Sarah A. Spitz - SMDP (Page 29)

Going gaga over art galleries

I’ve been a bit under the weather this week. Being bedridden gave me the excuse to dig into my overstocked bookshelves. Plowing through three books in three days, I want to commend the one that stopped me in my tracks, “A Million Nightingales,” by author Susan Straight, a Riverside, Calif.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 10 May 2012

No strangers on the train

I use public transit in every city I’ve ever visited but seriously never expected to ride the rails around Los Angeles. I was incredibly excited to hop aboard the Expo Line on Sunday (free!) as it opened to the public, at the Jefferson/La Cienega boulevards station.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 3 May 2012

Anniversaries: Civic and cultural

Just over a decade ago, a Westside venue for world-class performing arts was wishful thinking for Dale Franzen, a former opera singer whose ties to the world of the arts run deep.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 26 Apr 2012

Misha, Mamet and good people

Last week I went to the Broad Stage at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center for the U.S. premiere of “In Paris,” a theatrical piece based on a story by Russian writer and Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 19 Apr 2012

Engage, provoke and inspire

In an era when many arts groups have suffered a downturn in funding, Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Center has succeeded as an ever-evolving artist space for nearly 25 years.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 12 Apr 2012

April is the coolest month

Spring has definitely sprung across the Southern California arts landscape. Here’s a roundup of upcoming and ongoing events that pique my interest. I’ll report on some of them later but I think all merit your consideration now.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 5 Apr 2012

Finding Falkenstein

Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997), a female artist in her 50s, arrived in Los Angeles during the ‘60s when the mantra was “trust no one over 30” and when the art scene was dominated by hard-partying young men of the “cool school” who were creating their own new art and lifestyles.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 29 Mar 2012

Music that is mostly missing

Whenever I visit another country, I seek out church concerts. The acoustics are amazing and the settings are inspiring. Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church on Second Street rivals any city’s cathedral with its stunning stained glass art, welcoming brick courtyard and architecturally contemporar

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 22 Mar 2012

Leveling the playing field for purchasing art

BERGAMOT STATION — Incognito, now in its eighth year at Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMOA), is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful museum fundraiser/art sales anywhere in the art world.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 17 Mar 2012

Leveling the playing field for purchasing art

Art walks, crawls and even rolls

It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime moment. There I was at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday as the 340-ton boulder — soon to be installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as land artist Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” — rolled down Wilshire Boulevard and posed for its photo opp in front of the museum.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 15 Mar 2012

Meeting up at the market

THIRD STREET — Michael McCarty is a man on a mission. It’s not enough that he’s one of the leading progenitors of contemporary cuisine, that he’s a great art collector, that he has not one but two of America’s most celebrated restaurants (Michael’s Santa Monica, Michael’s New York), that he received

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 10 Mar 2012

When food becomes art

“If music be the food of love, play on!” — William Shakespeare L.A. Chamber Orchestra (LACO) is always thinking of ingenious new ways to get audiences interested in chamber music.

By Sarah A. Spitz

/ 8 Mar 2012