westernartgirl
luckygrrrAn Old/New Mural Reemerges
For more than a decade, it sat in an abandoned former sanatorium for tubercular patients near Bakersfield, waiting for new eyes to notice it again. No one knew what kind of state it was in. So as artist Barbara Carrasco, creator of the mural L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, and a small entourage of museum … Read more
Still Thrilling to Michael Jackson’s Music
Amanda Ayres never thought that, at age 29, she’d still be passionate about dancing to Michael Jackson’s tunes. Yes, she grew up in a dance studio. Yes, she and her mother oohed and aahed over the moves in “Smooth Criminal.” By the time she went off to college, however, she thought she’d better get serious … Read more
Michael Jackson: All This and the T-Shirt, Too
All those Michael Jackson fans who have been thinking about coming to see the new Michael Jackson installation at the Autry can now take a little bit of that “Thriller” magic home with them when they leave the gallery. The Autry Museum Store now carries items that are replicas of some of the Michael Jackson … Read more
Artists and Lawyers in the Struggle for Free Expression
The third artist panel discussion around the work of the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros last Friday, titled “Freedom of Speech and Censorship,” included a distinctly non-artist speaker: Tom Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). The previous two speaker panels — sponsored, like this one, by the … Read more
Michael Jackson’s Boots That Were Made for Moonwalking
The new Michael Jackson installation at the Autry went up yesterday, and the first thing that came to the minds of MJ designers Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins when they saw it was how well it clicked with all the other Hollywood cowboy memorabilia. “It really looks like it fits in with everything else,” Tompkins … Read more
Shooting, Yes. Cowboys Not Necessarily Included
If you were at the Autry on Wednesday afternoon you probably noticed a few cameras and somebody yelling, “Cut!” Of course, that’s not unusual here in the home of Hollywood. Any day on any street in this town, you might see the tell-tale white equipment trailers, the light screens, the bored actors sitting off to … Read more
The Divine and the Prosaic, Personified in Found Objects
Walk into artist Luis Villanueva’s rococo-inspired home in Woodland Hills, and he immediately becomes a Tasmanian Devil of activity, explaining the origins of each sconce, flourish and curlicue decorating staircase bannisters, framed paintings and pedestals. Because all of it is trash. And you won’t know that by looking around, so you have to hear the … Read more
Mark Twain’s Seedier, More Human Side
Blackmail. Slander. Sex toys. Those are just some of the highlights of Mark Twain’s last years, according to Laura Skandera Trombley, a noted Twain scholar who this year published “Mark Twain’s Other Woman: The Story of His Final Years,” a book 16 years in the making about the last decade in the life of the … Read more
What Makes a Picture Worth $200 Million?
The dustup last week over whether Fresno resident Rick Norsigian’s glass black-and-white negatives really are the early work of famed photographer Ansel Adams got me thinking: What exactly makes a photograph (or a negative) artistically significant? In the case of many 20th Century fine art photographers like Adams (1902-1984), the darkroom has a lot to … Read more
Conserve or Restore? Whether in History, Art, or Popular Culture, It’s a Curator’s Quandary
How far should a curator go when trying to preserve a great masterpiece or historical artifact for future audiences? That question is key to the raison-d’être of museums today. And the answer to it has changed over the years. “The policy (that is) really universally accepted in conservation is to stabilize, not to try to … Read more
