Dear Essential Arts Readers,

This has been a tough year for many of us. I don’t need to list the challenges we have faced as a country, because we are all keenly aware of them in our own ways. Instead, I’d like to focus on the bright spots — particularly what we’ve built together with this newsletter.

Each week when I sit down to write, I picture all of you out there. I imagine a curious, thoughtful, diverse, creative and intelligent group of readers. I believe you are deeply committed to arts and culture in this endlessly surprising, deeply misunderstood and truly magical city. I bet some of you make art yourselves — or know and love someone who does. I suspect you value truth, even when it’s not nice. I think you care about your communities and the people living in them.

Here’s what I wish for you in 2025: Abundant health, and days filled with love and kindness. A shoulder to cry on when things get hard. A poem that moves you. A painting that captivates you. A play that takes your breath away. A transcendent song. A thought that makes you angry enough to do something about it. I hope you experience a flash of pure, undiluted joy — the kind that makes you happy just to be here. In this life. At this moment.

Warmly,
Jessica Gelt
(The writer who has your back, with Ashley Lee, when it comes to what’s what in arts and culture this week.)

Best bets: On our radar this week

Ben Caldwell on the set of “I-Fresh,” 1987. Photograph.

(Courtesy of the artist)

‘KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Media Arts of Ben Caldwell’
“We always say that our kids are controlled by images in the media, but nobody really analyzes them,” KAOS Network founder Ben Caldwell told The Times in 1993. “At Kaos, we talk about what’s really going on.” This Art + Practice retrospective highlights the creative and community work of the media arts innovator who opened an independent studio for video production that doubled as a community arts center and an experimental training ground for young Black artists in the 1980s. The free exhibition, co-presented by the California African American Museum and on view through March 8, is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day; open until 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve). Art + Practice, 3401 W. 43rd Place, Leimert Park. artandpractice.org

Movie screenings at Ojai Playhouse
Here’s a day trip itinerary or an overnight getaway idea: One of California’s oldest single-screen theaters reopened last month after a decade-long closure, and is closing out the year with a mix of beloved classics (“Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Land Before Time”) and first-run films (“Nickel Boys,” “Queer”). The restored venue, complete with Dolby Atmos sound and an on-site cafe, is offering some of these screenings for free, with registration required. The holiday lineup is particularly fun: “Elf,” “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “Bad Santa” and “Die Hard” on Christmas Eve, and “Conclave” and “The Brutalist” on Christmas Day. Ojai Playhouse, 143 E. Ojai Ave, downtown Ojai. ojaiplayhouse.com

Stand-up comedian and visual artist Melissa Villaseñor (pictured above in 2022) will host the Christmas Eve program at the Music Center.

(Evans Vestal Ward / NBC via Getty Images)

L.A. County Holiday Celebration
The Music Center’s 65th annual spectacular, sponsored by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, is showcasing 28 locally based performance ensembles, including the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, Gabrielito y La Verdad, Hālau Hula Keali’i o Nālani & Daniel Ho, Joya Kazi Unlimited, Las Colibrí, Masanga Marimba and The String Revolution. Stand-up comedian and visual artist Melissa Villaseñor is hosting the Christmas Eve program, with voiceover actor Queen Noveen providing live narration. Audiences can watch in person for free (standby entry available) or enjoy it from home on PBS SoCal (KOCE), online and on the PBS App. Tuesday, 3 p.m. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave, downtown L.A. musiccenter.org

— Ashley Lee

The week ahead: A curated calendar

Don Stephenson as Doc Brown, left, and Caden Brauch as Marty McFly in the North American tour of “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which runs Dec. 26-Jan. 5 in Costa Mesa.

(Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

MONDAY
Arturo Sandoval Swinging Holiday The versatile jazz artist riffs on seasonal favorites.
8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

A Christmas Carol Geoff Elliott adapted, co-directed (with Julia Rodriguez-Elliott) and stars in a Noise Within’s annual take on the Charles Dickens classic.
2 and 7 p.m. Monday; 2 p.m.Tuesday. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org

A Christmas Carol Richard Doyle is Ebenezer Scrooge in Jerry Patch’s music- and dance-filled adaptation, directed by Hisa Takakuwa.
7:30 p.m. Monday; noon and 4 p.m. Tuesday South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scr.org

A Christmas Carol With Charles Dickens David Melville stars as the author performing his holiday classic.
7:30 p.m. Monday. Independent Shakespeare Company Studio, 3191 Casitas Ave., Suite 13, Atwater Village. iscla.org

Holiday Movies The American Cinematheque stuffs all three of its venues with traditional and nontraditional seasonal fare in the run-up to Christmas, including “It’s a Wonderful Life” (7:30 p.m. Monday. Aero; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Egyptian), “Bad Santa” (10 p.m. Monday. Los Feliz), “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” (4 p.m. Tuesday. Los Feliz) and “Elf” (7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Aero).
Monday and Tuesday. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. americancinematheque.com

THURSDAY
Back to the Future: The Musical Marty McFly, Doc Brown and the national tour of the Broadway hit bring “The Power of Love” to Orange County.
Through Jan. 5. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Diego Velazquezs’ “Queen Mariana of Austria,” 1652-53, oil on canvas, can be viewed at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum.

(Museo Nacional del Prado)

Queen Mariana of Austria was just 14 when she married her 44-year-old uncle, Spain’s King Philip IV, in 1649. At 18, when Mariana was a new mother, the brilliant court painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez created a monumental portrait of her, which is currently on loan to Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum from Madrid’s Prado Museum as part of an exchange program between the two institutions. The extraordinary painting has only been seen once before in the United States, writes Times art critic Christopher Knight in a rave review of the masterpiece by one of Europe’s greatest artists. “Velázquez’s vigorous brushwork is itself a demonstrable performance, designed to seduce and entertain the viewer. Rather than a tight, realist description of sitter and scene, he opted for suggestively rendering the image in quick, loose paint. Not dryly explaining tedious details, he invites the observer’s engaged eye to collaborate in assembling the scene’s visual construction,” Knight writes.

The 150th birthday celebration of the divisive composer Arnold Schoenberg (born in Vienna in 1874) concluded Dec. 15 with Zubin Mehta conducting “Gurrelieder” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. This was no small thing, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed, noting, “At 88, Mehta is the dean of Schoenberg conductors. When he became music director of the L.A. Phil in 1962, at the age of 26, he told the press that he felt it more important in L.A. to conduct all the neglected orchestra works of Schoenberg before doing all the Beethoven symphonies.” In a piece of commentary about the concert, Swed examines Schoenberg’s legacy and Mehta’s embrace of it.

Lorraine O’Grady during the Skowhegan Awards Dinner 2019 in New York City.

(Gonzalo Marroquin / Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Lorraine O’Grady, a conceptual artist who took on themes of racism and sexism via a variety of mediums, has died. She was 90. O’Grady gained notice in the arts world after working in a variety of other roles, including as a research economist and a rock critic. “In one of her best-known performances, O’Grady crashed public art events as ‘Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,’ or ‘Miss Black Middle Class.’ She wore a gown made of 180 pairs of white gloves and carried a white whip studded with flowers,” wrote Times’ intern Sandra McDonald in an obituary.

French president Emmanuel Macron and Paris archbishop Laurent Ulrich selected L.A.-based French painter Claire Tabouret to design stained-glass windows for six of the chapels on the southern side of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, which reopened earlier this month after being devastated by a fire in 2019. Tabouret’s contemporary designs inspired pushback from some conservation groups, but the French state has made it clear it wants to add a modern flourish to the rebuild.

The Museum of Contemporary Art has unveiled its 2025 exhibition calendar. The line-up includes the first solo museum exhibition by artist Takako Yamaguchi, and a much talked about show called “Monuments” (co-presented by nonprofit visual art space The Brick), which features decommissioned Confederate statues juxtaposed with contemporary artworks.

And last but not least

Have you ever heard of the “Pasadena Piss Bandit”? No? Well, here you go.