Newsletter: Essential Arts & Culture: Thoroughly modern museums and the go-to guy for Halloween
I'm Kelly Scott, arts and culture editor of the Los Angeles Times, and here are some stories and events that defined the week in the arts.
Museums and the selfie culture
"Museums are changing, perhaps at the fastest clip since the introduction of rudimentary audio guides in the 1950s," Jessica Gelt writes in an article about how museums are using digital technology to spiff up "the museum experience." Gradually Los Angeles museums are making changes that will bring them into the modern era. But it's a tricky balance. Some museum people, like Helen Molesworth of MOCA, don't want screens competing with art for visitors' attention. Elsewhere, at the Natural History Museum, for example, iPads are a more comfortable fit. Jessica lists some of the more creative innovations at Southern California institutions.
An iPad installed in the Huntington Library contains in-depth information about the museum's historic rooms. (Huntington Library)
The melancholy Cumberdane
Say what you will about the fan fervor surrounding actor Benedict Cumberbatch. He was a distinguished actor before he was a magnet for devoted, some would say obsessed, fans. Theater critic Charles McNulty says Cumberbatch's "Hamlet," now onstage at London's Barbican Centre and which he saw in a National Theatre Live broadcast, is an impressive one. "His well-balanced portrayal combines classical clarity with an emotional openness that draws us deeper into the character's inner stalemate," McNulty wrote. "Hamlet" runs at the Barbican until Oct. 31, but there will be other opportunities to see it via NT Live. That will have to hold us until "Sherlock" returns.
The self-dissecting words falling from Benedict Cumberbatch's lips transcended the cult of his celebrity. (Johan Persson)
Danny Elfman says 'Jack Skellington, c'est moi'
You might suspect that composer and musician Danny Elfman has plans for Halloween. This is Tim Burton's go-to film scorer we're talking about. Yes, he has plans — big ones: a screening at the Hollywood Bowl of Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas," with an orchestra, a chorus, soloists and Elfman himself singing the lead role of Jack Skellington. (There is a second show Nov. 1) Elfman has long identified with Jack, who is tired of Halloween and wants to take over Christmas. When Burton first conceived of him, Elfman was pulling away from his longtime rock band, Oingo Boingo. "I felt like Jack from where I was in life... I was writing from my feelings of being the king of my own world, from which I wanted out."
Danny Elfman says when he was writing songs for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" hero Jack Skellington, he related to the character's life goals. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Music Center's anniversary year: Pleasure and pain
Shortly after the Music Center celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of its first theater, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, last year, reports of fundraising shortfalls and money problems began to emerge. By summer the performing arts center had cut programs and watched several department heads depart. There was some good news: the appointment of Rachel Moore, the president of American Ballet Theatre, as the new Music Center president. But there were enough questions about the center's finances that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors asked for an audit of the funds they give it. The audit report landed this week.
Inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
In short
Exhibitions of an influential Japanese photographer and the women inspired by her work, at the Getty Museum ... Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian on the fine points of singing in the Armenian language — and Elvish, for the movie "The Two Towers" ... The inimitable John Fleck, in his latest work, "Blacktop Highway," at REDCAT.
What we've been reading...
Ivo van Hove, the Belgian auteur, is profiled by Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker. I consider him to be one of the most exciting directors working today and am curious to see how his Broadway productions of Arthur Miller plays will illuminate our understanding of these works. –Charles McNulty, Times theater critic
... and listening to
Pianist András Schiff has been receiving much attention this week for his extraordinary recital Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall and this weekend's concerts conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. So it is fascinating to visit the BBC archives, where you can hear him, for a 1999 appearance on "Desert Island Discs," defend his uncompromising standards, reveal his surprisingly wild youth and explain his courageous defection from Soviet Hungary. Rick Schultz brings us up to date with Schiff in The Times and the Jewish Journal. – Mark Swed, Times music critic
For the Record: Last week I mistakenly wrote that the Bill T. Jones performance that Mark Swed reviewed was at UCLA. Jones appeared at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach.
Follow me on Twitter at @kscottLATarts.
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