Another L.A.

Installation view Chris Burden Metropolis II, 2010 Three ½ hp DC motors with motor controllers, 12,000 custom manufactured die-cast cars (1,100 for operating, 10,900 for replenishing damaged cars), 26 HO-scale train sets with controllers and tracks (13 for operating, 13 for replenishing damages), steel, aluminum, shielded copper wire, copper sheet, brass, various plastics, assorted woods and manufactured wood products, Legos, Lincoln Logs, Dado Cubes, glass, ceramic and natural stone tiles, acrylic and oil-base paints, rubber, sundry adhesives. 9 ft., 9in. (H) x 28 ft., 3in. (W) x 19ft., 2in. (D). Courtesy of The Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Foundation © Chris Burden Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA

Next time you are gridlocked on the 405, imagine an alternative LA: a city in which cars speed without stalling or colliding on a network of freeways that loop around an eclectic array of towers. Trains run on elevated tracks and the ground lies forgotten, far below. It’s the city that Filippo Marinetti conceived in his Futurist Manifesto and Fritz Lang brought to the screen in Metropolis. Eighty-five years later, Chris Burden has revived the concept as Metropolis II and this mesmerizing installation is on long-term loan to LACMA, a few steps from Urban Light, his forest of vintage street lamps. Orson Welles described the RKO Studio as “the greatest train set a boy ever had,” and Metropolis II is a kinetic toy to delight frustrated drivers and their offspring.

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Design Polymaths

Five celebrations of Charles and Ray Eames are on show in LA through early 2012, recalling the landmark exhibition of their work, which ended its international tour at LACMA, eleven years ago. That ambitious show attempted to bring all the designers’ achievements under one roof, and it overwhelmed many visitors.  Small, specialized exhibits make the Eames’s genius feel more visceral.

© 2011 Eames Office, LLC (eamesoffice.com)

The best starting point is the iconic house (203 Chattauqua Blvd, Pacific Palisades). The living room has been emptied and its furnishings are displayed in a recreation of the house as a highlight of the LACMA exhibition “Living in a Modern Way: California Design, 1930-1965” (5905 Wilshire Blvd, through June 3). That gives the Eames House Foundation the opportunity to

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Snohetta Principal Speaks at LACMA on March 15th

 Photograph by Gerald Zugmann

Craig Dykers, an American architect who co-founded Snohetta with a group of Norwegians, will discuss the firm’s latest work in an AIA Masters of Architecture lecture at LACMA’s Bing Theater on Tuesday, March 15 at 7pm. Snohetta was named for a Norwegian mountain and launched its practice by winning the prestigious competition for the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. They scored a second big success on home ground with the Oslo Opera House, an ambitious waterfront project that was completed two years ago. Later this year their 9/11 Memorial Pavilion is scheduled to open on the WTC site in New York, where Snohetta has opened a second office. These three projects are among the highlights of a practice that has designed 200 buildings and landscapes around the world. This presentation follows closely on a lecture by Danish wunderkind Bjarke Ingels, and it may offer more insights into the world of architectural innovation –something that seems increasingly hard to find in L.A.

Tickets for the Craig Dykers lecture can be at purchased in advance at lacma.org or from the box office, 323.857.6010: $12 general admission; $10 LACMA and AIA members; $5 seniors and students with i.d.



An Acre of Art - LACMA's Resnick Pavilion Press Preview

LACMA has a new gallery and it’s a winner. The Lynda and Stewart Resnick Pavilion is a work of art that complements BCAM to the south and fleshes out Renzo Piano’s master plan. It substitutes a vibrant, layered composition of travertine, scarlet steel, and plantings for a dowdy courtyard as the museum’s core. Unjustly disparaged as the safe choice for American museums that are afraid of innovation, Piano demonstrates a mastery of space and connectivity that make him an ideal choice for LACMA. He has introduced order and excitement to an institution that stumbled badly in commissioning two mediocre sets of buildings in its early years, and then abruptly abandoned Rem Koolhaas’s iconoclastic proposal to start afresh. As an Italian, Piano has a sense of history and the way cities grow incrementally over time. He is familiar with excavations that reveal the foundations of Roman villas—a discovery that delayed construction of the Rome Auditorio by several years. “Here we struck oil—and dinosaur bones, but it didn’t stop us,” he observed.

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