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  • Choose Your Own Adventure at LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries

    Flower Day by Diego Rivera and a sculpture of Chicomecoatl at LACMA David Geffen Galleries (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Flower Day by Diego Rivera and a sculpture of Chicomecoatl at LACMA David Geffen Galleries. (Photo: Liz O.)

    There’s no right way to travel through the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA. I just happened to see Flower Day, a Diego Rivera painting where calla lilies are piled high on the shoulders of a vendor, as soon as I walked into the museum. Nearby was a small statue of the Aztec goddess Chicomecoatl. This seemed like a good place to start, so I began to walk an open pathway beyond the ancient Colima sculpture of a dog that stands guard, through a collection of works that’s some 2000 years old and into a passage of Latin American paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries.

    Quickly, though, the art around me looked more familiar, more like the L.A. I know. I was in a nook with rafa esparza’s adobe wall sculpture, …we are the mountains in front of me. To might right was one George Rodriguez’s photos from the Chicano movement. I turned my head slightly to the left and spotted a Smiths t-shirt out of the corner of my eye. That has to be one of Shizu Saldamando’s drawings, I thought. It was. 

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  • Some Monuments Need to Be Toppled

    Toppled, paintbombed Jefferson Davis statue inside MOCA Geffen Contemporary for Monuments (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    The toppled and paintbombed Jefferson Davis statue inside Monuments at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (Pic: Liz O.)

    Jefferson Davis looks like he’s been clocked. The oversized, bronze statue of the  onetime president of the Confederacy is laid out on the floor of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. He’s splotched and tagged with paint, dried pink streams running down the length of the statue like blood. Walk up close and you’ll see that the top of his head has been pounded flat. An outstretched arm, partially severed from the shoulder, may have once given him the appearance of a savior. Now, it looks like he the one who needs saving. I study the hulking figure for a few moments, snap a couple photos and continue through the museum. Some monuments are better left down for the count. 

    Monuments, a collaboration between MOCA and The Brick that’s on view at the Geffen Contemporary through May 3, is an exhibition juxtaposing decommissioned monuments with contemporary art to explore U.S. post-Civil War history. The Jefferson Davis statue, which was dedicated in 1907, lived in Richmond, Virginia, where it was part of a whole complex of Confederate monuments. In 2018, a local commission in Richmond recommended its removal, but that didn’t happen until two years later, when the statue was paintbombed and toppled during protests following the murder of George Floyd. 

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  • See the Midcentury Art and Design of Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman at Craft Contemporary

    Garden, designed by Evelyn Ackerman in 1962, made by Toyo Rug Company in Osaka for ERA Industrias at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Garden, designed by Evelyn Ackerman in 1962, made by Toyo Rug Company in Osaka for ERA Industrias at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles (Pic: Liz O.)


    The first piece that caught my eye inside Craft Contemporary was a rug. Really, it was a wall hanging— I can’t imagine anyone allowing feet to come in contact with it— but it was handhooked with the kind of thick wool yarn that you would imagine carpeting midcentury homes. Garden, designed by Evelyn Ackerman and produced by Toyo Rug Company in Osaka, Japan back in 1962, is art you want to touch. In it, a garden scene rises from a plush, sunny background where two children with cheery faces pick flowers and play with birds. It’s charming in the way that’s similar to Mary Blair’s It’s a Small World style, but it’s also tactile. Pictures don’t do it justice and, while you can’t actually touch museum pieces, you can lean in close to see how the yarn is hooked and sheared to create dimension and add textured details like windblown hair. You should see Garden, and so many other pieces Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman, in person and you can in the exhibition Material Curiosity By Design, which opened at Craft Contemporary in November and runs through May 10. 

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  • R. Crumb Shares Tales of Paranoia in New Art Show and Forthcoming Comic Book

    R. Crumb Tales of Paranoia cover original art at David Zwirner Gallery in Los Angeles (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    The original cover art of Tales of Paranoia by R. Crumb on view at David Zwirner in Los Angeles (Photo: Liz O.)

    Next month, Fantagraphics will release Tales of Paranoia, the first comic book from R. Crumb in 23 years. Right now, though, you can check out original art from the book, as well as other works from Crumb, at David Zwirner here in L.A. The gallery exhibition, which runs through December 20, is the first Crumb exhibition in the city since The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis ran at the Hammer in 2009/10. 

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  • Let There Be Gwar Made Me Nostalgic for Freedom of Speech

    Let There Be Gwar exhibition at Beyond the Streets in Los Angeles. Photos by Liz Ohanesian
    Let There Be Gwar is open at Beyond the Streets in Los Angeles through November 2. (All photos: Liz O.)


    I’m not one for nostalgia, but, damn, that longing for what was hit me hard as I walked through Let There Be Gwar at Beyond the Streets on Saturday morning. Inside the La Brea Avenue gallery is a treasure trove of costumes, props and ephemera from the rock band/art collective. A massive anthropomorphic toilet and plunger stands near the front entrance. Decapitated heads line a wall, a recipe for DIY bloodbags beside them. On the TV screens are flashbacks to Gwar’s time on the 1990s talk show circuit. Joan Rivers! Jerry Springer! Wally George!

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  • Tomata du Plenty at MutMuz Gallery and Art as a Human Act

    Inside MutMuz Gallery in Chinatown, Los Angeles for the opening of Tomata, a retrospective show of the art of Tomata du Plenty
    Inside MutMuz Gallery for the opening of Tomatâ

    On Friday night, the party at MutMuz spilled out of the gallery and onto the otherwise quiet Chung King Road, a semi-hidden pedestrian street in Chinatown that’s known for art galleries. First wave L.A. punks mingled with my own generation of electro-weirdos, while a handful of teenagers milled about the gallery owned by Mark Mothersbaugh. On the walls was a retrospective of of the late artist Tomatâ du Plenty, including his paintings, as well as photos and ephemera related to his performances, including his time as the frontman of seminal synthpunk band the Screamers. 

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  • New Stories on Repertory Cinema, Violeta Parra and More Out Now

    Premium Magazine art house repertory cinema story by Liz Ohanesian

    Just wanted to give you a quick update about some stories that I’ve recently written for other magazines and newspapers. 

    Now is a good time to watch a movie. At least it is if you’re in the greater Los Angeles area, where repertory and arthouse cinemas are experiencing a revival. I wrote about the resurgence of in-person movie screenings, focusing mainly on Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz and The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana for Premium, which is the magazine Southern California News Group newspaper subscribers. Click here for a gift link to read the story.

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  • The Social Justice Pop Art of Corita Kent Has a New Home

    e eye love by Corita Kent at Corita Art Center in Los Angeles (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    e eye love by Corita Kent at Corita Art Center in Los Angeles (Photo: Liz O.)

    Corita Kent was L.A.’s own pop art star. Back in the 1960s, when she was still a nun and known as Sister Mary Corita, she was named one of L.A. Times’ women of the year and landed on the cover of Newsweek. While she was creating serigraphs with social justice messages, she also taught at Immaculate Heart College and became head of the school’s renowned art department. Kent continued making art long after she left her religious order and moved to Boston. In fact, her best known work was the massively popular U.S. postal stamp that read “Love,” which was released in 1985, one year before her death. 

    Last week, on International Women’s Day, a new home for Kent’s legacy opened in the Arts District. A few days prior to that, I headed to the new Corita Art Center for a press preview. During my visit, and in the days that followed, I kept thinking about one specific piece. It’s called e eye love, which is part of a series called circus alphabet. In it, an eye is superimposed on a capital letter E. Underneath it is a snippet of a quote from the philosopher and writer Albert Camus, “should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.” Kent made this piece in 1968, a tumultuous year in  U.S. history. More than 55 years later, I’m looking at it in a gallery-like setting thinking, “Same.” 

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  • Neyva Live at “Yours, Forever” Exhibition at Leiminspace

    Neyva live at Leiminspace in Chinatown, Los Angeles on August 3, 2024 (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Neyva live at Leiminspace on August 3, 2024 (Pic: Liz O.)

    It was a quiet Saturday night in Chinatown. Out on Broadway, all the shops, as well as many of the restaurants, were closed by 8 p.m. The day-trippers had long gone and the club crowd was yet to arrive. In that strange in between time, though, the scene on Lei Min Way, a small, pedestrian-only street inside Central Plaza that tourists always miss, was a vibe. 

    The crowd gathered in and around art gallery Leiminspace wasn’t large, but it was high-quality. That’s the thing people often don’t understand about events— maybe because real life doesn’t translate well on social media— the size of a crowd doesn’t determine whether or not something is worthwhile. What matters is how engaged people are with what’s happening in that IRL space.  And it was clear from the first note of Neyva’s set that people were rapt by both the music and the performance. 

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  • Go See Giant Robot Biennale 5 at Little Tokyo’s Japanese American National Museum

    Yoskay Yamamoto "Moonage Daydream" installation with Luke Chueh painting in background at Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo for Giant Robot Biennale 5. (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Yoskay Yamamoto’s installation “Moonage Daydream” with painting by Luke Chueh in the background at Giant Robot Biennale 5. (Pic: Liz O.)

    It’s a been a minute, but the Giant Robot Biennale is back. Between 2007 and 2015, the group exhibition developed by Erik Nakamura and the Japanese American National Museum popped up roughly every other year, bringing together a cross-section of artists that you might recognize from shows at the GR2 Gallery in West L.A., or from the pages of the magazine Giant Robot, which ran from 1994 until 2010 and helped introduce audiences to artists like Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. 

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