Dear friends,

Hello and hope you are doing well. This is certainly a lively summer with the Olympic Games and the revved-up race for the White House.

Speaking of the Olympics, it won’t be long before Paris hands off the baton to Los Angeles, for LA 2028. So far, plans for LA’s third outing as host city appear modest — to reuse existing facilities — rather than the splashy or beneficial ideas like taking the opening ceremonies out of the stadium and onto the Seine or... cleaning up the Seine!!!

But several of those "existing facilities" will be pretty fresh, including SoFi Stadium and, new to the pack, the Intuit Dome. The new arena for the LA Clippers opens on August 15th with a concert by Bruno Mars. Whether or not you plan on getting tix for the upcoming NBA season, it’s worth checking out the architecture, art, and design, commissioned by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, even as the sports industrial complex emerging in downtown Inglewood prompts questions from some locals.

Cultural Playground, by Michael Massenburg, graces the outer wall of the Intuit Dome plaza. Photo by Frances Anderton.

The arena, designed by AECOM, is the mothership. Less dome in shape and more squashed oval, it has a skin of openable, translucent, plastic polymer panels, laid in a staggered, swirling pattern over a structural-steel frame that reportedly “keeps the rain out, direct sun exposure at bay, and lets fresh air in,” while giving the building the feeling of a beached scaly behemoth.

Then there's the plaza. Traditional stadiums have long been critiqued by urban planners for creating large, self-contained blobs in the urban fabric. The Intuit Dome experience starts outdoors, with an open-air bridge (from the parking structure and, in the future, a transit stop), a plaza with a basketball court and bandshell, and steps-come-seating shaded by a lattice filtering the bright sunlight. It was created by AECOM with designers including landscape architect Walter Hood, City Design Studio, and Anderson Barker, and will be open to non-ticket holders, according to press representatives.

The bridge leading to the Intuit Dome. Photo by Caglar Gokbulut/City Design Studio.

A stellar line-up of six public artists have adorned the spaces. The first sight visitors will see upon walking from the parking structure is Michael Massenburg’s Cultural Playground mural, depicting athletes, musicians, and dancers in sites across LA.

Living Arena, made using AI algorithms by Refik Anadol, is a kinetic work on the wall of the bandstand. Its data recast as abstract pattern includes flight information from LAX and other airports. Meanwhile, Jennifer Steinkamp's digital Swoosh (shown top of page in a photo by Iwan Baan) animates the entire surface of the dome itself, which must be a great show for passengers in planes overhead, descending into LAX. Those planes, incidentally, are very loud; one of the notable aspects of the dome's interior is that it is extremely quiet, insulated from outside. Read about all the artists, here.

While touring family and friends of the design and construction teams around shortly before the arena’s opening, Farooq Ameen, founding principal of City Design Studio, said he was overjoyed to see the plaza being instantly embraced. “People were spontaneously playing basketball on the open court. It felt so good. Nothing outside was choreographed.”

View from the steps of Refik Anadol's Living Arena, behind a basketball court at the Intuit Dome plaza. Photo by Sabrina Ahmed/City Design Studio

Not everyone in Inglewood, however, is seduced by the munificence of attractions like the art-filled Intuit Dome and its inviting plaza. Some residents have expressed concerns about the concentration of stadiums, saying they make it harder to get across central Inglewood and are sending up home prices. Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote recently in the LA Times: “Art is wonderful and welcome, but what Black people really need to secure their futures are affordable housing and decent schools. SoFi and all the rest secure neither.”

For its part, the city, helmed by Mayor James T. Butts, is garnering global prestige. Both new stadiums are slated as venues for the 2028 Olympics.

Intuit Dome, designed by AECOM. Photo by Iwan Baan.

Design Things To Do

Modernism, Inc. Movie Screening
Friday, August 9th, Saturday, August 10th
Laemmle Royal, 11523 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025

The strong design ethos in computer technology did not start with Apple. The documentary, Modernism, Inc., explores the career and impact of Eliot Noyes. The Walter Gropius-educated architect, says filmmaker Jason Cohn, "did more than anyone to align the Modernist design ethos to the needs of ascendant corporate America. His impact on companies like IBM paved the way for Apple and many of the other design-conscious brands we know today."

Modernism, Inc. will screen at Laemmle Royal this weekend, with Q&As to follow with Cohn, who also directed Eames: The Architect and the Painter.

Click here for details.

The World is Yours! – And Your Dog’s
Saturday, August 10th, 10:00 AM–3:00 PM
5700 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90043

Destination Crenshaw, the 1.3-mile Black public art and landscaping project, will unveil one of its artworks this Saturday: "The World is Yours!," a mural by Los Angeles artist Anthony “Toons One” Martin. It adorns the side of the Dog Lovers Pet Grooming store at Crenshaw Blvd. and 57th Street, so the opening is aimed at furry friends as well. Expect music, speeches, and "an obstacle course for the pups powered by South Park Doggie Land."

This mural is the first of many artworks commissioned by DC to grace the Crenshaw District, by Black artists connected to Los Angeles. “Toons One” was born and raised in Los Angeles and got his start in the early 1980s in hip-hop graffiti writing. His art and design work encompasses album cover illustrations, automotive pin striping/custom painting, skateboard graphics and sculpture, and furniture design and art direction.

Click here for information.

Toons One's mural is partially visible and will be revealed Saturday. Photo by Frances Anderton.

Freedom Tree Park opening
Saturday, August 17th, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM
Jordan Downs, 2070 E. Century Boulevard, LA 90002

Jordan Downs, the public housing estate in Watts, is in the process of a massive overhaul in a partnership between the city’s public housing authority, HACLA, and private commercial and affordable housing developers. Taking the place of the one-time superblock of barracks-like structures (originally built for war workers) are a retail mall, clusters of new housing in a mix of styles, and landscaped open spaces, one of which, Freedom Tree Park designed by Tina Chee, opens August 17th. 

While there, be sure to wander the development and check out Faces of Watts, 49 portraits of residents created by the muralist and street artist Man One. The vivid images emerged from an 18-month engagement with tenants, first to figure out who should be featured, and then to work together on prepping the walls. In the process, bonds were built between neighbors who had been strangers to each other. The message? There is public art for the people, as at Intuit Dome, above, and then there is public art created with the people. 

Click here for details about the opening. Read more about Faces of Watts, and the master planning and new housing at Jordan Downs in this month’s “awesome” selection in Awesome and Affordable: Great Housing Now.

Two of the "Faces of Watts" at Jordan Downs, by Man One. Photo by Frances Anderton

Black California Dreamin’
Through August 18th, 2024
California African American Museum, Exposition Park, Los Angeles

The historian Alison Rose Jefferson gave us a different way to think about our “public” beaches when she released her illuminating 2020 book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era.

Then her exploration of access to, and exclusion from, nature and recreational sites including the coastline, became an exhibition. It opened last year at California African American Museum (CAAM) but had to close soon after when the museum building suffered heavy rain damage.

The building and the show reopened and it is up through August 18th. Black California Dreamin’: Claiming Space at America’s Leisure Frontier, curated by Rose Jefferson, displays historical photographs and memorabilia that show how “African Americans helped define the practice and meaning of leisure in California as they faced emerging power politics around who gets access to naturescapes and other public spaces.” Catch the show before it closes.

Click here for details; and check out all the other summer shows at CAAM, here.

John “Johnnie” Rucker and friends at the beach near Bay Street, Santa Monica, California, ca. 1950. Photograph courtesy Konrad Rucker/CAAM

Sculpting with Light: Contemporary Artists and Holography 
AND
Abstracted Light: Experimental Photography  
Opens August 20th, on through November 24th, 2024
Getty Center 

Light as an artistic medium is now so ubiquitous (see public art by Anadol and Steinkamp at Clippers Stadium, above), it’s nice to be reminded of early experiments in the genre, as with two shows opening soon at the Getty Center.

Abstracted Light considers light abstraction as "one of the primary aesthetic concerns of avant-garde photography from the 1920s to the 1950s," evidenced in photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection by László Moholy-Nagy, Francis Bruguière, Man Ray, Tōyō Miyatake, Asahachi Kono, and Barbara Morgan.

When you think of holograms, the ABBA Voyage show may come to mind, or Tupac at Coachella. The Getty Center’s exhibition, Sculpting with Light, considers the fine art experiments in the creation of illusory objects floating in space, including those by artists produced by the C Project, “where C stands for the mathematical symbol for “speed of light,” and Deana Lawson’s hologram of “Los Angeles-based food activist Ron Finley (heard on KCRW) embedded in an inkjet print of a sidewalk vendor selling gold chains and watches; together the two portraits create a dialogue about resources and sustainability.” Interesting!

These exhibitions are among the more than 70 shows that make up PST ART: Art & Science Collide. PST Art is the Getty initiative formerly known as Pacific Standard Time (now puzzlingly rebranded). It was launched in 2011 to support and bring together cultural institutions in Southern California in elevating LA art and artists and officially kicks off on September 15th, but a few shows open this month.

Click here for information about Abstracted Light, and here for Sculpting with Light.

Untitled, c. 1950, Hy Hirsh. Ansco Printon chromogenic print 7 7/8 × 9 7/8 in. Getty Museum, 2013. Gift of Deborah Bell

What I'm Digging 

Join Or Die

A documentary about the decline in club participation in America may not sound like must-see TV, but in the hands of sibling directors Rebecca and Pete Davis, it is. Join or Die dramatizes Bowling Alone, the book that argued that American democracy and personal well-being are suffering with the nationwide decline of social and civic clubs. Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam stars, along with a panoply of talking heads (including Hillary Clinton, Eddie Glaude Jr., and Pete Buttigieg), and club-joiners, from the founder of a Black cycling collective in Atlanta to the motley members of the Odd Fellows in Waxahachie, TX. It is animated with lively graphics by Mark Lopez, and brisk storytelling. The film is being screened in theaters around the country, but the directors recommend you create your own “club” to view it. Click the “Host a Screening” button on their website, here. 

Animation by Mark Lopez puts a skip in the step of Join or Die.