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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.
We’ll also send you recommendations and reviews from our award-winning critics, investigations, profiles, interviews, photo essays and explanatory pieces produced by a team of longtime journalists wh know what’s happening in every creative corner of L.A. and beyond.
Recent Newsletters
Painter Harry Blitzstein, a true Los Angeles character who had his own storefront museum across from Canter’s Deli in order to exclusively show his own art, has died at 87.
A petition launched by drag artists asking Kennedy Center donors to suspend funding nears 100,000 signatures.
Here’s a look at the towering talent we lost in 2025.
The top 10 arts stories and most-read criticism of 2025, plus celebrate New Year’s Eve with the Roots, El DeBarge or aliens or aboard the Queen Mary
The sale of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C., could result in the razing of historic New Deal art
Kathryn Kanjo, director of MCASD, has been named director of the newly merged UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art.
Museums nationwide face worse financial outlook since the pandemic, in large part due to a destructive swath of federal policies enacted by the Trump administration.
Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block hosts a holiday spectacular at CineVita; plus Nutcrackers, Christmas Carols and other seasonal fare.
The Huntington acquires the Civil War-era Winslow Homer masterwork, “The Sutler’s Tent”; Robert Therrien at the Broad; and “Dungeons & Dragons” hits the stage at the Montálban.
Students from Eliot Arts — who lost their school during the Eaton fire — are fundraising for a class trip to Broadway this spring.
Takashi Murakami Dodgers’ World Series Championship collection goes on sale, plus opera, ballet and onstage horror in L.A. arts and culture this weekend
The cinematic quality of the recent Louvre art heist in Paris generated international attention. Find out which local museums appear in a new U.S. study, “Top 10 Museums Most Vulnerable to a Heist.”
The Essential Arts Team
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Jessica Gelt is the arts editor for the Los Angeles Times.
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Christopher Knight won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism and was a finalist for the prize in 1991, 2001 and 2007.
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Mark Swed has been the classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times since 1996.
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Charles McNulty is the theater critic of the Los Angeles Times.
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Now in his second tour with the Los Angeles Times, totaling more than 25 years, Kevin Crust is the planning editor for Entertainment and Arts.