SAN MARINO, Calif. —An innovative partnership between The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and East L.A.’s Esteban E. Torres High School has produced some pretty snappy results: An exhibition of photography by students that will be displayed along more than 1,000 feet of construction fence surrounding The Huntington’s Education and Visitor Center project.
The students’ artwork was unveiled today at an event marking the culmination of the collaboration, the first of a series of activities The Huntington and Torres aim to do through their “2nd Campus” program.
“At a time when so many headlines suggest that K–12 education is in dire straits, we’re seeing proof of what can happen when you give students and teachers a little support and a lot of license,” said Steven S. Koblik, Huntington president. “We’re delighted with the results and are equally pleased that we will soon have an expansive display space on which to present them.” The construction fence will be adorned with life-size photographs of students holding the photographs they created. It goes up in early June.
The work will be on display through early 2015, when construction of the new Education and Visitor Center is expected to be complete.
If you want a chance to be part of William Shatner’s new album, and you’re lucky enough to have a photo of yourself with a rainbow (not sure if it has to be a real rainbow), then send one in to William Shatner before 31 May 2013. See the message from Google+ below:
Last call for rainbow photos. I’m closing this as of May 31st. The album will be out late summer/early fall. Make sure that the images are big. If they are too small we will not be able to use them. MBB
So you may have heard that I’m doing a new album. One song in particular I’m going to be doing a music video on. I’d like to invite my fans to be a part of that video. I’m looking for a photo of you with a rainbow. Send me a digital copy of the photo in the highest resolution possible along with your name and the location of the photo. This could be an old photo or a new photo – as long as it has you in the photo with the rainbow. Send the file to ShatnersRainbow@gmail.com
William Shatner must be working on his next documentary because he just posted the following message on Facebook:
Friends,
I’m looking for true stories on how watching Star Trek (any series) affected your career decisions later in life. Did you go into a career in Science or Aviation or even become an Astronaut due to Star Trek and Science Fiction?
I want to hear your story. Please send me an email of your story on what about Star Trek made you choose your career path. Send a email with your story in the body of the email to: ShatnerScifi@gmail.com
On Monday, during the semi-finals on DWTS 16, there were four perfect scores and 17 tens in all. Olympic gymnast Alexandra Raisman and Mark Balls were tied for first with football player Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff with 59 points.
Jones and Smirnoff finally got a ten. They actually got three of them for a perfect score for their Argentine tango. Then he earned two more for his Lindy Hop for a 29.
In third place were Kellie Pickler and Derek Hough with a 58. Pickler and Hough got their first perfect score for the Argentine tango. Zendaya and Val Chmerkovskiy fell to fourth place with 55. Their downfall was the quickstep.
At the bottom, were Ingo Rachmacher and Kym Johnson with 51. This couple will probably be eliminated.
During the live shows, the judges will give each couple a score based on several factors, including technical execution. But the judges’ scores alone do not decide a couple’s fate.
Phone lines, text votes (AT&T customers only) and online voting will open at the top of each performance show so that viewers can vote for their favorites. Phone and text lines will stay open until 60 minutes after the end of the show in your local time zone. Online voting will remain open until 11 a.m. (Eastern Time)/ 8 a.m. (Pacific Time) the following day. Tuesday night, 14 May 2013, who will be eliminated during season 16 week 9 of “Dancing with the Stars.”
What beloved movie from your childhood holds up just as well today? And which one doesn’t?
We (my family) were animal lovers, something encouraged by living in San Diego where we frequently visited the world class San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Safari Park. I also grew up in a household ruled by Disney. As a family, we also loved cartoons.
The beloved movies from my childhood would be “Old Yeller” and the 1942 “Bambi.” I still tear up during the last moments of “Old Yeller” despite the acting that marks the movie as family entertainment. “Old Yeller” was based on a 1956 novel by Fred Gipson.
The animators on “Bambi” studied the structure and movement of animals and used Tyrus Wong’s impressionistic backgrounds which had more detail in the center to draw attention to the center of the action. “Bambi” lost money during its original release, but when it was re-released in 1947, it found its audience. This animated feature showed that cartoons can bring to life stories and portray tragedy with such emotional impact that I still ache when I think of the death of Bambi’s mother.
After seeing “Bambi,” I went on to read the 1923 book (first published in English in 1928) “Bambi, A Life in the Woods” which is more heartbreaking than the animated movie. I went on to read other books about deer and other animals.
The movie that doesn’t hold up as well would be Disney’s 1950 animated feature “Cinderella.” As a child the thought of a magic fairy godmother who could sweep away your problems and find you a husband to solve all your problems seems ideal when you’re under 10 and still think marriage is about dressing up, playing house and a chaste kiss. It would be wonderful if I could train house mice to make me ballroom gowns, too, and if I could ride in a coach that was once a pumpkin. While I still have affection for pumpkins, I no longer have the same affection for Cinderella.
Since I was a child, I learned that the Cinderella syndrome is a term used to refer to parasites, the Cinderella effect refers to the theory that stepparents tend to be more abusive toward their step offspring and and Cinderella complex refers to women who is afraid of independence and wants to be taken care of by others, particularly a man. Attempting to embrace meritocracy, I find the concepts of aristocracy and better by merit of birth as part of social Darwinism. Now that the Disney princess has become a commercial brand, I find Cinderella part of a crass and less than magical movement.
Do you love grand spectacle, color and great style. That’s what Baz Luhrmann brings to the movies, and I looked forward to the opening of his “The Great Gatsby.” I love the styles, the music and the fashion of that time period. Luhrmann gives it to us in vibrant excess as the art deco meets Hollywood CGI.
The movie features terrific performances by Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular character and Tobey Maguire as the narrator. Maguire’s character is still a witness to the horrors of callousness and immorality polished by good manners and lots of money but on more levels than just white trash versus white upper class.
Luhrmann quickly establishes Nick Carraway (Maguire) as an unreliable narrator. He’s in an institution, diagnosed as being “morbidly alcoholic” with “fits of rage” among other things. His doctor, Walter Perkins (Jack Thompson), suggests that he write. In the actual novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests has Nick remembering the distant past. Both this movie and the 1974 Robert Redford version as well set us up with a much wiser Nick recalling:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
In Luhrmann’s movie, Nick’s unreliability is underlined in several ways–he writes he has only been drunk twice, although we see that in his writing he originally said once. We later see this isn’t true and knowing that he’s an alcoholic, we know that he’s been drunk enough for other people to notice in a public way. He’s not a quiet drunk; he’s not a full-functioning alcoholic who can hide his drinking.
The main story is the same in Luhrmann’s version as with the novel and the Robert Redford vehicle. In Long Island in 1922, Nick is based in a small cottage next to an almost impossibly large mansion owned by a mysterious man called Gatsby. Nick’s cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan) lives across the water, and at night Nick and later Gatsby can see the green light at the end of the pier on Daisy’s estate. Daisy is married to old money in a polo player Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton).
Nick is invited to Daisy’s estate, where we first see Daisy only as a bejeweled hand floating up from the other side of a couch with white transparent curtains blowing in the wind around it like veils or great shrouds. Daisy’s friend Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki) is also there, dressed and made up beautifully and lounging on a couch.
At dinner, Tom spouts racist views, asking about a particular book, “The Rise of the Colored Empires,” while surrounded by black servants. That’s a cringe-worthy moment. Then the phone rings. Baker lets Nick in on a barely kept secret: Tom has a mistress who calls at dinnertime.
Tom quickly involves Nick in this intrigue by taking him to New York where Tom passes a message to his flamboyant mistress, Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), at the local gas station in the Valley of Ashes. Tom tells her to meet him at their love nest in New York City. Myrtle is married to George (Jason Clarke) who runs the gas station and George has been promised an old car by Tom. George is a dirty, greasy lunk of a man. Myrtle is a loud, brassy woman with gaudy tastes. Tom probably could have called Myrtle, but how much more fun it must be to ask your mistress out when her husband’s in the other room. That’s the kind of man Tom is.
Myrtle and Tom’s love nest has red wallpaper and is in a neighborhood where African Americans live in neighboring buildings. Nick waits in the living room as the couple make loud and lustful afternoon delight. That’s soon followed by the influx of friends. Myrtle and Tom’s party is drunken and violent with probably lots of embarrassing incidents if one could remember, but Nick doesn’t even know how he returns home.
In due time, Gatsby invites Nick to one of his parties and Gatsby, or Luhrmann, knows how to throw a party (Please send me an invitation next time, Baz). Here, Luhrmann puts the jazz and Jay-Z into the Jazz Age. In the 1974 movie, perhaps the most daring thing at the Gatsby party was two ladies dancing together and a bit of tango. Luhrmann has entertainers, both black and white. Men and women are drunk beyond elegance and slumping into slatternly sloppiness. Contrast that to Tom’s party as a post-coital relaxation. Jay Gatsby’s parties are his grand foreplay because wealth and glamour excite Daisy whereas his poverty frightened her away.
This Gatsby, DiCaprio’s Gatsby, has various mental issues that we’re not sure Nick recognizes. Today, we might call Gatsby a stalker. He’s been obsessing about Daisy since the moment he kissed her in Louisville when his poverty was disguised by his uniform. He loves her when they had little in common except they were two beautiful people. His obsession with Daisy prevents him from seeing her as a woman, a shallow woman without courage or morals. His insistence on re-writing history indicates a brittle rigidity that Daisy can easily shatter.
Gatsby has ambition and has taken opportunity, but all with one very romantic aim–to have Daisy as a wife. With his illegally gained fortune, Gatsby rubs shoulders with the politicians, singers and actors. He’s on both sides of the color line, taking Nick to a club where African American dancers and singers entertain because where else did jazz come from?
In the 1974 film, Tom Buchanan racist comments mark him as man to be held in contempt (since both Gatsby and Tom commit adultery). In the book, Scott has Tom say, ”Civilization’s going to pieces. I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things… The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be–will be utterly submerged… It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” In the 1974 movie, we don’t see that many black people except for the witnesses to Myrtle’s fatal accident. They are good credible people and the police seem to treat them with respect. Is this what Tom was worried about? Bruce Dern’s Tom doesn’t show it.
Luhrmann gives something for Tom to worry about: a white chauffeur driving rich black people in a fine car. Black entertainers in the shady club. Black people living near his illicit love nest. He’s in a neighborhood where his social set won’t see him, but also where there might be some mixing between blacks and whites.
There’s been a quibble over the casting of Amitabh Bachchan as the Jewish Meyer Wolfsheim. The 70-year-old Asian Indian Bachchan is part Hindi and part Sikh. I’m not sure what the problem is. Do people believe that he can’t pass as Jewish? There are Jews in India–five native Jewish communities and others arrived during various migrations. Does he look Jewish to you?
In the 1974 Robert Redford-Mia Farrow version, Howard Da Silva played Meyer Wolfsheim. Howard Da Silva was born Silverblatt, the son of Russian Yiddish-speaking Jews who was born in Cleveland, Ohio and changed his name to the Portuguese-sounding Da Silva. Was it to seem less Jewish? There are Jewish people who could pass for white. Think of a young Kirk Douglas. Bachchan’s Wolfsheim has a swarthy complexion and puts him distinctly on the other side of the color line drawn here. Nick and Gatsby could cross, they could pass into the social set of Nick and Daisy if they watch their language and have the right clothes, but as Tom says, there’s something in the blood that defines them that makes the old rich family different. Social Darwinism is dressed up in fine clothes and manners.
Did Scott believe that? Some of his writing would be considered racist by today’s standards. His relationship with his wife, Zelda, who was from a well-to-do family didn’t end well. They had fights, drank too much and, according to one person, needed drama. Scott was also an alcoholic and based Daisy on another rich girl who he didn’t marry. He might not have been bitter, but he like Nick isn’t probably the most reliable narrator.
Luhrmann’s version of Nick as an alcoholic cautions us to consider Scott’s version of the events–from his assessment of Daisy and Tom to his version of Gatsby. In Luhrmann’s version both Clarke’s George and Edgerton’s Tom are bigger men and more physically threatening just as his estate is more castle like (Don’t bother looking for the house that stands in for Jay Gatsby’s estate. The exterior is the college of International College of Management in Sydney, Australia.) than the stately beauty that Redford’s Gatsby live in. You can complain about Luhrmann’s beating your over the head with some imagery, but the repetition was also present in the Robert Redford version (of the oculist sign) and the image of those eyes linger after you leave the movie.
DiCaprio is both dangerous and pathetically lovelorn. You might shudder when you see him anywhere near the water if you’ve seen “Titanic.” The movie is gaudy and gorgeous.It drags F. Scott Fitzgerald into the real Jazz Age while adding a modern touch thanks to both CGI and a bit of hip hop. You won’t see me drinking myself into a black out, but let’s get some fringed dresses and Charleston until the band stops playing.
As preparation for the much anticipated Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” I took to Netflix and watched the 1974 version which starred Robert Redford.
Law & Order fans might gasp at the sight of a young Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway. Carraway is the story’s narrator. His Nick is out-of-place, somber, almost passive bystander to the life that he both envies and eventually reviles. Nick is in a low-rent cottage on Long Island in 1922, next to the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a rich man who hosts lavish parties, but doesn’t seem to be a party boy. Nick’s distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow), is directly across the water, living in a beautiful house with her loutish rich husband Tom (Bruce Dern). Gatsby is in love with Daisy and continues to pursue her despite her marriage. Nick witnesses both Gatsby and Daisy’s adulterous affair as well as Tom’s relationship with Myrtle Wilson (Karen Black) the wife of an auto mechanic, George (Scott Wilson). Tom has been promising to sell one of his old car’s to George who needs the money.
The screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola (based on the 1925 book by F. Scott Fitzgerald of the same name) and the direction by Jack Clayton provide a nostalgic look at how white people would like to see the 1920s. The people at the parties are respectable looking enough. The British-born Clayton had received an Oscar nomination for directing the 1959 “Room at the Top,” a criticism of the British class system. Yet perhaps with this version of “The Great Gatsby,” it wasn’t the right time and Clayton didn’t understand the American class system.
Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated in 1968. The race riots of the 1960s–the Harlem Riot of 1964, the Watts Riot of 1965 and the King riots of 1968 in several cities–were still part of an uneasy national consciousness. In 1974, Hank Aaron became the all-time MLB home run king. He had played in the Negro American League (for the Indianapolis Clowns) before becoming a an Atlanta Brave. Aaron received death threats and hate mail from people who didn’t want to see an African American break Babe Ruth’s home run record.
Many audience members might cringe at the Tom’s racist rants, but in the movie, the presence of African Americans doesn’t seem enough to merit the remarks except to set up Tom as an boorish man. The book is supposed to represent the Jazz Age, but jazz wasn’t born in the homes of the East Coast rich and wealthy–old money or new money.
The movie is lovely. The poor aren’t so much downtrodden as poorly dressed and in smaller houses. Nick’s cottage is like one of those TV show New York apartments–impossibly big for someone supposedly working class.
Redford’s Nick is less ambiguously immoral. He’s a steady guy in love with an unsteady girl, but no one doubts his love and that purifies all the measures he has taken to get the girl. Farrow’s Daisy is sweet but unstable, her voice often tremulous in that way Mia Farrow has that suggests both mental and moral weakness. Her Daisy lights up the screen when she is well-dressed and rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, but lost in her own home. She is also a woman without much maternal instinct. As Daisy’s counter-part, the mistress of Tom, Black is just a girl looking for a good time and a good opportunity, but she’s not necessarily a gold digger.
Dern’s Tom is repellant, but not particularly a physical threat. Do you believe him as a former football player? As George, Wilson is a clean, decent white man with a weak will. His crime of passion comes with much more deliberation than the George of the more recent movie.
This version of “The Great Gatsby” was praised by Truman Capote, but found to be bland by others. As a story about beautiful people having a beautiful time and one beautiful poor boy who finds tragedy when he tried to join them, “The Great Gatsby” is a fairly faithful though sanitized version. If you have a nostalgia for the flappers, and want to see some fine flapper fashion and have a taste of the Jazz Age without the people who created jazz, this is the movie for you.
When my theater companion suddenly canceled and I was scrambling to find someone who would want to join me, for this sensitive production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” I was surprised that people didn’t know who August Wilson was. Wilson who died in 2005 (2 October at age 60), won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and is best known for the ten plays which make up “The Pittsburgh Cycle.”
You might be thinking what could possibly be interesting in Pittsburgh? Wilson was born in Pittsburgh and he writes about what he knows. Wilson’s ten plays are each set in a different decade and illustrate the changing situation for African Americans in America. He won the Pulitzer for the 1985 “Fences” and the 1990 “The Piano Lesson.”
“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” is about the 1910s. When this play went to Broadway, Delroy Lindo played Herald Loomis and Angela Bassett was his wife, Martha. The play tells about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South. The title comes from an old blues song:
They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone (Oh, Lordy) Got my man and gone.
He come with forty links of chain He come with forty links of chain (Oh, Lordy) Got my man and gone.
The song is about true events and Wilson’s play expands and explains the possible background behind the stereotype of an African American husband deserting his wife and children. Instead of disappearing to shirk his responsibilities, we come to understand that a white man, Joe Turner, has been trumping up charges and giving stiff sentences for minor legal infractions in order to build up free labor chain gang style. If you had the right connections, you could order up your own labor crew in those days. The men would then just disappear, abducted and enslaved. In today’s media driven world, that wouldn’t be unlike the three unfortunate women who were kidnapped and raped in Cleveland. No doubt women were subjected to such treatment as well during those dangerous times.
Yet Wilson begins his play in a boardinghouse. Scenic designer John Iavocelli’s dusky brick red and sunflower yellow set is cozy. This isn’t a flophouse for losers. This is a respectable home run by Seth (Keith David) and Bertha (Lillias White) Holly. Seth complains about Bynum Walker (Glynn Turman) and his folk rituals that involve a dead pigeon. We don’t get to see his doings in the garden and Seth is much more concerned about Bynum stepping on his prized vegetables. Any gardener can easily understand that anxiety. However in Seth’s case, it’s not just green thumb pride.
Seth worries about money and earns a bit on the side making things for a white traveling salesman, Rutherford Selig (Raynor Scheine). Rutherford is a people finder because he travels around. Bynum uses magic to bind people. Along comes Herald Loomis (John Douglas Thompson) with his young daughter Zonia Loomis (Skye Barrett). Herald is dressed in a dark long coat. He’s the man who was abducted by Joe Turner. For seven years, he was on a chain gang thought constantly of escaping and finding his wife and daughter. He found his daughter, left with her grandmother, but he now seeks his wife.
The play exposes the differing morals of the African American community in 1910s as compared to the accepted standards of the American society at large and each of the characters is attempting to define themselves in a legal system that barely recognizes them as people. The concept of migration considered–that of African American individuals looking for economic opportunities and people forced to move without the benefit of contacting their loved ones. Migration and identity are both tied to the racial discrimination that is in flux after the end of slavery.
At the boarding house, a young man, Jeremy Furlow (Gabriel Brown), lives life without long-term planning and takes love where he can find it. He finds it with Mattie Campbell (January Lavoy), a former slave who can’t quite adapt to independence and without a master, she needs a man to tell her what to do. We also see other women who have learned to survive alone.
Director Phylicia Rashad infuses this production with warm humor, more than you’d expect in what ultimately is a tragedy of a whole community. Yet you get the impression that all will survive even when love does not. Under Rashad, you see Thompson’s Loomis as a husband you might not want to return to. He’s bitter and burnt down to his soul with hate and anger. Not a spark of joyous love survives, even in the presence of his daughter. He’s a man still in survival mode with an armor built over seven hard years. That contrasts sharply with the wisdom of David’s Seth Holly. Seth knows the precarious nature of being black in a white world, you can hear that in his dealings with Rutherford and in his warnings to the more careless Jeremy Furlow (Gabriel Brown).
Wilson brings the tragedy of those years to us in a lyrical language, like the blues with a buoyant beat, softening it all with a bit of magic. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” continues at the Mark Taper Forum until 9 June 2013. $20-$70. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. For more information, call (213) 628-2772 or visit their website.
It’s not to early to be thinking about summer and a week from this Friday, 17 May 2013, the Pacific Asia Museum is kicking off its Fusion Fridays with a beautiful Indonesian shadow puppet performance.
Fusion Fridays are all about live performances, meeting people and seeing good art along with good eats. Cocktail and Asian attire are encouraged . DJs will be spinning in the courtyard, you can quench your thirst at the cash bar (Angel City Brewery) and some of L.A.’s best food trucks will be parking in our lot.
Want to enjoy the museum before the crowds? You can purchase a pre-party package and your group can have early entry with happy hour pricing. Contact education@pacificasiamuseum.org for more info.
This Fusion Friday features the Indonesian shadow puppet performance, gamelan music and DJ Arshia with a special Bollywood dance mix.
Current exhibits include the Takashi Tomo-oka exhibit of this contemporary Japanese artist’s photographs on handmade paper mounted on scrolls (closes 28 July 2013), “Focus on the Subject: The Art of the Harari Collection” (closes 30 March 2014), “The Art of Continuity: Revering our Elders” exhibit on the veneration of ancestors and lineages on the arts of Asia and “The Garden in Asia” which looks at the garden as a source of inspiration throughout the centuries.
In addition to the temporary exhibits, you can wander through the permanent exhibits of “The Art of Pacific Asia” and “The Arts of Korea.”
The Pacific Asia Museum is located at 46 North Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, California 91101. Regular hours are Wednesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Pacific Asia Museum presents a wide variety of public programming in June 2013. All programs below are included with museum admission unless otherwise stated.Silk Road Storytime
June 1, 10:30 a.m.
Some of the best stories don’t have any people in them at all! Join Sunny Stevenson as she shares favorite animal stories from across Asia. You can also make a fun animal craft and enjoy some Asian snacks. Free and open to the public.
Dyeing Workshops
June 9, 16, 23, 3-5:30 p.m.
Acclaimed textile artist Setsuko Hayashi is back by popular demand! Over three consecutive Sundays, students will create projects using three distinctive dyeing techniques: Japanese shibori, Indonesian batik and stenciling. Taught in Japanese and English. Each class is $35 for members, $45 for non-members, or sign up for all three for $90 for members, $120 non-members. Fee includes all materials. Students under 15 years must be accompanied by an adult. Advance registration required, visit the Pacific Asia Museum front desk or call 626-449-2742 x 31.
Concert
Sunday, June 16, 2:30 p.m.
Opera Pasadena presents “Sing a Song Of Shakespeare,” a performance of songs from within the Bard’s plays, as well as scenes from operas inspired by his works. $15, includes museum admission.
Friday, June 21, 7:30-10:30 p.m.
Experience the dramatic haka warrior dance, catch the summer spirit with traditional Japanese festival dances, try an activity inspired by special exhibition Takashi Tomo-oka, enjoy delicious treats from leading food trucks, plus art, DJ music and drinks! Free for members, $15 general public.
Authors on Asia: Dennis George Crow
Sunday, June 23, 2 p.m.
Dennis George Crow will discuss and show images from his new book, Old Shanghai’s Bund: Rare Images from the 19th Century. Presented as a collection for the first time, these rare and early photographs of Shanghai’s most famous waterfront offer a unique glimpse into how a small treaty port turned into the city’s most recognized landmark. Dennis George Crow is a leading specialist in historic China and Asian photography. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Light refreshments. RSVP to 626-449-2742 x 20.
Authors on Asia: Kendall H. Brown
Sunday, June 30, 2 p.m.
Kendall H. Brown will discuss and show images from his new book, Quiet Beauty: The Japanese Gardens of North America. Japanese gardens have been part of North American culture for almost 150 years. In his new book, Brown offers an intimate look at twenty-six of the most beautiful, with stunning color photographs of each, detailing their style, history, and special functions, and explores the ingenuity and range of Japanese landscaping.
Top images, from left:
Sunny Stevenson at Silk Road Storytime
Japanese shibori scarf
Fusion Fridays
Old Shanghai’s Bund by Dennis George Crow
About Pacific Asia Museum
Pacific Asia Museum is among the few institutions in the United States dedicated exclusively to the arts and culture of Asia and the Pacific Islands. The museum’s mission is to further intercultural understanding through the arts of Asia and the Pacific Islands. Since 1971, Pacific Asia Museum has served a broad audience of students, families, adults, and scholars through its exhibitions and programs.
Pacific Asia Museum is located at 46 North Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, California 91101. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $10 general, $7 students/seniors, and free for museum members and children under 12. Admission is free every 4th Friday of the month. For more information visit www.pacificasiamuseum.org or call (626) 449-2742.
SAN MARINO, Calif. —An innovative partnership between The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and East L.A.’s Esteban E. Torres High School has produced some pretty snappy results: An exhibition of photography by students that will be displayed along more than 1,000 feet of construction fence surrounding The Huntington’s Education and […]
If you want a chance to be part of William Shatner’s new album, and you’re lucky enough to have a photo of yourself with a rainbow (not sure if it has to be a real rainbow), then send one in to William Shatner before 31 May 2013. See the message from Google+ below: William Shatner […]
William Shatner must be working on his next documentary because he just posted the following message on Facebook: Friends, I’m looking for true stories on how watching Star Trek (any series) affected your career decisions later in life. Did you go into a career in Science or Aviation or even become an Astronaut due to […]
On Monday, during the semi-finals on DWTS 16, there were four perfect scores and 17 tens in all. Olympic gymnast Alexandra Raisman and Mark Balls were tied for first with football player Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff with 59 points. Jones and Smirnoff finally got a ten. They actually got three of them for a […]
What beloved movie from your childhood holds up just as well today? And which one doesn’t? We (my family) were animal lovers, something encouraged by living in San Diego where we frequently visited the world class San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Safari Park. I also grew up in a household ruled by Disney. […]
Do you love grand spectacle, color and great style. That’s what Baz Luhrmann brings to the movies, and I looked forward to the opening of his “The Great Gatsby.” I love the styles, the music and the fashion of that time period. Luhrmann gives it to us in vibrant excess as the art deco meets […]
As preparation for the much anticipated Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” I took to Netflix and watched the 1974 version which starred Robert Redford. Review of 2013 “The Great Gatsby” Law & Order fans might gasp at the sight of a young Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway. Carraway is the story’s narrator. His Nick is […]
When my theater companion suddenly canceled and I was scrambling to find someone who would want to join me, for this sensitive production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” I was surprised that people didn’t know who August Wilson was. Wilson who died in 2005 (2 October at age 60), won two Pulitzer Prizes for […]
It’s not to early to be thinking about summer and a week from this Friday, 17 May 2013, the Pacific Asia Museum is kicking off its Fusion Fridays with a beautiful Indonesian shadow puppet performance. Fusion Fridays are all about live performances, meeting people and seeing good art along with good eats. Cocktail and Asian […]
Pacific Asia Museum presents a wide variety of public programming in June 2013. All programs below are included with museum admission unless otherwise stated.Silk Road Storytime June 1, 10:30 a.m. […]
