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What to expect

Every week, Essential Arts covers the depth and breadth of Southern California’s complex cultural sphere: the latest biennial, the avant-garde building design, a groundbreaking opera and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play — along with all the bits of related news emerging from the region and beyond.

This begins with the voices of our award-winning critics, who bring a depth of reporting and experience to the region’s cultural scene: Christopher Knight’s profound knowledge of art in Los Angeles; Mark Swed’s longtime immersion in classical music; Charles McNulty’s deep understanding of theater, and his ability to identify the idea that stays with you long after the performance is over.

But it also includes our reporting: investigations, profiles, interviews, photo essays and explanatory pieces produced by a team of longtime journalists who know what’s happening in the creative corners of L.A. — and beyond.

Your host

Carolina A. Miranda is a Los Angeles Times staff writer covering a wide gamut of culture, including visual art, architecture and film, not to mention performance art cabaret divas.

Her work often looks at how art intersects with politics, gender and race — whether it’s the ways in which artists are tackling the U.S.-Mexico border or the ways in which art intersects with development and gentrification.

She is a regular contributor to KCRW’s “Press Play” and was a winner of the 2017 Rabkin Prize in Visual Arts Journalism.

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