Getty grant helps L.A. Conservancy map Altadena heritage: L.A. arts and culture this week
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The Getty announced a $420,000 grant to the L.A. Conservancy for a cultural asset mapping project that will help track, chronicle and maintain Altadena’s cultural, historic and architectural heritage in the wake of January’s devastating Eaton fire.
Community participation will be crucial to the effort as the conservancy works to document buildings and sites, as well as more ephemeral heritage such as local traditions, oral histories and cultural practices. There is also interest in cataloging longtime businesses that contributed to the social fabric of Altadena’s various neighborhoods. The results of this work will be used in collaboration with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning to ensure that policy discussions and decisions take Altadena heritage into account when it comes to building back what was lost.
Rebuilding efforts in Altadena — an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County — have been complicated by the lack of concrete cultural mapping, including sites of historic interest. By contrast, Pacific Palisades, another area that was brutalized by fire, had already established an official record of its cultural heritage via SurveyLA, a historic resources survey conducted by the city.
“Tackling this incomplete record of Altadena’s cultural resources, both built and intangible, is critical for the community as it contemplates rebuilding,” Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation, said in a news release. “L.A. Conservancy is an excellent partner to lead an alliance of community-based organizations and preservation professionals who are working to ensure that Altadena’s vibrant cultural history is not lost in redevelopment efforts.”
L.A. Conservancy has a special interest in historic preservation and the grant will allow for a complete inventory of Altadena’s heritage sites — to be made available in an online map.
Related to this effort is the news that Artists at Work, which provides artists with employment, benefits and a steady salary for 18 month terms, has released its list of 2025-26 participants. Four Los Angeles artists are among them, including Altadena resident Alma Cielo, who is set to collaborate with L.A. Conservancy during her term. Cielo, a ceramicist, lost her home in the Eaton fire and plans to focus on post-fire recovery.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt marveling at the resilience of Altadena residents in the face of their losses, and firmly invested in supporting them as they rebuild. Here’s this week’s arts and culture news.
Best bets: On our radar this week
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Artemisia’s Strong Women: Rescuing a Masterpiece
Five years ago, a massive explosion ripped through the port of Beirut, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands more. The aftermath of the tragedy revealed a previously unknown painting by the great 17th century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi amid the rubble. “Hercules and Omphale,” an oil-on-canvas work that manifests Gentileschi’s penchant for classical subjects, was severely damaged and sent to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for restoration. That painstaking conservation process is now at the center of an installation featuring four other paintings by the artist, who has become a modern feminist icon. In 2022, when the Getty acquired another painting, “Lucretia,” that is part of the new exhibition, Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote of Gentileschi, “Happily, in the last two decades, the study of her paintings has been widening in productive and exciting ways, giving us a fuller understanding of her challenging involvement with social, political, literary and intellectual currents of her day. There’s a long way to go, and more discoveries are inevitable.”
Through Sept. 14 . J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. getty.edu
Mumford & Sons
It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 17 years since Mumford & Sons made their local debut at the Hotel Cafe. Since then, the British folk-rock band — Marcus Mumford, Ted Dwane and Ben Lovett — have toured the world several times over, crafted hit songs such as “Little Lion Man,” “The Cave” and “I Will Wait,” and won a best album Grammy for 2012’s “Babel.” This week, the group is back in L.A. (minus longtime member Winston Marshall, who left in 2021 following controversial social media posts) and playing the Hollywood Bowl in support of their latest album, “RUSHMERE.” The English indie rock duo Good Neighbours — Oli Fox and Scott Verrill — will open the show.
7:30 p.m. Thursdays. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. hollywoodbowl.com
Culture news
The 2025 Tony Awards honored Broadway’s best and brightest last night at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The surprise hit “Maybe Happy Ending” won best musical and led all productions with six wins, while the musical “Buena Vista Social Club,” inspired by the legendary Cuban ensemble, earned four. Earlier in the week, Times theater critic Charles McNulty made a prescient arument for why Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose” deserved to win the Tony for best play over Cole Escola’s, “Oh, Mary!” The campy melodrama had a wave of giddy popularity at its back, but “Purpose” is the more complex piece of writing and could more readily benefit from the prestige of a Tony win when it comes to rallying support for future productions, wrote McNulty. “There was a time not so long ago when the future of the Broadway play was in serious doubt. The threat hasn’t gone away, and Tony voters shouldn’t pass up an opportunity to honor true playwriting excellence.” Escola did not go home empty-handed, however, winning the Tony for best lead actor in a play and drawing what may have been the largest applause of the night.
The business outlook is not good for the Kennedy Center in the wake of President Trump’s takeover. The Washington Post recently reported that subscriptions were down by about $1.6 million, or 36%, from the previous year — with the hardest hit coming in theater subscriptions, which are down 82%. “At this time in last year’s subscription campaign, the center had generated $1,226,344 in revenue from selling 1,771 subscriptions. This year it has sold 371 subscriptions, totaling $224,059, a difference of more than $1 million,” the Post reported. The numbers were leaked to the paper by former Kennedy Center employees and confirmed by a current staff member, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution.
Journalist Stephanie Elizondo Griest has a new book coming out this month through Beacon Press titled “Art Above Everything,” which chronicles the lives — and countless sacrifices — made by more than 100 female artists around the world in service of their vocations. At the core of Griest’s explorations in Rwanda, Romania, Qatar, Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, Cuba and the U.S., is the question: What is the pursuit of art worth?
The SoCal scene
”L.A. Opera unveiled a violent, politically disquieting production in which a tortured jester faces mob rule,” Times classical music critic Mark Swed writes in his review of the company’s season closer, Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” L.A. Opera has tackled the show before, usually to lackluster effect, Swed notes. This show, however, is different. Thanks to outgoing music director James Conlon’s deft approach to Verdi, this production — featuring a truly terrifying clown suit — sizzles with visceral energy. “After 32 years of failed attempts, L.A. Opera has finally moved the ‘Rigoletto’ needle in the right direction,” Swed says.
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Once you’ve read Times music critic Mikael Wood’s recent interview with Cynthia Erivo about her new album “I Will Forgive You” and what she’s doing during her break from “Wicked,” be sure to check out the talented multiplatform artist’s lengthy June 2 profile in Billboard. Erivo discusses the world’s reaction to her being queer. For the most part, she says, she didn’t experience much difficulty in the wake of her decision to come out. But there was a major exception, she told Billboard: a massive conservative backlash earlier this year after the Hollywood Bowl announced that Erivo would play Jesus in its summer production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” “You can’t please everyone. It is legitimately a three-day performance at the Hollywood Bowl where I get to sing my face off. So hopefully they will come and realize, ‘Oh, it’s a musical, the gayest place on Earth,’ ” Erivo says in the article.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
There are 600 L.A. landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places, and lifelong Angeleno Etan Rosenbloom is determined to visit them all. Thankfully, for us, Rosenbloom has highlighted his picks for the top 10 in a handy map.
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