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title: 🚀 The Space Shuttle Launch at the California Science Center is a Success
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 The Endeavour is about to go on view in Expo Park. Plus, cringe culture and LA’s new gallery spaces  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­    ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

| Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here. Hey LA: I’m culture writer Carolina A. Miranda and I'm sitting here biting my nails over the midterms. But I am nonetheless nerding out over my new poster, An Incomplete\* Listing of Los Angeles Libraries, Reading Rooms & Archives. It’s a map to the spaces in the city where you can park yourself with a book — no purchase necessary. Find it on the website of Inventory Press for only $2.50. This week, I’m reporting on the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. But before I take you to the stars, here are four events to check out: Every Minute is History: Five Views of Los Angeles and Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography, at the Getty Center. A pair of adjacent shows bring Mexican and Mexican-American photography into focus. Through January 3rd, admission is free; getty.edu. 40 Years of La Luz de Jesus Gallery, at La Luz de Jesus. The countercultural art space is marking four decades in existence with a two-month celebration. Opens November 6th, admission is free but the opening party requires an RSVP; laluzdejesus.com. Dan Levenson, SKZ Centimeter Studies Classroom, at Timothy Hawkinson Gallery. It’s the final week for this charming show, which imagines a Bauhaus-style art school, down to the furniture and stained aprons. Through November 7th, admission is free; timothyhawkinsongallery.com. The 23rd annual New Original Works (NOW) festival at REDCAT. An annual rite of passage, the festival is staging nine new works of dance, theater, music and performance over three weeks. November 5th through 21st; admission is $25 per show, or you can see all nine works for $50; redcat.org. Need more? I’ve got three additional gallery recommends in The New York Times. Now, onto the launch… At top: Dances with Muertos (1983, printed 1991), by Ricardo Valverde, from the group show Every Minute is History at the Getty Center. (Esperanza Valverde and Christopher Jude Valverde) AD ASTRA The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, at right, will open on November 13th. (California Science Center) In the fall of 2012, the Space Shuttle Endeavour made its final journey — not into space, but through the streets of Los Angeles. Its 12-mile ride, from LAX to the Forum to its permanent home in Exposition Park, provided an unforgettable spectacle of the spaceship’s massive body slowly inching over freeways and past Randy’s Donuts. Fourteen years later, the Endeavour is ready to meet the public in its permanent home: the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, a new museum wing that adds 200,000 square feet of space to the California Science Center. It has absolutely been worth the wait. The shuttle now stands — vertically — in a 20-story-tall chamber that presents it as it might have been seen on a launchpad. And the approach to this space has been smartly and evocatively designed. Visitors assemble in a small theater, where a trio of screens play a video of the Endeavour in action: you see astronauts suiting up and gorgeous vistas of Earth. This concludes with footage of the shuttle lifting off into space — after which a set of doors open to reveal the actual shuttle beyond. I am by no means an aviation geek, but this theatrical reveal was appropriately awe-inspiring. The Space Shuttle Endeavour is seen in launch position in its new home. (California Science Center) The shuttle gallery is the centerpiece of the new wing, which also includes the new multi-story Korean Air Aviation Gallery, which features more than a dozen aircraft, including a North American F-100D Super Sabre, a US Air Force fighter jet whose nose is painted with a toothy grin, as well as the forward section of a Korean Air Boeing 747 — which you can board. Separately, the Kent Kresa Gallery, which is centered on space exploration, features vessels like the Gemini 11 capsule used in a 1966 orbital mission and the Apollo Soyuz Command Module from 1975, which marked the first time US and Soviet astronauts came together in orbit — a mission now known as “the handshake in space.” The building expansion, which rises like a silver shark fin over Exposition Park, was designed by ZGF Architects, which has executed the science center’s master plan over the last 25 years. From the exterior, the building’s stainless steel paneling gives off a whiff of warmed-over Frank Gehry. It also functions as a wall between the northern and southern ends of the park. But in its mission to provide an adequate home for Endeavour, along with other air- and spacecraft in the center’s collection, the structure does the job. The airplane-hanger like environment provides a worthy home to a range of craft that include everything from a late 19th century replica glider to a modern drone. And tucked into its many corners, are thoughtful installations geared at kids, including flight simulators, a replica shuttle cockpit, and a 115-foot tube slide that lands at the foot of Endeavour. Ultimately, however, it’s Endeavor that is the star of the show. This includes a glass-walled, gantry-style elevator that leads guests up to the shuttle’s nose. There, a transparent viewing platform also provides vertigo-inducing views of the space below.   Aircraft hang in the Korean Air Aviation Gallery. (Mike Kelley) The Endeavour was the fifth and final operational shuttle ever built, a replacement for the Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded soon after liftoff in 1986 — a moment that members of my generation, who saw it happen live on TV, remember all too well. A video and a monument within the gallery honor the Challenger crew, along with ground crew members who gave their lives in support of various shuttle missions. I was moved by the display. But I was also moved by the larger narrative contained within the story of the Endeavour and the missions that preceded it. The Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery does a thorough job of recounting the story of the shuttle, from fabrication to flight. In doing so, it highlights the vast collective effort it took to get a craft like the Endeavor into orbit — down to the small, family-owned machine shop in El Monte that made the orthogrid panel for the launch system rocket. In a recent story in The Atlantic, staff writer Josh Tyrangiel reported on how the space race of today is no longer a collective pursuit, but a private contest between two billionaires: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The display at the California Science Center made me think that this may be one area where it may pay to revisit the past. The exploration of space should be bigger than the naked ambitions of two men. 🚀🚀🚀 The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will open to the public on November 13th. Admission is free, but due to anticipated demand, advance reservations (available for a $4 per person ticketing fee) are recommended; californiasciencecenter.org. While you’re there… The California African American Museum nearby has a small but stunning show of paintings by Compton-born painter Reggie Burrows Hodges, part of a trio of exhibitions devoted to the artist that includes displays at Art + Practice and the Getty Center. The CAAM portion will be on view through February 28th; caamuseum.org. AROUND THE INTERNET    Eugenie Brinkema on art and cringe. Get those old club flyers out from under your bed! Cal State LA is organizing a community archiving session around underground music on November 5th. Shana Nys Dambrot has a handy (and hopeful) guide to LA’s new gallery spaces. Gary Brewer’s review of Charles Dickson’s recent show makes me hope that some LA institution picked up his striking chariot, Bongo Congo Mobilization of the Spirit (1975). I always appreciate a good jam with Lari Pittman. The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach is celebrating 30 years. William Poundstone has a look at some of MOCA’s latest acquisitions. A group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego explores queer Latinx nightlife. Dushko Petrovich Córdova on the Trump/microphone aesthetic. Colombia’s new right-wing government has been removing objects it considers controversial from museum displays. If you read Spanish, El País goes deeper on the story, and they round up some of the objects in question on their Instagram. Tony Berlant, known for his found metal collages, is dead at 85. Signing off with this melting statue of Ron DeSantis. Thanks for reading! And don't forget to vote! 🗳️ Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe to Art Insider for more design, art, and culture from Carolina Miranda. SUBSCRIBE KCRW 1900 Pico Blvd.  Santa Monica, CA 90405  You received this email because you are subscribed to Art Insider from KCRW. Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. Unsubscribe from all future emails. |
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