By claudiadayanna

You came, you saw, you Instagrammed. Here are some of the coolest photos we found tagged #LAWeeklyArtopia from last night's event in Chinatown. If for some reason you changed your mind and don't want your photo included here, drop us a line.

See also: Artopia 2013, The Slideshow

More »

Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Trust

Stahl House (Case Study House #22), Hollywood Hills, Julius Shulman, 1960.

Jewish history in turn-of-the-century America usually conjures up images of deeply religious East Coast garment district workers or greased-back, penny-pinching Old Hollywood studio moguls.

The Autry National Center attempts to break down this second stereotype with its latest exhibit, "Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic."

"This was not primarily, in certain respects, an immigrant community," says W. Richard West, Jr., president and CEO of the Autry National Center. "It was a settlement community who came from elsewhere ready to roll once they hit the city. And they did. What this exhibit is about is ... an effort to figure out how those who comprise the Jewish community here in Los Angeles touched other communities and touched the great diversity of other communities here in Los Angeles."

The exhibit wouldn't be accurate without the inevitable tributes to Hollywood and includes mementos like Billy Wilder's Oscars and a "Scroll of Fame" with signatures of guests who came to the 1935 grand opening of Max Factor's cosmetic studio (Judy Garland and "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd among them). But it also highlights less-glorified or forgotten Jewish people and families who influenced the city, such as:

More »

Courtesy photo Venice Art Walk & Auctions

Google's Venice offices, in Frank Gehry's "binoculars" building

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying

Google...It's everywhere. And in late 2010, Google set up camp in Frank Gehry's cherished "binoculars" building in Venice Beach amidst the marijuana clinics, fire-eaters, and snake charmers.

Last year, Google reached out to the Venice Family Clinic and offered to sponsor the annual Venice Art Walk & Auctions benefit and host the silent auction at the landmark building. Many Venetians were wary of the corporate presence and its involvement, while others welcomed the imminent nouveau regime.

At this year's 34th annual event, on Sunday, May 19, Google has taken center stage, providing not only the gallery for the auction but also hosting the "family fun day." "The Venice area is home to a lot of Google employees who are happy to be involved for the second year in a row," says Thomas Williams, engineering director and Google L.A. site lead.

More »

Alexandra Wyman/Invision for LD Entertainment/AP Images

Duplass and Aselton

Mark Duplass has established himself as half of an independent film power couple. Over the last few years, the writer-director-producer-actor of the micro-budget mumblecore genre and his brother Jay (who are together known as the -- and whose production company is called -- Duplass Brothers) have worked on character-rich feature films like Safety Not Guaranteed, Cyrus and Jeff, Who Lives at Home.

But this isn't the only way Duplass keeps it in the family. With his latest film,Black Rock, he re-teams with his wife (and co-star on the F/X comedy The League) Katie Aselton. The feature, which Duplass wrote and Aselton directs and co-stars in with Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth, centers on childhood friends who set out on a camping trip to rekindle their friendships and end up in life-threatening circumstances after a drunken night of flirtation goes awry, opens May 17.

The film is, at times, dark with disturbing scenes that take on hot-button issues like war veterans' mental wellness and a woman's right to say no. The writer-director collaboration in making the film, however, wasn't nearly as polarizing.

More »

Tinder screenshots

Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Mateen knows a whole lot about your dating life. He knows how old you are, how many Facebook friends you have and what physical characteristics you're most attracted to in a potential mate -- that is, if you're a member of the nationwide, L.A.-made dating app, Tinder, which uses GPS to locate potential matches nearby.

The iPhone app's addictive, game-like premise is that users anonymously reject others almost solely based on their profile pictures. They can also initiate conversation with only those they're actually interested in, under the condition that the interest is mutual. There are no personal statements, compatibility quizzes or rating systems.

Since launching Tinder in September 2012 with CEO and fellow USC alum Sean Rad, Mateen says the app has made more than 40 million matches -- or, two people who mutually click the "heart" button on each other's profiles -- plus eight marriage proposals and counting. Not bad for a free app that was locally developed less than a year ago.

More »

MAK Center

Curator Sylvia Lavin introduces her exhibition to a packed Schindler House

This is the third installment of our Pacific Standard Time Presents diary, tracking modern architecture happenings all over the city. Check out our previous entries:
*The Getty's Big, New Exploration of L.A. Architecture
*SCI-Arc's Gala and a Concert at Jackie Treehorn's House

High temperatures might be bad for art, but they're great for museums. The past week's blistering heat wave drove many an Angeleno into the air-conditioned respite of their local cultural institution -- I spotted Getty curator Christopher Alexander leading a particularly large tour through "Overdrive" on a steamy Saturday. Even when it's not serving as an escape from the heat, the show is an excellent destination, and a few hours wandering the exhibition filled me with a renewed sense of civic pride. In fact, I had a hard time seeing the "thoroughgoing urban mess" as described by one bitter East Coast reviewer in his description of the show (or maybe L.A. in general?) last week.

On another night, it was the promise of warm spring air -- and not a lick of air conditioning -- that packed the Schindler House for the MAK Center's "Everything Loose Will Land" opening. The al fresco vibe extended to the art: Sylvia Lavin -- in a snappy molecular-looking statement necklace -- admitted that she rather enjoyed curating an exhibition outside of a traditional museum, even though mounting a show in the drafty duplex is "pretty much like installing an exhibition outdoors."

More »

Archway Theatre

Tis Pity She's a Whore: Jonny Rodgers and Hannah Skye Wenzel, as brother and sister in lust

The scandal surrounding a love affair between a brother and his sister forms the centerpiece of John Ford's 17th century play, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Archway Theatre's downtown production is this week's pick. See below for all the latest new theater reviews and comprehensive theater listings.

This week's theater feature profiles the co-creators of a new opera, Dulce Rosa being presented by L.A. Opera at the Broad Stage. It launches L.A. Opera's "Off-Grand Initiative."

More »

Christian Coulson

Playwright Christopher Shinn

"When I grew up," recalls playwright Christopher Shinn, "I grew up with the image of the artist as somebody who could be central to the culture in a big way, and that was the kind of artist I wanted to be. And I remember feeling with Dying City that I might get to be that kind of artist."

Shinn is speaking to LA Weekly by phone from his home in Manhattan about the 9/11 play -- and his eighth major stage work -- that he fully expected to catapult him at the relatively tender age of 30 to the forefront of the American theater. That would finally deliver him his dream of becoming a nationally recognized man of letters, a celebrated playwright of serious works.

Then, the writer continues, in spite of a successful 2006 run at London's Royal Court Theatre and an ecstatically unqualified rave by the New York Times' Ben Brantley for Dying City's 2007 Lincoln Center production, America turned its back. Or at least America's big, career-making regional powerhouses like L.A.'s Center Theatre Group. Now, Dying City will finally receive its local premiere on May 18 at the 99-seat Rogue Machine Theatre.

And while Shinn admits that the reasons for the wider public's indifference might have had something to do with the play's downbeat title or the manner in which it suggested unpleasant, audience-implicating truths about the Iraq War at a time when the country was still hopelessly mired in the conflict, he suspected something more profound was at work -- what he now calls "the new normal" for playwrights and all artists.

More »

Photo by Daniel Trese

KTCHN dancers

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Our Latest Theater Reviews
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week's dance events include speed dating musicians and dancers, the latest from Ryan Heffington and Los Angeles Ballet continues to paint the town Balanchine Red.

5. When musicians and choreographers date
The dancer/choreographers are familiar names from local, mostly modern dance companies including Stephanie Zaletel, Loretta Livingston, Carol McDowell, Rebecca Pappas, and Damon Rago. The musicians are Erik Leckrone, Eric Pham, Alan Shockley, Marty Walker, George Wheeler. In this two-part event curators Stephanie Nugent and Robin Cox first pair five choreographers with five composers with the "hook up" intended to create new and unlikely pairings to produce new works. In the second half, dubbed the "speed dating" round, each composer and choreographer gets a different pairing for an eight-minute collaboration session, during in which they will create a score. Then the audience gets to see the results. At Art Share LA, 801 E 4th Place dwntwn.; Sun., May 19, 8 p.m., $10-$20. www.iridianarts.com/page5/Iridian_Arts_payment_page.html

More »

Sales' book, which shares a title with Sofia Coppola's upcoming film (pictured above), is an expansion of her 2010 Vanity Fair article "The Suspects Wore Louboutins."

"It seemed like something somebody would make up," author Nancy Jo Sales says on the phone from her New York home. "If you had pitched this as a movie, nobody would've bought it. It would've been too unbelievable." But the story of a bunch of young suburbanites who burglarized a string of celebrity homes in 2008 and '09 did happen. And somebody did buy it — director Sofia Coppola, whose upcoming film The Bling Ring (out June 14) is inspired by the Hollywood crime spree. It's also the subject of Sales' new book, likewise titled The Bling Ring.

Coppola hired Sales as a consultant on the film after optioning her 2010 Vanity Fair article, "The Suspects Wore Louboutins." Realizing she had enough material on the case for a book, Sales started writing The Bling Ring last summer. It hits bookstores next week.

The Bling Ring, a nickname coined by the L.A. Times, was made up of six kids mostly in their late teens, who stole more than $3 million in merchandise from the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, Brian Austin Green, Megan Fox, Ashley Tisdale and The Hills' Audrina Patridge, as well as a few non-celebs. They were arrested in 2009, and all pled no contest.

More »