Arts

Alvin Ailey Dance March 20-24 at The Music Center (Isabel Wallace Green, Christopher Wilson, and Caroline Dartey / Photo Paul Kolnik, The Music Center)

Alvin Ailey

  • By CAROLINE LENHER

The tremendous Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater launches an exclusive four-year Southern California residency at The Music Center this month. The residency begins with the New York-based company showcasing two exhilarating programs blending Ailey classics and audience favorites with three Los Angeles premiere pieces. 

Celebrating its 65th anniversary, the incredible Alvin Ailey dancers will perform two programs, both with signature masterpiece, “Revelations.” The first program includes the premieres of Ode (choreography by former Alvin Ailey dancer Jamar Roberts) and Are You in Your Feelings? (choreography by Kyle Abraham)The all-female performance of Ode honors the fragility and beauty of life and features a jazz score. Are You in Your Feelings? celebrates Black culture, music, and youthful spirit with a “mixtape” of soul, hip-hop, and R&B.

The second program features CENTURY (choreography by Amy Hall Garner) along with a restaging of Dancing Spirit (choreography by Ronald K. Brown). A deeply personal piece, Dancing Spirit is a moving work with evocative choreography set to jazz legends, including Wynton Marsalis and Duke Ellington.

Both programs feature the beloved Alvin Ailey masterpiece Revelations. This moving, must-see piece is a tribute to Ailey’s heritage and childhood memories of growing up in the South.

Both programs are presented across seven performances, March 20–24, 2024, as part of “Gloria Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center.”

For more, click here.

On view at Getty, Roy Lichtenstein with a mask cut out from a proof for his Painting Series (detail), 1983, Sidney B. Felsen (American, b. 1924). Getty Research Institute, 2019.R.41. Gift of Jack Shear. Art © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Photo © J. Paul Getty Trust

Gemini G.E.L.

  • By CYNTHIA LUM

In the winter of 1965, Sidney Felsen, an accountant asked his former USC fraternity brother, Stanley Grinstein, if he would like to start a lithography studio.

Their print shop, Gemini G.E.L., would become a place of inspiration for Felsen, whose photographs of artists and printers go on view February 20 as part of First Came a Friendship: Sidney B. Felsen and the Artists at Gemini G.E.L., a Getty Research Institute (GRI) exhibition drawn largely from the GRI archives. 

In the familial, intimate space of Gemini, Felsen documented a community where artists were, and still are, encouraged to experiment freely. Over some 50 years, Felsen, now 99, documented artists’ professional milestones and also captured more intimate, quotidian moments—breaking bread, listening to live jazz, and enjoying family fishing trips in LA.

In his photographs, Felsen records the energy and dedication of the artists and the power of their collaborations with master printers and fabricators. The work of creating a print is a “give-and-take, experimental, passionate, exhausting time,” he said. “I really saw…the spirit of what it is to be creative and how demanding it is and how much effort has to go into it.” He captures the hard work, both the labor and joy, of creating the new. “What’s unique about Gemini—the doors are completely open for the artist to do whatever they want,” says master printer Jill Lerner. “It’s a place where creativity runs free.”

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Korean treasures from the Chester and Cameron Chang Collection on view at LACMA, February 25-June 30, 2024

Korean Treasures

  • By Cynthia Lum

Korean Treasures from the Chester and Cameron Chang Collection is a selection of works drawn from the largest gift of Korean art in the museum’s history. In 2021, the museum announced the acquisition of an initial major gift of 100 works of Asian art from Dr. Chester Chang and Dr. Cameron C. Chang (MD). The collection consists primarily of Korean paintings, calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics, lacquers, furniture, and other works of art ranging in date from the Three Kingdoms Period (c. 57 BCE– 668 CE) to the 20th century. The exhibition, will feature works by notable figures in Korean modern art history, including Jung-seob Lee, Soo-keun Park, and Kwan-sik Byun. It will also include pieces by Kwan-ho Kim, regarded as Korea’s second Western-style painter, and a mountain watercolor by Joseon Dynasty artist Inmun Yi. Rare ceramics will also be on display, such as a bookshelf inscribed with the seal of Hyung-rok Lee, a royal painter during the King Jeongjo reign. Additionally, a Goryeo Dynasty bronze water bottle and a Joseon Dynasty water jar will be featured. The bulk of the collection has remained within a single family for a century and has never publicly been on view. Organized chronologically and by material, this exhibition presents 35 donated and promised gifts, including traditional Korean secular and religious paintings, calligraphies, rare mid-20th-century oil paintings from both North and South Korea, and ceramics of the Goryeo (918–1392) and Joseon (1392–1897) dynasties. Feb 25–Jun 30, 2024, Resnick Pavilion.

For more, click here.

Judithe Hernández Beyond Myself on view February 3-August 4, 2024 at Riverside Art Museum

BEYOND MYSELF

  • By CYNTHIA LUM

Judithe Hernández | Beyond Myself, Somewhere, I Wait for My Arrival Riverside Art Museum’s Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, spans over 50 years of this groundbreaking artist’s career. It is the first major retrospective of her work, which centers the realities and mythologies of Mexican migrant women, exploring the legacies of colonization and the US Mexico border and their impact on women and children.

The fifth and only female member of the acclaimed artist collective, Los Four, Judithe Hernández began her artistic career as a muralist working with Carlos Almaraz painting murals for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union. She is credited for painting one of the first feminist empowerment murals at the Ramona Gardens Housing Projects in East Los Angeles. In 1980, Hernández decided to work as an independent and individual artist, inventing a visual vocabulary inspired by her cultural background, worries and sexual identity. She subsequently went on to have a significant international career. Hernández’s work was included in the first groundbreaking exhibition of Chicano art in Europe, Les Démons des Anges, where she was one of only three women featured.

After more than 40 years, Hernández’s artistic presence returned to downtown Los Angeles in 2019 when her seven-story mural La Nueva Reina de Los Ángeles was installed at La Plaza Village one block north of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument District.

The exhibition is on view February 3, 2024 through August 4, 2024

For more, click here.