Newsletter: Essential Arts: Brazen bronze, thumbs down on a freeway and an art heist solved
I’m Kelly Scott, arts and culture editor of the Los Angeles Times, and our reporters and critics were all over these stories last week:
Unprecedented bronze
The J. Paul Getty Museum’s “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” is the first American museum survey of Hellenistic bronze sculpture, Times art critic Christopher Knight says. The exhibition takes one of the Getty’s prized possessions, “Victorious Youth,” and surrounds it with other institutions’ bronze masterpieces. “Smart museums fulfill the fundamental mission to investigate and illuminate their permanent collections by building exhibitions around significant works of art they possess,” Knight writes. “The Getty is a smart museum.”
“Statue of Eros Sleeping,” third-second century BC.
"Statue of Eros Sleeping," third-second century BC. (J. Paul Getty Museum)
The long, winding and uncoordinated road
We know the stretch of 405 Freeway that connects the Westside and the Valley as the Sepulveda Pass, which recently was broadened, at a cost of $1.14 billion, to make room for a single carpool lane on its northbound side. Now, critic Christopher Hawthorne reviews the newly widened stretch of freeway as architecture -- and it’s not a rave. What should look like “a streamlined corridor” is, instead, “a hodgepodge, a patchwork in which every seam not only shows but also appears to be threatening to come loose,” Hawthorne says. What happened to Southern California’s expertise at an infrastructure art form it virtually invented? Over the next months, Hawthorne will look at the freeway and its changing role in our lives.
Traffic streams into the Sepulveda Pass right below the Getty Museum on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles.
Traffic streams into the Sepulveda Pass right below the Getty Museum on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
The prodigal jeune fille
There’s nothing like an art heist yarn with a (fairly) happy ending. This one by arts reporter David Ng began with a 1991 Beverly Hills burglary that netted a small Rodin sculpture, “Jeune Fille au Serpent,” and other pieces from a private collection. When the Rodin turned up in a Christie’s auction catalog 19 years later, a French Rodin expert recognized it as stolen. Work by a determined Beverly Hills detective and a stolen art recovery firm eventually brought the piece back to its owner. Other works stolen in the burglary, however, remain at large.
The bronze cast of Rodin's "Young Girl With Serpent" that was stolen from a Beverly Hills residence in 1991. (Art Recovery Group)
Hip-hop 'Hamilton' moves to Broadway
Those of us who didn’t see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” at the downtown Public Theater last spring get another shot, though we'll probably have to wait months for a ticket. The show, in previews for its Broadway opening Aug. 6, made as big a splash as anything on Broadway last season. A hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton’s role in the founding of the republic – hard to beat that as an attention getter, and critics loved it. Steve Zeitchik talked with Miranda and the creative team about "Hamilton's" wild ride, the move uptown, and its appeal to current and potential residents of the White House.
"Hamilton" is a collaboration among Thomas Kail (director), left, Lin-Manuel Miranda (music, lyrics and book), Andy Blankenbeuhler (choreographer) and Alex Lacamoire (music direction and orchestrations). (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Should the Smithsonian be showing Cosby's art collection?
The Times’ Colin Diersing in our Washington bureau went by the Museum of African Art to see what visitors thought about Bill and Camille Cosby’s collection of African American art being shown at one of the Smithsonian's institutions. Last week, New York magazine published its attention-getting cover story in which 35 women allege that Cosby drugged and raped them. “I was shocked,” one museum visitor said. Others seemed satisfied with the posted disclaimer – the museum didn’t condone Cosby’s behavior, the show is about the art. The museum has no intention of shuttering the show before its scheduled January closing date. The collection, experts and dealers agreed, deserves to be seen.
The Museum of African Art is displaying works from the Cosbys' much-admired collection. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
In short
Gustavo Dudamel conducted concerts devoted to Mendelssohn and Mozart at the Hollywood Bowl last week. For the Mozart program, he was joined (replaced?) by Rodrigo of "Mozart in the Jungle" -- a.k.a. actor Gael Garcia Bernal. ... Eric Idle may have written the musical "Spamalot," but when it came to casting the Hollywood Bowl production, he took the part with the fewest lines. ... Center Theater Group is having a strong summer with its productions of "Bent" at the Mark Taper Forum and "Girlfriend" at the Kirk Douglas. ... The British government realized its error, a day after it denied a six month visa to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and issued the appropriate document.
Follow me on Twitter at @kscottLATarts.
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