Wendy Gilmartin

ESMoA

The new home for the El Segundo Museum of Art -- which isn't a public museum, but technically a private collection open to the public -- infills a tiny slice of downtown El Segundo's Main Street, right next to a former post office storefront, in a skinny slot that used to be a drive-through alley. The new headquarters -- complete with an exhibit hall, artist-in-residence housing, roof deck and administrative facilities -- features soaring, 24-foot tall ceilings that seem even higher in the thin main hall of the building where gathering crowds and a floating chorus of voices continually grew Sunday afternoon at the official public opening.

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Courtesy of the artists and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles

Eben Goff + Rowan Wood, Burn (2012)

This week, an artist stages a tiny exhibition at Central Library and a century-old Rodin sculpture plays a part in an afternoon-long performance.

5. J.J. Abrams inspires an art book
The Lost Issue , the catalog for the "Lost (in L.A.)" exhibition at Barnsdall Park, a show of work by French and Angeleno artists loosely named after the hit TV show Lost, has a disclaimer at the beginning: "This is not a catalog in the way you expect." It includes a partly fictionalized conversation between filmmaker Michel Gondry and artist Alexandre Singh, in which Picasso and Stanley Kubrick make appearances, and reading it feels like reading a screenplay, with notes and illustrations inserted. Lauren Mackler, who runs the alt art space Public Fiction and put together The Lost Issue, will guide anyone curious through the catalog and its making process this week, and talk about artist-made publications in general. 800 Hollywood Blvd.; Fri., Jan. 18, 7 p.m. (323) 644-6269, lostinla.com.

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Wendy Gilmartin

Google headquarters

See also:
*More tech stories from L.A. Weekly
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.

Since the arrival of Google in Venice last year, westside beach communities like Santa Monica, Playa Vista and others have seen an influx of tech companies, startups, investors and software businesses of all kinds burst into the neighborhood now dubbed "Silicon Beach."

As they scramble to get a piece of what many think will be the next big boomtown, companies are snatching up all the commercial real estate they can find. But this is L.A. and appearances mean everything.

LA Weekly explains what a handful of companies' choices in office buildings -- essentially their outward projection to the world -- says about their style in general.

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Jim Simmons

Grand Park downtown

We spend most of the year criticizing Los Angeles' ugly buildings and other unfortunate aspects of the local built environment. Here's our chance to rundown some of the thoughtful, inspiring and downright stellar projects that make us L.A. proud, and that make our burg a better place in general.

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Bill Raden

Now leasing -- a life in the arts

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*Our Latest Theater Reviews
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week

Whatever else it might entail, making live theater begins with real estate -- a plot of land and a building to accommodate both a stage and an audience. And as any veteran of the cramped, repurposed storefronts with doubtful plumbing and the converted, tumble-down warehouses on dead-end streets that comprise the bulk of this city's small theaters can attest, more often than not that real estate tends to be on the wrong side of the tracks.

So when Road Theatre Company Founder and Artistic Director Taylor Gilbert accepted the keys this week for Road's spanking-new, purpose-built, state-of-the-art, $800,000 78-seat theater in NoHo, she might well have felt like Cinderella on her way to the ball.

And while no magic wands were employed in the construction of Road's new and as-yet-unnamed main stage (the company's current home in the Lankershim Arts Center will continue as Road's experimental second stage), its story does contain more than a few fairy godmothers.

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Wendy Gilmartin

We can thank the developers and architects who built the Alessio apartments on Centinela Avenue in Westchester for this one. To all those visitors to L.A. who emerge from LAX's arrival terminal and head north up the 405, this is what greets them: A seven-story-tall, poo-brown colored wall -- which almost makes the Promenade at the Howard Hughes Center across the highway look dynamic.

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Thom Andersen

still image from Reconversão

We don't see Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura until the last 20 minutes of Reconversão, the new documentary by L.A. filmmaker Thom Andersen. But the build-up to the interview is a visual assemblage of Souto de Moura's built and un-built work -- some of it still functioning and some of it abandoned -- through Andersen's sympathetic lens.

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Flickr User jericl cat

Familiar to anyone who drives the 110 near Exposition Park, the recently altered Felix the Cat neon sign at Felix Chevrolet has become the focus of preservationist ire after owners replaced its neon lights with LEDs.

Says a letter from Los Angeles historian and preservationist Kim Cooper, who is circulating an online petition to save the sign:

The cold, thin light of LEDs is a pale imitation of the beautiful natural gas glow of neon -- the neon which made this sign historic, unique and beloved by Angelenoes.

The sign was very nearly designated a historic-cultural monument by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 2007, but the designation was thwarted by objections of Felix Chevrolet's owners and of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilwoman Jan Perry, who argued that the designation would inhibit business growth in the area.

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Zach Lipp

Opening Day at CityTarget Downtown

See also:
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Our Best of L.A. issue and our Best of L.A. app

Target's new "City" store opened this week in the the sunken shopping center at the corner of 7th and Figueroa downtown. The multi-level indoor/outdoor retail center, originally designed by John Jerde Architects (famous for Horton Plaza in San Diego and the seizure-inducing light canopy in Las Vegas' downtown), sat nearly-abandoned for years, plagued by awful sight lines, practically-invisible store recognition signage for pedestrians, and a useless, teal-colored space frame structure up top.

But with Target moving in, there's hope for the sad old mall at 7th & Fig, and at the opening gala Wednesday, boosters were in high spirits. The the Mayor was there, ribbons got cut, the USC Trojan marching band played.

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photo by Mina Marefat, Yale University Archives

OSS graphics

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.

Eero Saarinen's fingerprints are all over mid-century design's greatest hits, and even if you can't pronounce his name, you definitely know his tulip chair. From the St. Louis Gateway Arch, to the Dulles Airport main terminal to the grasshopper chair, the gamut of the architect's best known works are now on view as the A+D Museum hosts the traveling exhibit "Eero Saarinen: A Reputation for Innovation." The show also features some of his recently uncovered, lesser-known projects, and a peek into the secret life he led at the pinnacle of undercover government espionage.

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