). View Original Article -
Woven Women: Helen and Dido Tapestries at the Norton Simon
As I stood before the magnificent tapestries and tapestry cartoons (full sized drawings made in preparation for weaving) on display in "Once Upon a Tapestry: Woven Tales of Helen and Dido" at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (on view until May 27, 2019) I wondered if during the Middle Ages persons of means looked at the woven narratives unfolding serially across larger wall hangings as we do movies, TV and our smartphones â as entertainments, as chronicles of human… -
MØ Waves, MØ Better Sound
Danish singer-songwriter MØ (Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen ) was singing "I assure you I would dye my hair in crazy colors just to make you smile," from her song Nights With You, dancing and striking poses that were silhouetted on a giant scrim behind her as her band played and a sophisticated light show with visual effects enhanced her performance. In motions both sinuous and purposefully awkward, full of confidence and power, MØ stalked the stage of the Wiltern,… -
The Art to Being David Van Eyssen
Recently, I went to an art opening in Santa Monica, where a doorman stood guard, clipboard in hand like at some private party or club. A spiral staircase led to a basement gallery where new works by David Van Eyssen were on display that combined film and still images layered upon each other and interacting in various ways, projected on screens or shown on flat screen TVs.At times, there were video images that unfolded in a loop and appeared among… -
The Mariinsky: A Dream of a Ballet at the Segestrom
The Mariinsky Ballet performs La Bayadere View Original Article -
Carl Bernstein Delivers Inaugural Beck Lecture In Investigative Journalism
This past Sunday October, 27, 2019 Carl Bernstein delivered the inaugural Nick Beck Investigative Journalism Lecture at Los Angeles City College (LACC), telling a standing-room-only crowd that journalism is how we "arrive at the best obtainable version of the truth."Bernstein, celebrated for breaking the Watergate scandal with Bob Woodward as a young reporter at the Washington Post (and portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the movie "All The President's Men," have since served as Washington Bureau... View Original Article -
The Gateway Arch is a Tourist Must-do
There are some tourist experiences that need doing, such as walking the Sydney Harbour Bridge or going up the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. And when in St, Louis, you"ve got to go up in the Arch, America's tallest man-made monument, a catenary curve 630 feet up in the air, as wide as it is high.Truth to tell, I"d gone to the top of the Gateway arch almost thirty years ago. All I really recall is being seated… -
Pieces of R. B. Kitaj
It is hard to believe that twelve years have passed since the death of R. B. Kitaj, the at-times-controversial artist who coined the term "The London School" about his fellow contemporary artists in Britain (including Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach) and who spent his last years living in Los Angeles. A new exhibition at LA Louver gallery in Venice, CA, "R.B. Kitaj: Collages and Prints, 1964-1975" reminds us of Kitaj's great talent and his restless, obsessive intelligence expressed in works… -
Netflix Debuts "The Devil Next Door"
Netflix's just-released documentary The Devil Next Door is a true crime mystery about John Demjanjuk, a Cleveland autoworker who was discovered to be a Nazi death camp guard and was tried over a 40-year period in the United States, Israel and Germany in a roller-coaster of convictions and appeals - as he denied any and all participation and guilt. Demjanjuk died in a German nursing home, in 2012, age 91, awaiting the appeal of his German conviction.As someone who covered… -
Love Rocks NYC 2020: A Pandemic Of Caring
This is an article about caring in the time of Coronavirus.This is an article about a benefit concert that was supposed to happen on March 12, 2020: the 4th Annual Love Rocks NYC benefit produced by Fashion Designer John Varvatos, multi-hyphenate Greg Williamson (Real Estate, Concert Production and God's Love We Deliver trustee), and Event Producer Nicole Rechter that was to be held at the Beacon Theater in New York to raise funds for God's Love We Deliver, an organization… -
Concerts At Home
Over the last five weeks I have had some great music experiences at home, music that has lifted my spirit and fed my soul, distracted me from the increasingly grim reality of the coronavirus death tolls, and been a companion during self-created "lunch hours" and late-night evening entertainment.Every day (or in my case, most nights) one has but to scroll through Instagram to see regular or occasional performances from home by James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Carole King, John Doe, Larkin…