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:

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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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Bobby Martin

Directors Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille in the lobby of the Standard, with a Source Family-inspired fabric sculpture by Elena Stonaker

It was not your typical happy hour on the Sunset Strip. Last Thursday, the Standard Hotel hosted the L.A. premiere of The Source Family, a documentary by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos. In honor of the 1970s Hollywood commune portrayed in the film, which is the first feature for both directors, the lobby was swathed in colorful fabrics and bedecked with flowers. Psychedelic music snaked through the speakers while longhaired boys and girls milled about, dressed in their flowing finest. In a glass case behind the counter, two young women lounged and did yoga poses, much to the obvious bemusement of the tourists who stood by with rolling suitcases, waiting to check in.

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Irving Greines

The wall of the old American Hotel

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
*5 Best Places to Eat in the Downtown Arts District
*6 Developments That Will Change the Downtown Arts District's Future

Joel Bloom, who moved downtown in 1986 and opened the beloved Bloom's General Store at the corner of Traction and Hewitt in 1994, gave the downtown Arts District its name. The late Bloom, whose now-shuttered store became a community hub, did so unofficially in the 1980s, and then petitioned the city to make it official in the mid-'90s.

But to hear people talk now, you might think the district was new. The L.A. Times recently compared the Arts District to New York City's industrial-turned-trendy Meatpacking District, then suggested artists might not be able to afford to live there much longer.

Residents have heard such speculation before.

"That's been the fear since 1983," says Jonathan Jerald, who curated the recently opened "In Your Face" exhibition, which documents the district's past in an Alameda Street warehouse now owned by Angel City Brewery.

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Anna Jones

Performers Moira MacDonald, Whitney Rodriguez, Stephen Schilling and Mark Simon and musician Kari Rae Seekins rehearse a scene from "Exhibit A" onstage at Automata in Chinatown.

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*L.A.'s Best Experimental Puppet Theater
*Move Over, West Hollywood -- Silver Lake Is the True Gay Mecca
*Silver Lake Has Always Been Gay, Readers Say

Let's face it, puppets are cool. Automata, the non-profit experimental puppet theater and workshop that is quickly gaining a reputation as the center of cutting edge puppetry in Los Angeles, is yet again proving just how cool puppets can be with their latest production, Exhibit A, which opens today, for a two-weekend run. But the puppets you'll find at Automata aren't your average goofy, fuzzy, kid-stuff. L.A. Weekly sat in on a tech rehearsal this weekend and got a sneak peek.

In the show, a cast of life-size strangely beautiful puppets and live actors all play a number of different characters, mixing and melding personas in a dance both graceful and jarring. But the show goes beyond just entertainment value. Susan Simpson, the director of Exhibit A and co-founder of Automata, has a sophisticated vision of what this show can accomplish in the local arts community, both educationally and politically.

Exhibit A focuses mainly on the inner lives of some key members of the Mattachine Society, one of the very first homosexual activism groups in the United States when it was founded in L.A. in 1950. By the 1960s, the organization had chapters in cities all over the U.S.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)

One of Liz Craft's "hairy guys" in West Hollywood Park

This week, two artists dance with hula-hoops, another uses graffiti to obscure paintings of high-heeled, made-up models and a third installs hairy bronze statues in WeHo.

5. Just say no
In 1962, Judson Dance Theater started at the Judson Church in Greenwich Village. Programming was informal; writers and artists contributed as much as dancers and choreographers did. Trisha Brown worked at Judson, as did Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, who developed her No Manifesto there. ("No to spectacle. No to virtuosity," it started, then continued to list all the tropes of performance Rainer wished to reject.) Rainer and Forti will be at the Hammer this weekend, along with a number of other artists, dancers, theorists and historians, talking about where the dance world and art world meet. 10899 Wilshire Blvd.; Fri., April 26, 5-9 p.m.; Sat., April 27, 10-2 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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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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Michiel Hendryckx

Allen Ginsberg

When most people envision the Beat Generation, they probably start with a vision of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, stumbling into a bar in New York City, rambling on about Nebraska and staring into the electric religion of the American plains. Or perhaps people think of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, printing copies of Gasoline or Howl and handing them out to the citizens of San Francisco.

Well, it's easy to forget a group of Southern California Beats were creating a renaissance right here in Venice. And in celebration of the Beats, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will be performing a live staging of Ginsberg's Kaddish at Royce Hall on Wednesday, in the midst of many other Beat-related events UCLA is putting on.

We put together a list of 10 essential Beat landmarks in Los Angeles to celebrate the tradition. Thanks to William Mohr, Mike "The Poet" Sonksen and Pegarty Long for their help.

See also:
*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament
*10 of Charles Bukowski's Dirty L.A. Haunts

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Courtesy Roberts & Tilton

A view of Noah Davis' Stacked Cubicles (2013)

This week, another painted portrait of Kate Middleton debuts, an aesthetic terroist talks about fashion and tea time happens ten days in a row in Chinatown.

5. Man and the machine
Llyn Foulkes, the rash, visceral artist who has a solo show at the Hammer Museum now, also plays what he calls The Machine. It's a multi-part instrument that surrounds him when he performs, sitting amidst bass drum, symbols, xylophone and other brass and rubber horns. Filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Christopher Quilty have been making a documentary about Foulkes called One Man Band, a name inspired by the artist's Machine. They'll screen it as a work-in-progress at the Hammer and answer questions afterward. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Wstwd.; Thurs., March 21, 7:30 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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UC Press

Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream

Much as been made of the look and feel of post-War Southern California -- be it the mid-century modern décor, the urban sprawl, the Googie architecture of restaurants and shops or the tailfin cars. But what about the people who helped finance it all?

Howard Ahmanson, Sr. (1906-1968) is remembered more today for his support of the arts or for his son Howard Ahmanson, Jr.'s own philanthropy and support of Proposition 8 during the last election. But historian Eric John Abrahamson offers a more detailed look at the insurance and savings and loan tycoon in his new book, Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream.

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