Essential Arts & Culture: Visceral border art, a 'guileless' Wilshire Grand, must-see African sculpture

June 30, 2017 3:20 PM PT

Happy Fourth, Los Angeles! May your buns be firm and your apple pie sweet. I’m Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, with your weekly dose of important culture news and dog videos:

A visceral border experience

Mexican film director Alejandro G. Iñárritu has created a VR experience that places the viewer in the Sonoran desert in the middle of a perilous border crossing. It goes on view at LACMA on Sunday, but I got an advance peek — and was left shaken. Its story of a dangerous crossing fits right in with key narratives that have shaped U.S. identity. (Think: Mayflower.) Los Angeles Times

Plus, I spoke with Press Play about my experience inside the installation. KCRW

L.A. welcomes the Wilshire Grand

The Wilshire Grand opened this month as the tallest building in Los Angeles.

The new Wilshire Grand Center opened on Friday — and it is now the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne paid a visit to the structure, designed by longtime L.A. firm AC Martin Partners. He found that it has “a certain guileless charisma.” Los Angeles Times

Plus, in his weekly Sunday Calendar column, Hawthorne looks at how a young generation of architects have used design, installation and performance to play with ideas of impermanence and informality in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Los Angeles Times

Must-see: ‘Beautiful’ show of African sculpture

Times art critic Christopher Knight reports that an exhibition of African sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art may be the “most flat-out beautiful museum exhibition in Los Angeles so far this year.” The show, titled “The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts,” brings together about 100 sculptures that date from the 13th to the 19th century. You have until July 9. Do not miss! Los Angeles Times

A critic’s letter

Times theater critic Charles McNulty wrote his review for “Letters From a Nut by Ted L. Nancy,” currently on view at the Geffen Playhouse, in the form of a letter — one that reads like the most scathing Dear John. “I hope you will keep your good fortune in mind when I say to you, with all due respect, the show is not very good,” writes McNulty. “And by ‘not very good’ I’m avoiding saying something much harsher.” Oh, burn. Los Angeles Times

Berlin vs. L.A. music scenes

Times classical music critic Mark Swed looks at how Los Angeles stacks up against Berlin, one of the globe’s classical music capitals. L.A. has plenty to crow about, he reports: “More new music likely came from the L.A. Phil than from all other major American orchestras combined.” But L.A. “may never come close to catching up with Berlin when it comes to opera.” Los Angeles Times

Plus, Swed attended a two-day conference at the Music Academy of the West that surveyed the state of classical music. Los Angeles Times

In the galleries (and the desert)

The arts team has been hitting the gallery scene hard. Christopher Knight got a gander at Joel Holmberg’s highly intriguing paintings of toilets at Michael Benevento Gallery and sculptures by Tatsuo Kawaguchi at Kayne Griffin Corcoran that he says collide “French Dada with Zen koan.”

Times contributing reviewer David Pagel was moved by the “oddly powerful” paintings of Chris Finley at Chimento Contemporary and the “thrilling” pointilist drawings of Eric Beltz at CB1 Gallery, works that make space and time “elastic.”

Reviewer Leah Ollman reports that the Getty Research Institute’s “Concrete Poetry: Words and Sounds in Graphic Space” is a “terrifically lively” exploration of visual, spatial and other types poetry. Los Angeles Times

And Steve Appleford got a gander at the riotous events that went down at the Broad during the first of its summer happenings. Los Angeles Times

Looking ahead: Daniel Hawkins has built a lighthouse in the desert and he is having an opening on Saturday. You can find the rest of the week’s arts listings in my weekly Datebook. Los Angeles Times

Plus: MOCA will be free through Monday — and your last chance to see the great Kerry James Marshall show at the Grand Avenue location! Facebook

Icing on ‘The Cake’

Bekah Brunstetter, the playwright behind "The Cake," and a writer on NBC's "This Is Us."

The prolific writer Bekah Brunstetter is known for contributions to TV programs such as NBC’s “This Is Us.” Her new play, “The Cake,” about a conservative baker faced with the task of making a cake for a same-sex wedding, has been garnering buzz in advance of its opening. “It was really important to me to start with a character who has conservative values and make her the hero,” she tells The Times’ Daryl H. Miller. “And then, after we get to know her, have her do something that, quote-unquote, ‘we’ — the liberal theater audience — don’t agree with.” Los Angeles Times

Joe Mantegna on Lenny Bruce

The Tony Award-winning actor is directing a play about comedian Lenny Bruce at Theatre 68 in North Hollywood. He tells The Times’ Jessica Gelt: “Lenny Bruce is one of the rare performers who pushed the envelope for not just show business, but for society.” Los Angeles Times

Egypt’s Jon Stewart

Bassem Youssef was once known as the Jon Stewart of Egypt. After fleeing his native country, he has begun anew in Los Angeles.

A popular television satirist who mocks the powerful on a nightly program. That was Bassem Youssef, the surgeon-turned-comedian who became known as the “Jon Stewart of Egypt.” But death threats in his native country forced him to flee — and he is now in Los Angeles. The Times’ Jeffrey Fleishman has an intriguing profile of an entertainer forced to beginning anew. Los Angeles Times

A purgatory for ‘McMansion Hell’

“McMansion Hell,” the popular blog run by Kate Wagner that picks apart the poor design aesthetics of McMansion architecture, was temporarily shut down this week after Wagner received a cease-and-desist letter from the real estate site Zillow. (She would often employ photos from the site in her comical deconstructions of the style.) After a media outcry, the site, quite mercifully, is back. Long may those Italian balustrades live! Archpaper

In the event that Zillow is still feeling litigious, however, Wagner’s latest report on McMansion architecture (Mediterranean vs. Moderns), features nothing but drawings. Curbed

In other news…

— Cue the Jar Jar Binks jokes: The L.A. City Council has given the go-ahead to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Los Angeles Times

— Erin Christovale joins the Hammer Museum as an assistant curator. Congratulations! ARTnews

— Matt Stromberg has a piece about unusual cultural spaces in L.A., including galleries in a gray Ford Crown Victoria (a.k.a. Gallery1993) and a freight elevator (Elevator Mondays). The Guardian

— California’s Arts-in-Corrections program will expand to all 34 state-run adult correctional facilities in California. Sarah Linn has a look at the program. KCET Artbound

— Speaking of which, the California Arts Council, which helps operate Arts-in-Corrections, just saw a $6.8-million funding increase from the state. Very good news! KQED

— From rent control to homeless plans, Aaron Hillel draws up a list of 20 things that would make Los Angeles a better place to live. LA Weekly

— A combative new ad by the NRA features a host of modern architecture. Diana Budds looks at why Modernism remains a target. Co.Design

— To balance out that NRA ad: the video for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s remix of “Immigrants: We Get the Job Done” from “The Hamilton Mixtape.” YouTube

— “As audiences, we sit side by side with strangers, performing the democratic possibility of a collective experience from multiple positions and perspectives.” Theater director Diane Paulus on how theater contributes to democracy. The Atlantic

— A ballerina’s final performance in pictures. New York Times

— Amiruddin Shah, who grew up in a Mumbai slum, is about to begin four years of training with American Ballet Theatre. AP

— Journalist Ann Friedman has a thorough and wonderful Q&A with novelist Chris Kraus of “I Love Dick” fame. The Cut

— I was born in Casper, Wy., and this piece, by Marcus Patrick Ellsworth, on the town’s first gay pride parade, is quite wonderful. MTV News