‘Einstein’ brings new relativity

When the brass at the Skirball Cultural Center booked the show “Einstein” last year, they expected a lot of interest in the exhibition, which was making its only West Coast appearance.

But they didn’t expect the hosts of weddings and bar mitzvahs and birthday parties to want their guests to have access to the show. Nor did they expect to get oddball rock music mystic Brian Eno playing with the gravity distortion machine and ranting against shortsightedness at New York loft parties before his Skirball appearance in April.

“We said we wanted to look at Einstein from 360 degrees,” museum Director Lori Starr says, “and I think we’ve done that.”

The whole thing added up, says Starr, to the most popular exhibition the museum has ever mounted. Roughly 200,000 people came to the show and related programs over the last nine months, including thousands of schoolkids.

“We’re a Jewish cultural institution, and more than half the people who came were not Jewish and had never heard of us before,” Starr says.

Today will see the last official events for the show, which runs through next Sunday: The Glendale Youth Orchestra will play classical pieces Einstein loved, after which local choreographer Rosanna Gamson will present a dance piece, “Grand Hope Flower,” partly inspired by the writings of the late Caltech physicist Richard Feynman.

Pleased as she was by the turnout, Starr says the Einstein show didn’t make the Skirball want to showcase a famous figure beloved by the goyim every year.

“Don’t live by the blockbuster,” she says. “They’ll kill you.”

-- Scott Timberg