Made in LA

Los Angeles is brimming with hidden treasures and at the Hammer Museum’s second biennial show, “Made in L.A. 2014,” some of the city’s best-kept art secrets will be revealed, as reported in the LA Times

“Consider the selections from the Los Angeles Museum of Art — not to be confused with Wilshire Boulevard’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Tucked down an alleyway, wedged

against the steel siding of an Eagle Rock garage, the LAMOA is a tiny, 9

la-la-et-made-in-la-2014-02-jpg-20140218-by-12-foot open-air wooden hut built by the artist Alice Könitz.

“Artworks from LAMOA’s permanent collection of local and international artists, including some of Könitz’s own sculptural installations, will be on display at the Hammer’s ambitious “Made in L.A. 2014.”

“The exhibition, which opens June 15, features emerging and under-recognized artists from the L.A. area. On Wednesday, the museum announced the lineup of 35 artists and collectives. Among them are emerging artists Marina Pinsky and Devin Kenny; AM radio station KCHUNG, which is also the Hammer’s public engagement artist-in-residence; and more widely known artists who include Gabriel Kuri, Wu Tsang and Judy Fiskin.

“The inaugural “Made in L.A.” show, a 2012 collaboration between the Hammer and the art space LAXART, took place in three locations: the Hammer, LAXART and the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park. It featured 60 artists.  Continue reading “Made in LA”

Museum merger mania in Los Angeles

This has been a rough couple of years in the Los Angeles musuem world, replete wiht power struggles, board rebellions, curators euphemistically resigning, and the public wondering what the hell is going on. At least the city gained one very huge rock. From outside the LA bubble, the New York Tmes put it this way:imgres-1

“The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which has been battered in recent months with defections of board members, criticism of its direction and precarious finances, would merge with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art under a proposal by the latter museum.

“Lacma’s director, Michael Govan, and its board’s co-chairmen, Terry Semel and Andrew Gordon, proposed the union in a letter dated Feb. 24,according to The Los Angeles Times. Were the two institutions to merge, it said, it envisioned Lacma’s keeping its two downtown locations and operating under MOCA’s name. Continue reading “Museum merger mania in Los Angeles”

Trouble for cats at Hemingway Museum

Apparently, visitors to Key West’s Ernst Hemingway Museum are often tickled by all of the weird cats the place has. Yes cats.  in fact, pthe lace is overrun with cats who all have six toes

“The so-called Hemingway cats — who for generations have stretched out on Hemingway’s couch, curled up on his pillow and mugged for the Papa-razzi,”  reports todays New York Times. “Tour guides recount over and over how the gypsy cats descend from Snowball, a fluffy white cat who was a gift to the Hemingways.images Seafaring legend has it that polydactyl cats (those with extra toes) bring a bounty of luck, which certainly explains their own pampered good fortune.

“But it seems the charms of even 45 celebrated six-toed cats have proved powerless against one implacable foe: federal regulators.

“The museum’s nine-year bid to keep the cats beyond the reach of the Department of Agriculture ended in failure this month. The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the agency has the power to regulate the cats under the Animal Welfare Act, which applies to zoo and traveling circus animals, because the museum uses them in advertisements, sells cat-related merchandise online and makes them available to paying tourists.

“In other words, the cats are a living, breathing exhibit and require a federal license.

“’The most ludicrous part of the whole thing is that if we were really dealing with the health and welfare of the cats, this would have never been an issue,’ said Michael A. Marowski, the great-nephew of the woman who bought the Hemingway house in 1961, the year Hemingway died, and opened it as a museum in 1964.”

Full story at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/us/cats-at-hemingway-museum-draw-a-legal-battle.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0