Grant Mudford, A New Sculpturalism, Skira Rizzoli, 2013

KFC at MOCA: This building by Grinstein/Daniels Architects will be in the show, and so will Frank Gehry (again)

This is the fifth installment of our Pacific Standard Time Presents diary, tracking modern architecture happenings all over the city during the Getty's big initiative. 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
*Everything Loose Will Land, A+D and Machine Project
*Where Are the Women?

You know what the problem is with writing diary entries every two weeks? SO MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN TWO WEEKS! I had just tapped 'publish' on my last column when a bombshell dropped somewhere near the Geffen Contemporary: Frank Gehry, the Columbo of the architecture world, is back in the MOCA show, you guys!

"A New Sculpturalism" opened this past Sunday, just a smidge behind schedule but now with all of its regularly scheduled participants. Although some may be, um, participating a bit too much? According to the Architect's Newspaper, Thom Mayne is trying to curate the show (which already has a curator, Christopher Mount) by sending emails to participants and adding even more architects to the show. It's something you can ask him about in person at the members' opening on June 22. Expect lots of heavy drinking and sighs of relief.

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Courtesy of the artist and Santa Monica Museum of Art

Joyce Pensato's Batman (2012)

This week, one artist turns pop icons into haunting, dripping messes and another visits a burning volcano again and again.

5. Do architects believe in truth?
"I've been told to tell you that the slides are out of focus intentionally," said architect Tom Mayne in 1976, introducing a lecture by his colleague Coy Howard. After Howard got up in front of the audience at SCI-Arc, he began by addressing Pico Boulevard: "You consist of asphalt, cement and largely cheapish small buildings. ... You jerk through the city, stoplight to stoplight, like a blunt knife through an unfeeling body." Then a woman interrupted, telling Howard to raise his right hand and swear to tell nothing but the whole truth before he went on to talk about his fellow architects, whom he said probably didn't really believe in truth. Mayne, who won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2005, and Howard will give the keynote lecture at SCI-Arc's symposium on architecture's past and future this weekend. 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; Fri., June 14, 3-9 p.m., and Sat., June 15, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (213) 613-2200, sciarc.edu.

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Film by David Finster.

Still from The Florida Room by Asher Hartman.

See also:
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying
*10 L.A. Art Spaces That Change Our Idea of What an Art Space Is

This week, a man becomes a god in a play set in a midcentury landmark and an artist builds an adults-only dollhouse.

5. Sculpting the president
Sculptor Robert Merrell Gage announces, "We know what Lincoln looked like," early on in the 1955 documentary The Face of Lincoln, then proceeds to describe the different curves in the 16th president's face. As the film continues, Gage talks about Lincoln's life while sculpting a portrait of him. The film screens at the Fischer Museum at USC, where Gage taught when the film was made. 823 Exposition Blvd.; Sat., June 8, 1 p.m.; $15. (213) 740-4561, fisher.usc.edu.

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Four men onstage (and a bonus man on the wall)

This is the fourth 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
*Everything Loose Will Land, A+D and Machine Project

"Where are the women?"

This was the question posed to me via Twitter last night as I dutifully documented the latest Pacific Standard Time Presents panel. "So many men" chimed in my friend on Instagram. Over on Facebook, critic Mimi Zeiger sparked another conversation lamenting the dearth of females in the lineup for tonight's "Why L.A.?" event. The same could be said about this one. Or this one. Or this one.

Yes, it would definitely appear that many of the featured speakers in the Getty's architecture project look much like the Getty itself: Big, bald and white.

(Okay, maybe they're not all bald.)

For the museum exhibitions themselves, I kinda understand: It's tougher to feature the role of women while focused on a time period when there were few practicing female architects in the city. But it would seem that these events around the shows would be a fantastic opportunity to engage not only the legends of the era but all the amazing women working in L.A. today.

Not that females haven't been featured: Denise Scott Brown was in town for the Getty's "Minding the Gap" event last week (and the subject of another gender-biased controversy), and I've written about the contributions of ladies like Sylvia Lavin and Deborah Sussman in this column. But I'd really love to see more women speaking about how this influential Modern era shaped their contemporary practice. Especially since so many of the organizers of these events are dynamic, amazing females themselves.

This is a diary, not an op-ed, so I'll get back to the champagne sloshing in a second. But my challenge to all the organizers is this: We have a whole PSTP summer ahead of us. Add more speakers! Add more events! Let's diversify and try to include some different perspectives. Okay? Okay.

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Photo by David Wing

Jef Raskin with building blocks he designed, on view at the MAK Center

This week, footage about a high-energy collaboration between artists, architects and Pepsi plays at the MAK Center, one artist leads people on a hunt for truth and other intangibles at the Getty and another turns cough syrup into something of a tribute.

5. Art, lies and hashtags
A green vinyl sign above the security desk at the Getty Center asks, "Is a museum for everyone?" Another sign affixed to the floor in the rotunda at the top of the main stairs asks, "Is a museum fun?" These and other questions are part of L.A. artist Sam Durant's #isamuseum project. The idea is that visitors will answer, either on Twitter on their phones, later on the website or by going up to the info desk. You see the question "Is a museum truthful?" while winding down the stairs from the painting galleries, and one visitor answered no because "Truth has nothing to do with art." 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood; through July. (310) 440-7300, gettycenter.org.

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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."

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Stefanie Keenan

SCI-Arc's glitzy gala designed by Alexis Rochas celebrated 40 years of training design heretics

This is the second installment of our Pacific Standard Time Presents diary, covering the Modern architecture extravaganza that's blanketing the city. Go here for the first installment: *The Getty's Big, New Exploration of L.A. Architecture.

Who would have guessed that with just the right amount of booze, architects can be so much fun? On a warm April night I headed to SCI-Arc for its 40th anniversary gala, which also provided a peek at the PSTP show "A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice 1979." The exhibition traces a series of shows held in architect Thom Mayne's Venice home in 1979 featuring a dozen architects who would come to put L.A. on the map. One could mill about the show then step into the other room and see those grinning heretics wearing the same smiles 30-odd years later (and in a few cases, I think, wearing the same clothes).

As guests dined on softball-sized orbs of short rib, Frances Anderton and Tom Gilmore tried their best to emcee the event over dicey acoustics and chatty guests, but the room paid full attention and rose to its feet when honoring the school's founder and first director, Ray Kappe, looking adorable at 85.

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HNTB

The design for the new 6th Street Bridge, one of many upcoming developments in the Arts District

This week's L.A. Weekly profiles the one of the city's hottest neighborhoods: the downtown Arts District. Check out the other stories in our series:
*Tyler Stonebreaker: Curator of the Downtown Arts District
*How the Arts District Got Its Name
*5 Best Places to Eat in the Downtown Arts District

The Arts District is undergoing major developments that are not only changing the face of the neighborhood but also are indicative of larger trends in the city related to transportation, public space and sustainability. These six projects are intended to add residents and businesses to the area, deliver much-needed green space and connect the neighborhood to communities across the river.

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Photo courtesy David Scott / Little Landers Historical Society

A postcard of the detention center

L.A.'s Cultural Heritage Commission met at City Hall Thursday morning to determine whether to designate Tujunga's Verdugo Hills Golf Course a historic-cultural monument, not because it's a golf course, but because it was the site of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, Immigration, and Naturalization Service -- a World War II internment camp where 90 percent of the detainees were Japanese.

But the Los Angeles Department of City Planning's Staff of Historic Resources recommended against the designation, precisely because the site is now a golf course -- and has been one for more than 50 years. And the Commission agreed.

A group of passionate speakers voiced their support for historic designation, including Japanese-Americans with personal ties to the site, and David Scott, whose grandfather, Merrill H. Scott, was a guard at the internment camp. They were just a few of the representatives from the community who have been trying to preserve the golf course after Snowball West Investments bought the property in 2004 for over $7,500,000, with plans to turn it into a housing development.

It's been a complicated and contentious debate for both those in favor and against historical designation, but at least everyone agreed on one thing: the site is very rich in history.

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Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging

Charles Phoenix gives a SoCal Modern architecture slideshow at the Getty's press event

"The San Andreas is not Los Angeles' only fault," cracked architectural historian Thomas Hines at the kickoff to Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.. Hines didn't really mean it -- he was quoting a joke that people from, say, San Francisco might make -- but the quip hit just the right tone for the Getty's new initiative, the infinitely more accessible and laid-back architectural sequel to the serious and self-important art world extravaganza Pacific Standard Time.

Also, unlike Pacific Standard Time, Pacific Standard Time Presents -- which some people have taken to calling PSTP, even though it sounds like something one might want to clear up with a few doses of Valtrex -- has a much more manageable number of exhibitions and events. This intimate scale makes for overlapping and quite personal portraits of these post-war practitioners, many of whom are still working and popping up in person at events around the city. Where, with free champagne in one hand and my iPhone in the other, I plan to stalk them for the next few months.

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