Arts

After more than 20 years under construction, the Grand Egyptian Museum will finally open this weekend, promising more than 50,000 artifacts showing what life was like in ancient Egypt.

Tom Aspinall retains heavyweight title after Ciryl Ganes accidently pokes him in both eyes at UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi.

Champion Tom Aspinall and top-ranked Ciryl Gane could not make it through the opening round of their heavyweight main event at UFC 321 inside Etihad Arena before the match was ruled a no-contest.

Aspinall (15-3-0) and Gane (13-2-0) both came out with a lot of energy until an accidental double eye poke prompted an official timeout at the 4:35 mark of the first round.

Aspinall (15-3-0) could not see out of his right eye during the allotted five-minute break, and at 4:09 into the stoppage, the match was ruled a no-contest.

It was Aspinall’s first defence as the undisputed heavyweight champion.

“What am I supposed to do about it? I can’t see,” said a disappointed Aspinall, speaking in the ring in response to the chorus of boos throughout the arena. “This is [expletive]. The fight was just getting going.”

Gane dropped to his knees, also disappointed, as the ring announcer made the official announcement.

“I’m feeling sorry,” Gane said. “I’m very sorry about that.”

Aspinall was off to a fast start, as the champion wasted no time in throwing heavy shots at Gane.

Known for his elusive footwork, Gane showed no intimidation and stood toe-to-toe while taking command in the centre of the cage.

Gane used a sharp jab to bloody the champ. And when Aspinall took his shot for a takedown, Gane successfully defended it midway through the round. When Aspinall tried to cut off the cage, Gane did a good job of circling out of it while landing jabs and low kicks.

Inside the final minute of the round, Gane continued to out-strike Aspinall until his poke to the eye.

Dern downs Jandiroba

In an intense co-main event in which both women left the cage with battered right eyes, fifth-ranked contender Mackenzie Dern (16-5-0) won the vacant strawweight belt over top-ranked Virna Jandiroba (22-4-0) with a unanimous decision.

Though both fighters had impressive moments within some tightly contested rounds, Dern’s left hand was much more effective and damaging.

Upon hearing the ring announcer announce her name as the new champ and having the belt wrapped around her waist, the 32-year-old Brazilian fell to her knees in tears.

“It feels amazing,” Dern said. “I need to see Moa. This is for Moa.”

Dern was then joined in the cage by her six-year-old daughter, Moa, who draped the UFC belt over her shoulder.

In earlier bouts, No 2 Umar Nurmagomedov (19-1-0) earned a unanimous decision over No 8 Mario Bautista (16-3-0) in a battle of top-ranked bantamweights.

Second-ranked heavyweight contender Alexander Volkov (39-11-0) won by split decision over No 5 Jailton Almeida (22-4-0)

In the light heavyweight division, 10th-ranked Azamat Murzakanov (16-0-0) made quick work of No 7 Aleksandar Rakic (14-6-0).

Murzakanov’s first-round stoppage extended the second-longest active UFC win streak in the division to six consecutive wins.

You don’t have to be afraid to put your dream in action, because you’ll never fade, Trina Vega, you’ll be the main attraction — in a “Victorious” spinoff.

Netflix announced Friday that “Hollywood Arts,” a spinoff of the Nickelodeon teen sitcom following a group of students attending a performing arts high school, is now in production. The new show will see Daniella Monet reprise her Trina role from the original series, which aired for four seasons on the kid-centric network.

“Coming back as Trina alongside such a dynamic, powerful cast of newcomers is something I feel very lucky and grateful to do,” Monet said in a news release, which announced the “Hollywood Arts” cast will also include young actors Alyssa Miles, Emmy Liu-Wang, Peyton Jackson, Martin Kamm and Erika Swayze.

“‘Victorious’ was in a lot of ways life changing for all of us, our cast is forever bonded by that experience, and to think that I have an opportunity to steward anything close to that is a feeling I can’t begin to describe,” Monet continued. “As an actress, producer, and mom, I am so eager to create something we can all be proud to share with the world.”

According to the logline, “Hollywood Arts” will see Trina return to her alma mater as “an unqualified substitute teacher” after struggling to make it as an actress. There, she will both clash and “unexpectedly” inspire the next generation of ambitious and talented performing arts school students.

In “Victorious,” which originally ran from 2010 to 2013, Trina was the untalented but overly confident older sister of Tori Vega, played by Victoria Justice. The cast of the hit teen series also included Ariana Grande, Avan Jogia, Elizabeth Gillies, Leon Thomas III and Matt Bennett.

The spinoff will also feature Yvette Nicole Brown as a guest star. Brown briefly appeared in “Victorious” as school principal Helen Dubois — a character who originated on Nickelodeon’s “Drake & Josh,” which ran from 2004 to 2007.

In addition to starring on “Hollywood Arts,” Monet will serve as an executive producer alongside showrunners Jake Farrow and Samantha Martin and director Jonathan Judge. (Dan Schneider, who created “Victorious” and whose alleged misconduct was at the center of the 2024 docuseries “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” is not involved.)

The 26-episode first season is expected to debut on Netflix in 2026 before hitting Nickelodeon and Paramount+. The series is currently in production in Ontario, Canada.

AI is driving the stock market to record highs, dominating countless debates about the value of human labor, and radically rewiring the way schools approach education. It’s also causing a stir in the art world, with media artist Refik Anadol poised to open Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, inside the Frank Gehry-designed Grand L.A. complex in downtown Los Angeles next spring.

A first-look at the Infinity Room gallery at Dataland.

(Dataland)

The 25,000-square-foot museum was originally scheduled to open this year, but Anadol announced Thursday that the opening has been pushed back to spring 2026. Anadol also unveiled a sneak peak at the Infinity Room, one of the museum’s five discrete galleries. The immersive room features Anadol’s distinct swirling colors and images and will be infused with AI-generated scents, creating a multisensory experience powered by its very own AI model, called the Large Nature Model.

The Infinity Room design dates back to 2014 when Anadol created his first immersive data sculpture at UCLA. He described it as an exploration into the future of the Light and Space movement. It was essentially a 12-by-12-foot cube, with mirrored walls, ceiling and floors. Projectors emitted pulses of black-and-white imagery that used data as a pigment. To date, the Infinity Room has toured 35 cities and been viewed by more than 10 million people.

Another look at the Infinity Room, which has been viewed by 10 million people on tour.

(Dataland)

“The work emerged from my exploration of the idea that information can become a narrative material capable of transforming architectural space into a living canvas. The question driving me was simple but profound: What happens if there is no corner, no floor, no ceiling, no gravity?” Anadol wrote about his concept for the Infinity Room in a blog post on his website. “At DATALAND, Infinity Room enters a new era. This iteration embodies the technical and conceptual leaps our studio has made over the past decade. Where the original used generative algorithms, this new incarnation incorporates our decade-long research into what I call “machine hallucinations” — the dreamlike, surreal realities an AI can generate from vast datasets.”

The Infinity Room is meant to be a multisensory experience.

(Dataland)

In an interview last year, Anadol said “ethical AI” is essential to his practice. Unlike most large AI models, Anadol secured permission to use all of his sourced material, and said all of the studio’s AI research was performed on Google servers in Oregon that use only renewable energy.

“Art is worth something, even if it’s stolen.”

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The Louvre Museum in the French capital has closed for “exceptional reasons” after a group of intruders successfully stole eight pieces of priceless jewellery in a quick-hit heist that has rocked the world’s most-visited museum.

A manhunt for the thieves was under way in Paris on Sunday as police cordoned off the museum – famously home to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa – with tape and as armed soldiers patrolled its iconic glass pyramid entrance.

French government and museum officials said several intruders entered the Galerie d’Apollon (Apollo’s Gallery) through a window shortly after the museum opened, relying on a lift used to hoist furniture into buildings.

Within just four minutes, the thieves stole away on motorcycles laden with eight items dating back to the Napoleonic era, dropping a ninth on their way out.

French President Emmanuel Macron took to social media to denounce the heist as an “attack on a heritage that we cherish”.

“The perpetrators will be brought to justice,” he added. “Everything is being done, everywhere, to achieve this, under the leadership of the Paris prosecutor’s office.”

Here’s what we know about the heist, which arrives as the Louvre faces questions over large crowds and overworked staff.

What happened?

Around 9:30am local time (07:30 GMT) on Sunday, as tourists already roamed the halls of the Louvre, the thieves zeroed in on Apollo’s Gallery – a gold-gilded, lavishly painted hall commissioned by King Louis XIV that houses the French crown jewels.

Describing the incident as a “major robbery”, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the thieves used a basket lift to reach the museum’s windows, entered the gallery and escaped via motorbike with “jewels of inestimable value”.

The Louvre evacuated all visitors and posted a notice online that the museum would remain closed throughout the day under “exceptional” circumstances.

Police meanwhile sealed the gates, cleared courtyards and even closed off nearby streets along the Seine River as authorities kicked off an investigation.

It was “crazy”, one American tourist, Talia Ocampo, told the AFP news agency – “like a Hollywood movie”.

No injuries were reported, but the thieves – believed to number four people – remained at large as of Sunday evening.

What was stolen during the heist?

Thieves successfully removed eight items from two high-security display cases, the Ministry of Culture confirmed late on Sunday. These include pieces that belonged to Empress Marie-Louise, the wife of French Emperor Napoleon I, and others that belonged to Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III.

These are the items that were stolen:

• Tiara from the jewellery set of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense
• Necklace from the same duo’s sapphire jewellery set
• A single earring from the sapphire jewellery set
• Emerald necklace from the Marie-Louise set
• Pair of emerald earrings from the Marie-Louise set
• Brooch known as the “reliquary” brooch
• Tiara of Empress Eugenie
• Another large brooch of Empress Eugenie

The crown of Empress Eugenie was recovered outside the walls of the museum, the ministry said, where it was dropped by the thieves as they fled. The crown contains 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the Louvre.

Apollo’s Gallery is home to a range of other priceless gems, including three historical diamonds – the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia – and “the magnificent hardstone vessel collection of the kings of France”, according to the museum’s website.

Anthony Amore, an art theft expert and co-author of the book Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists, told Al Jazeera the items contained in the collection were priceless “not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of cultural patrimony”.

“It’s not like stealing a masterpiece where instantly news media … would publicise this image,” Amore said. “You might see pieces like this broken up and individual jewels sold that are indistinguishable to members of the public.”

How did the thieves do it?

The thieves used a combination of power tools, motorcycles and efficiency to pull off the minutes-long heist, authorities said.

The group drew up on a scooter armed with angle grinders, one police source told AFP. They used the hoist to access the gallery from the outside, cutting windowpanes with a disc cutter.

One witness, who told the TF1 news outlet that he was riding his bicycle nearby at the time, said he saw two men “get on the hoist, break the window and enter”, adding that the entire operation “took 30 seconds”.

Le Parisien reported that the thieves entered the museum – located inside a former palace – via the facade facing the Seine, where construction work is ongoing. Two were dressed as construction workers in yellow safety vests, the newspaper said.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati said authorities arrived “a couple of minutes after we received information of this robbery”.

“To be completely honest, this operation lasted almost four minutes – it was very quick,” she said.

Footage showed the hoist braced to the Seine-facing facade and leading up to a balcony window, which observers said was the thieves’ entry point before it was removed Sunday.

What happens now?

With the thieves still at large, forensic teams have descended upon the Louvre and surrounding streets to gather evidence and review CCTV footage from the Denon wing, where Apollo’s Gallery is located, and the Seine riverfront.

Authorities also planned to interview staff who were working when the museum opened on Sunday, they said.

The Interior Ministry said it was compiling a detailed list of the stolen items, but added that “beyond their market value, these items have priceless heritage and historical value”.

Dati, the culture minister, suggested the thieves were “professionals”.

“Organised crime today targets objects of art, and museums have of course become targets,” she said.

Have similar heists happened in the past?

The Louvre’s most famous heist occurred in 1911, when the Mona Lisa portrait disappeared from its frame. It was recovered two years later, but decades afterward, in 1956, a visitor threw a stone at the world-famous painting – chipping paint near the subject’s left elbow and prompting the portrait to be moved behind bulletproof glass.

In recent years, the museum has struggled with growing crowds, which totalled 8.7 million in 2024, and frustrated staff who say they are stretched too thin.

In June, the museum delayed opening due to a staff walkout over chronic understaffing.

One union source, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP that the equivalent of 200 positions had been cut at the museum over the past 15 years, out of a total workforce of nearly 2,000.

The fact that Sunday’s theft took place in broad daylight inspired a wave of consternation from French citizens and politicians.

“It’s just unbelievable that a museum this famous can have such obvious security gaps,” Magali Cunel, a French teacher from near Lyon, told the Associated Press news agency.

De Ridder’s four-fight UFC winning streak was snapped after he was unable to continue against Brendan Allen.

Brendan Allen shook up the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight division in a big way, handing Reinier de Ridder his first promotional loss by securing a technical knockout (TKO) after the Dutchman’s corner deemed him unable to continue ahead of Round 5.

De Ridder was visibly exhausted in his neutral corner at UFC Fight Night in Vancouver on Saturday night, leading to the sudden ending in the main event of mixed martial arts (MMA).

Allen (26-7 MMA) avoided de Ridder’s (21-3 MMA) devastating kickboxing ability by utilising his wrestling and controlling de Ridder with strikes from the top position.

De Ridder had few answers for the American fighter, as Allen stepped in on short notice after replacing fellow contender Anthony Hernandez (15-2, 1 no-contest MMA).

“It feels good to do exactly what I said I would do,” Allen said. “This was me three and a half weeks off the couch. I told you I’m a different monster. When my head is clear and we’re on, I’m the best in the world.”

With the UFC’s middleweight logjam in full effect, Allen said post-fight he has done enough to earn a title shot opposite champion Khamzat Chimaev (15-0 MMA).

“Come get it, baby,” Allen said.

De Ridder had not lost in 19 months.

In the co-main event, welterweight Mike Malott (13-2-1 MMA) dodged a bullet by avoiding a no-contest against Kevin Holland (28-15 MMA) after Holland’s protective shorts cup was compromised from a Malott leg kick gone wrong early in the fight.

A Malott arm-triangle choke attempt in the third round was not enough to secure the win either. Malott was eventually awarded the highly competitive five-round fight via decision: 29-28, 29-28, 29-28.

Aiemann Zahabi won his bantamweight bout by decision against former title challenger Marlon Vera (23-11-1 MMA). The final score had Zahabi victorious by a judges’ score of 29-28, 28-29, 29-28.

In women’s flyweight action, former title challenger Manon Fiorot (13-2 MMA) delivered a devastating TKO over Canada’s Jasmine Jasudavicius (14-4 MMA), set up by a flurry of punches to secure the stoppage win at 1:14 of the opening round.

I can’t think of another time that I was quite as terrified as when I walked alone into an interactive horror maze called “Feast” at a chilling carnival-like event called “The Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor: Summoned by the Seas,” which takes place in the parking lot in front of the famously haunted ship, and also in the creepy bowels of its engine rooms, through Nov. 2.

“Dark Harbor,” is the scarier sister event to Griffith Park’s famous “Haunted Hayride.” Both Halloween season fright fests are produced by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, which specializes in seasonal terror. The highlight of the nightly carnivals — which include food and drink booths, bars and rides — are a series of interactive mazes populated by bloody monsters, drooling ghouls, murderous clowns, spectral ghosts and maniacal serial killers.

The spooks are largely played by local actors — many of whom come back year after year for a guaranteed paycheck while pursuing a profession that is anything but financially sound. It is to these hardworking artists that the events owe their success. I was struck by just how dedicated the actors were to scaring us mere mortals out of our pants.

The masks, elaborate makeup and props, including butcher knives and bats, surely help the players stay in character— but this is not easy work. The actors must contend with aggressive guests who try to get in their faces (this is against the rules), as well as shrill, shrieking patrons who jump and run as they approach (guilty!).

But the actors are specially trained to handle these reactions and more.

“Each fall, Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor and Los Angeles Haunted Hayride hire a few hundred performers, most of our cast are locals who come back year after year. We hold open calls in the summer and focus on energy, movement, and presence more than traditional acting experience,” wrote “Dark Harbor‘s” general manager, Star Romano, in an email.

After the performers are hired, Romano explained, they attend orientation, safety training and rehearsals leading into opening weekend.

“It’s a huge community effort, part performance, part team reunion, and one of my favorite things about the season,” Romano wrote.

The result of those efforts led to me sleeping with the lights on for two nights straight.

“Get away from me! I’m too scared!” I shouted at one Leatherface-type character as he approached me with a chain saw.

“That’s the whole point,” he growled under his breath before obeying my wishes and lurching off toward another fear-stricken guest.

(NOTE: For a kid-friendly immersive Halloween experience, you can head to the company’s “Magic of the Jack O’Lanterns,” which features 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins on-site at South Coast Botanic Garden.)

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, inviting you to sink into spooky season with me. Here’s your weekly arts and culture news.

On our radar

Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project performs “On the Other Side.”

(Laurent Philippe)

L.A. Dance Project
Renowned choreographer Benjamin Millepied continues his exploration of the intersection of dance and visual art with the ballet triptych “Gems,” featuring artwork by collaborators Barbara Kruger, Liam Gillick, Mark Bradford and others. The performance is composed of three contemporary ballets inspired by precious stones: “Reflections” (2013), “Hearts & Arrows” (2014) and “On the Other Side” (2016). The show — with music by David Lang and Philip Glass — marks the first time these pieces have been staged together.
— Jessica Gelt
7:30 p.m. Thursday through Oct. 25. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. https://thewallis.org/show-details/la-dance-project-gems

New York artist Jon Henry stages photographs that reflect on reports of Black men killed by police.

(The Brick)

Monuments
The most eagerly anticipated theme exhibition this fall is reflected in the emphatic title, pointedly written all in caps. “MONUMENTS” was inspired by the wave of revulsion following the violent 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. — a deadly riot opposing the proposed removal of a local statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. That statue is now gone, torn down along with some 200 other tributes across the country to American turncoats who supported chattel slavery. (The last known Confederate monument in Southern California was removed in 2020.)
A selection of decommissioned Confederate statues will be shown at MOCA and alternative space the Brick, joint organizers of the exhibition; they’ll be paired with contemporary work by Bethany Collins, Stan Douglas, Leonardo Drew, Jon Henry, Martin Puryear, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker and a dozen other artists, borrowed and commissioned for the occasion.
— Christopher Knight
Thursday through May 3, 2026. Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, 152 N. Central Ave., Little Tokyo; The Brick, 518 N. Western Ave. moca.org

Vikingur Olafsson will perform with conductor Santtu-Matias and Philharmonia.

(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)

Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Vikingur Ólafsson join the Philharmonia Orchestra
It’s been almost a decade since Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a former Dudamel Fellow at the L.A. Phil, last returned to Southern California as a guest conductor of the L.A. Phil. In the meantime, though, he’s been busily attracting attention in London as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (having succeeded Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2021). For his first local appearance with the Philharmonia, he is joined by the stellar Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The program also includes the local premiere of a new score meant to awaken environmental awareness, popular Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s “Si el Oxígeno Fuera Verde” (If Oxygen Were Green), along with Shostakovich‘s Fifth Symphony. Shortly after fall, Ólafsson heads back to Disney in January as soloist with the L.A. Phil for John Adams’ latest piano concerto, “After the Fall.”
— Mark Swed
8 p.m. Tuesday. Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. philharmonicsociety.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Ethan Remez-Cott, left, and Matthew Goodrich in the play “Amerika or, The Man Who Disappeared.”

(Amanda Weier)

Amerika or, The Man Who Disappeared
There’s Kafkaesque and then there’s the genuine article. Open Fist Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Dietrich Smith’s adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel that details the strange experiences of a 17-year-old European immigrant after he arrives in New York City aboard a steamer.
7:30 p.m. Friday; 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20; through Nov. 22. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. openfist.org

Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson–Apt. 2B
Two free-spirited roommates embrace mystery and adventure in the L.A. premiere of Kate Hamill’s dark modern comedy, a gender-bent spin on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle directed by Amie Farrell.
7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 2. International City Theatre, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach. ictlongbeach.org

नेहा & Neel
Asian American theater collective Artists at Play and Latino Theater Company collaborate for the world premiere of Ankita Raturi’s new comedy about an Indian immigrant and single mom on a cross-country college tour with her 17-year-old American-born son. Directed by East West Players artistic director Lily Tung Crystal.
Through Nov. 16. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org

17th OC Japan Fair
Japanese culture festival featuring food, shopping, a cosplay show, a tuna cutting show, popular Japanese entertainers, traditional instrument performances, games, kimono models meet and greet, and more.
4 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday; noon-10 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday. OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. oc-japanfair.com

David Roussève will perform “Becoming Daddy AF” Friday and Saturday at the Nimoy.

(Rachel Keane)

Becoming Daddy AF
Renowned dance-theater artist David Roussève presents the West Coast premiere of his experimental movement journey “Becoming Daddy AF.” The piece marks Roussève’s first full-length solo performance in more than two decades and explores themes that have touched and shaped his life, including HIV, genealogy and the loss of his husband of 26 years. (Jessica Gelt)
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Unravelled
The story of Canadian biologist Dr. Anne Adams, who turned to painting at age 53, and her remarkable connection to French composer Maurice Ravel, with whom she shared the same rare brain disease. A play infused with music and visual art, written by Jake Broder and directed by James Bonas.
7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

SATURDAY

British artist Edmund de Waal will install new work in three sites at the Huntington, including the Chinese garden.

(Linnea Stephan)

The Eight Directions of the Wind
British artist, potter and writer Edmund de Waal is obsessed with archives, which he describes as “places, streets, hillsides as much as card indexes.” For a body of new work, he once traveled to the place in China where the clay used to make porcelain was discovered — and then on to Dresden, Germany; Cornwall, U.K.; and the Appalachian Mountains, where subsequent cultures reinvented it. De Waal’s three site-specific, yearlong installations will be in the Huntington’s cultural and natural “archives” that are its art gallery and Chinese and Japanese gardens. (Christopher Knight)
Through Oct. 26, 2026. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org

Lorde performs Saturday at the Kia Forum.

(Scott A Garfitt / Invision/AP)

Lorde
Just as her generation has, by all accounts, sobered up and gone sexless, Lorde returned this year with a defiant album about the giddy rush of partying and the frightening ramifications of a body in search of pleasure. “Virgin” pulls her back to the experimental electro-pop many fans were hoping for after the relatively complacent “Solar Power,” and the album is brimming with startling meditations on pregnancy scares, familial inheritance and the malleability of gender. (August Brown)
7 p.m. Kia Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com

Orchidées
Cellist Kate Ellis performs composer Nick Roth’s cello étude — which traces the 100‑million‑year evolution of orchids by translating their DNA sequences into music — accompanied by time‑lapse footage of blooming specimens from the Huntington’s orchid collection. Also available to livestream.
7 p.m. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org

Tortoise
The lauded post-punk band performs “Touch,” their first new album in nine years with opening sets from local duo Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer and KCRW DJ Ale Cohen.
8 p.m. Saturday. The Broad, outdoor East West Bank Plaza, 221 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. thebroad.org

TUESDAY
A Concert for Lowell
A memorial tribute to Lowell Hill, one of the great patrons of new music in L.A., featuring many of the city’s top local artists, including Wild Up, MicroFest, Piano Spheres, the Industry, Partch Ensemble, Monday Evening Concerts, Long Beach Opera and People Inside Electronics.
8 p.m. Monk Space, 4414 W. 2nd Street. brightworknewmusic.com

Morgan Siobhan Green as Eurydice and Nicholas Barasch as Orpheus in the 2022 “Hadestown” North American Tour.

(T Charles Erickson)

Hadestown
The Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical that reimagines the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a New Orleans-style folk opera returns on its latest national tour. “Born out of a concept album by Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote the book, lyrics and music, the show travels to the underworld and back again with liquified grace,” wrote Times theater critic Charles McNulty in a 2022 review. “Developed by Rachel Chavkin, the resourceful director who won a Tony for her staging, ‘Hadestown’ achieves a fluidity of musical theater storytelling that makes an old tale seem startlingly new.”
Through Nov. 2. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. broadwayinhollywood.com

Learning to Draw
The exhibition traces a 300-year evolution of artistic training and the mastery of drawing in Europe from about 1550 to 1850. Bringing together the physical control of the hand and the concentration of the mind, the foundational artistic act became essential to exploring, inventing and communicating visual ideas in the modern world.
Through Jan. 25, 2026. Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive. getty.edu

Dispatch: Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson

Actor, singer and songwriter Ben Platt stands for a portrait at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Thursday, April 20, 2023.

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

Breaking news sure to make L.A. musical theater fans swoon: Center Theatre Group announced Friday that Broadway superstar Ben Platt will be in residency for two weeks and 10 shows at the Ahmanson Theatre , Dec. 12–21. Two-time Tony Award-winning director Michael Arden is set to direct the the residency, appropriately titled, “Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson.” Platt’s appearance comes a year after he staged a wildly successful three-week residency at Broadway’s Palace Theatre, which included a cornucopia of famous special guests including Cynthia Erivo, Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Hudson, Kacey Musgraves, Sam Smith, Micaela Diamond and Shoshana Bean. The production is staying mum on who might appear onstage alongside Platt during his L.A. run, but it’s safe to expect more big names.

“When you think of the very best in musical theatre, it simply doesn’t get any better than Ben Platt, whose stage presence and charisma make him one of the seminal performers of his generation,” said CTG’s artistic director, Snehal Desai, in a news release that promised “the holiday event of the season.”

Tickets and information can be found at centertheatregroup.org.

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Bassist Tonya Sweets, from left, Marlon Alexander Vargas and drummer Dee Simone in “littleboy/littleman,” directed by Nancy Medina, at Geffen Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

A tale from a land of immigrants
Rudi Goblen’s “littleboy/littleman” is in the midst of its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse. The two-person show about two Nicaragua-born brothers is much like a performance piece, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty in his review. It’s also a deeply American story. “Lest we forget our past, America is the great democratic experiment precisely because it’s a land of immigrants. Out of many, one — as our national motto, E pluribus unum, has it. How have we lost sight of this basic tenet of high school social studies?” McNulty writes.

Les Miz at 40
I went backstage at the Pantages for the opening night of “Les Misérables,” which happened to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the legendary musical. The mood was euphoric and everyone in the cast and crew seemed to have a story about a formative connection to the show. Stage manager Ken Davis walked me through the maze-like wings and filled me in on what it takes to tour a show of this scale. Of particular note: The touring production travels with 11 tractor trailers containing over 1,000 costumes, 120 wigs and hundreds of props.

Patrick Martinez, “Fallen Empire,” 2018, mixed media

(Michael Underwood)

When the sum is less than the whole
Times art critic Christopher Knight was not impressed by “Grounded,” a newly opened exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show’s theme, rooted in recent acquisitions of contemporary art, is promising, but ultimately falls apart. Viewed as a whole, “the 39 assembled contemporary paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles and videos by 35 artists based in the Americas and areas of the Pacific underperform,” writes Knight. “Sometimes that’s because the individual work is bland, while elsewhere its pertinence to the shambling theme is stretched to the breaking point,” Knight writes.

Remembering Bernstein
Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s death, and reminders of the great composer’s tributes to John F. Kennedy abound, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed. In a piece of commentary about what Bernstein’s work can teach us about memorials, Swed examines multiple L.A. productions rooted in that work, including L.A. Opera’s “West Side Story” and Martha Graham Dance Company’s “En Masse” at the Soraya. Swed also wonders whether those important pieces will reach the Trump administration’s newly configured Kennedy Center in the spring.

Guests attend the K.A.M.P. family fundraiser at the Hammer Museum on Oct. 12, 2025, in Los Angeles.

(Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images for Hammer Museum)

Everyone went home happy
UCLA’s Hammer Museum raised nearly $200,000 last weekend with its 16th annual K.A.M.P. (Kids Art Museum Project) fundraiser. More than 700 excited parents and children showed up at the gloriously messy event co-chaired by Aurele Danoff Pelaia and Talia Friedman. Kids roamed the courtyard over the course of four hours, creating art at stations set up and manned by participating artists including Daniel Gibson; Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the Johnston Marklee architecture firm; Annie Lapin; Ryan Preciado; Rob Reynolds; Jennifer Rochlin; Mindy Shapero; Brooklin A. Soumahoro; and Christopher Suarez. Fairy Gardens were constructed of thick clay and foraged leaves; cardboard boxes were painted with rollers; plates were spray-painted and affixed with knickknacks and jewelry; and geometric shapes were glued to canvases and painted an array of bright colors. Children went home with their art, and parents left knowing they supported a host of free Hammer Kids programs that serve thousands of children and families annually.

Fair wages on Broadway
Musicians working on Broadway, represented by AFM Local 802, voted to authorize a strike earlier this week — with 98% in favor. The nearly 1,200 musicians have been working without a contract since Aug. 31. According to an open letter the musicians sent to the Broadway League on Oct. 1, their demands include: “Fair wages that reflect Broadway’s success. Stable health coverage to allow musicians and their families to enjoy the health benefits that all workers deserve. Employment and income security so that hardworking freelance musicians have some assurance of job security. This includes not eliminating current jobs on Broadway.” Bargaining talks are ongoing.

Gene Hackman co-stars in “Bonnie and Clyde,” alongside Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

(Associated Press)

Gene Hackman, art collector
The late actor Gene Hackman’s art collection will go up for auction through Bonhams in November. Highlights of the 13-piece collection — which is being offered as a single-owner sale — include works by Milton Avery, Auguste Rodin and Richard Diebenkorn. Hackman was passionate about art throughout his life, and took an extra-special interest in it after he stopped acting. During that time he dedicated himself to taking classes and art-making. He even kept a journal of everything he learned, according to Bonhams.

Historic homes tour
Paging architecture fans: It’s not too late to reserve a spot in Dwell’s open-house event, back in L.A. for its second year. Tours of three historically significant Eastside homes are on offer during the day-long event, which launches from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park. The three additional houses in the tour are: Richard Stampton’s Descanso House in Silver Lake; Taalman Architecture, Terremoto, and interior designer Kathryn McCullough’s Lark House in Mount Washington; and Fung + Blatt’s San Marino House in — you guessed it — San Marino.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Still feeling sad about losing Diane Keaton? Me too. Here’s a list I put together of her 10 most important films. Watch one you haven’t seen — if that’s possible.

Thirty paintings by the late artist — and PBS staple — Bob Ross are heading for auction beginning Nov. 11. American Public Television, which syndicates programming to public stations across the country, is staging the auction in Los Angeles through Bonhams. APT has pledged to donate 100% of the profits to beleaguered public television stations nationwide.

“Bonhams holds the world record for Bob Ross, and with his market continuing to climb, proceeds benefiting American Public Television, and many of the paintings created live on air — a major draw for collectors — we expect spirited bidding and results that could surpass previous records,” said Robin Starr, general manager, Bonhams Skinner, in a statement.

The auction house established its record in August when it sold two of Ross’ mountain-and-lake scenes from the early 1990s for $114,800 and $95,750, respectively. Bonhams said it could not yet provide an estimate on the worth of the 30 works coming up for auction.

The first three paintings will go on the block at Bonhams in Los Angeles as part of its California & Western Art auction. The remaining 27 will be sold throughout 2026 at Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and L.A.

The news comes as public broadcasting faces unprecedented challenges to its survival. In July, Congress voted to cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which was founded in 1968 and helps fund PBS, NPR, as well as 1,500 local radio and television stations. The cuts were encouraged by President Trump, who derided the organization for spreading “woke” propaganda.

The private, nonprofit corporation soon after announced that it would close. The majority of its staff was dismissed at the end of last month, and a bare-bones transition team remains through January to wrap up unfinished work.

Without CPB, educational programming like “The Joy of Painting” with Bob Ross will have an uphill battle finding the support it needs.

Known for his cloudlike halo of curly brown hair, soothing voice and infectious love of the art form as shown on his signature show, the artist became a mainstay in American households across 400-plus episodes and more than a decade on the air.

With its wholesome content and relaxed pace, his was the kind of show that defined PBS. Hopefully, his work can help keep the lights on at the stations that helped gain him a cultlike following.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, and I’m the proud owner of a Bob Ross Chia Pet head. Here’s your arts and culture news for the week.

On our radar

Kai A. Ealy stars in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at A Noise Within

(Daniel Reichert)

Joe Turner’s Come And Gone
Gregg T. Daniel continues his reinvestigation of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with a production of what is arguably the finest work in the playwright’s 10-play series. Set in a Pittsburgh boardinghouse in 1911 during the Great Migration, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” focuses on the spiritual crossroads of Black Americans who are being reminded at every turn that their freedom comes with a prohibitive cost. The sixth Wilson production at A Noise Within in this seasons-long retrospective should be a standout: It’s one of the great American plays of the 20th century. — Charles McNulty
Previews, 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Oct. 17; opening night, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18; through Nov. 9. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org

Tavares Strachan, “Six Thousand Years,” and “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility,” 2018, mixed media

(Johnna Arnold / © Tavares Strachan)

Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began
Bahamian-born New York artist, whose immersive solo exhibition “Magnificent Darkness” filled the Hollywood branch of Marian Goodman Gallery last year, makes multidisciplinary art that seeks to amplify notable events and people — especially related to exploration, from deep-sea diving to outer space — that are often sidelined in standard cultural histories. Strachan, a 2022 MacArthur Foundation fellow, once shipped a 4.5-ton block of ice from the Arctic to the Bahamas via FedEx. We’ll see what might arrive at Wilshire Boulevard. — Christopher Knight
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday; closed Wednesday; through March 29, 2026. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, BCAM Level 2, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org

Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony Friday-Sunday in Costa Mesa.

(Curtis Perry)

Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony
At 45, the British conductor has a seemingly full and far-fledged plate: music director of the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa; principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; and artistic and music director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida. Next year, the plate becomes fuller and further-fledged when he becomes music director of the Pacific Symphony. This fall, however, Shelley makes his debut as music director designate by showcasing works bursting with color — Mongomery’s “Starburst”; Arturo Márquez’s “Concert for Guitar Mystical and Profane” with Pablo Sáinz-Villegas as soloist; and Rimsky Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Shelley returns in November with Ravel’s glorious ballet score “Daphnis and Chloe,” the perfect enchanting complement to San Diego Symphony’s “L’Enfant,” for wrapping up the Ravel year, the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth having been in March. — Mark Swed
8 p.m. Thursday-Oct. 18. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. pacificsymphony.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

The American Contemporary Ballet dances to Shubert’s score for “Death & the Maiden.”

(Victor Demarchelier)

Death and the Maiden
American Contemporary Ballet, under the direction of Lincoln Jones, dances to a live performance of Schubert’s score, complete with opera singers; plus “Burlesque: Variation IX.”
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; Thursday performances Oct. 23 and 30; through Nov. 1. ACB, Bank of America Plaza, 330 S. Hope St. #150, downtown L.A. acbdances.com

Installation view, Derek Fordjour: “Nightsong,” Sept. 13-Oct. 11, 2025.

(Jeff McLane / David Kordansky Gallery)

Nightsong
Times video intern Quincy Bowie Jr. recently visited artist Derek Fordjour’s sensorial experience at Mid-City’s David Kordansky Gallery. “In a time where many feel silenced, and afraid to speak up, Fordjour creates a space of darkness where truth can be revealed, heard and felt,” wrote Bowie. “‘Nightsong’ creates a unique space where the Black voice and its many songs are centered.” The free exhibit closes tonight.
6-10 p.m. David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Place. davidkordanskygallery.com

Mexican singer Lucía performs Friday at the Nimoy.

(Shervin Lainez)

Lucía
The enchanting Mexican singer mixes traditional American jazz and Latin folk in her eponymous debut album, released earlier this year.
8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Mascogos
Jose Luis Valenzuela directs the world premiere of playwright Miranda González’s drama revealing the untold stories of Mexico’s Underground Railroad.
Final preview, 8 p.m. Friday; opening night, 8 p.m. Saturday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 4 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 9. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org

People in the Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story
A Lost Legends Ghost Tour goes frighteningly awry, placing the audience face-to-face with Hollywood’s haunted past in this enveloping theatrical experience from Drowned Out Productions.
7-11:40 p.m., with start times every 20 mins. Friday; 6-10:40 p.m., with start times every 20 mins. Saturday and Sunday (also Thursday, Oct. 16), through Oct. 31. 1035 S. Olive St., downtown L.A. tickettailor.com

Grand Kyiv Ballet performs “Swan Lake” Friday at the Ebell Wilshire.

Grand Kyiv Ballet
This touring company of Ukrainian dancers is temporarily based out of the International Ballet Academy in Bellevue, Wash., while Russia continues its war with Ukraine. The troupe brings Tchaikovsky’s timeless ballet “Swan Lake” to Mid-City in a graceful performance sure to soothe even the most restless soul. (Jessica Gelt)
7 p.m. Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W 8th St, Los Angeles. ebellofla.org

SATURDAY
Corey Helford Gallery
A trio of strikingly distinct shows with a global sweep opens Friday. In the main gallery, “The Weight of Us,” a duo exhibition featuring solo works from Nigerian artists Arinze Stanley and Oscar Ukonu explores interconnectedness, and the complex interplay of individual and collective narratives. “Where Petals Dance,” features the work of Japanese artist aica in Gallery 2. The major exhibition featuring Latvian-born contemporary surrealist painter Jana Brike, “When I Was a River,” debuts in Gallery 3.
Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 15. Corey Helford Gallery, 571 S. Anderson St. #1, Los Angeles. https://coreyhelfordgallery.com/

Vicky Chow
CAP UCLA and Piano Spheres present new music pianist Vicky Chow performing the West Coast premiere of Tristan Perich’s “Surface Image.”
8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Gracias Gustavo Community Block Party
Hosted by Aundrae Russell of KJLH, this outdoor celebration features performances by DJ Aye Jaye, live art by Hannah Edmonds and Israel “Seaweed” Batiz, Mariachi Tierra Mia, poet Aletha Metcalf-Evans, Versa-Style Street Dance Company, YOLA at Inglewood Jazz Ensemble, Sherie, muralist ShowzArt — “The Art Jedi,” D Smoke and the Inglewood High School Marching Band, plus activities, food trucks and more.
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center, 101 S. La Brea Ave., Inglewood. laphil.com

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
An open house kicks off four new exhibitions: Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, “The Awake Volcanoes”; Samar Al Summary, “Excavating the Sky”; Liz Hernández, “Donde piso, crecen cosas (Where I step, things grow)”; and AoA x IAO, “I Smell LA.”

4-8 p.m. Friday. Noon-6 p.m. Wednesday; Noon-7 p.m. Thursday; Noon-6 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; closed Mondays, Tuesdays and public holidays. Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1717 E. 7th St., Arts District, downtown L.A. theicala.org

Sleep Token performs at the Reading Music Festival, England, in 2023.

(Scott Garfitt / Invision / Associated Press)

Sleep Token
Sleep Token is by some measures the biggest heavy-rock band in the world right now. Its 2025 LP, “Even in Arcadia,” demolished streaming records for a metal act, reaching well beyond the genre’s cantankerous core fan base, which has mixed feelings about Sleep Token’s pop chart success, to say the least. (No one is more skeptical about the band’s new fame than its cryptically anonymous front person Vessel: “Right foot in the roses, left foot on a landmine,” he sings in “Caramel,” “They can sing the words while I cry into the bass line.”) The band’s high-drama live shows are where Sleep Token really shines, though, as in this return to L.A. for a set that finally provides the scale its runic masks, robes and necrotic body paint have always called for. (August Brown)
8 p.m. Crypto.com Arena, 1111 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. cryptoarena.com

SUNDAY
Paul Jacobs
The Grammy-winning organist performs Bach’s “The Art of Fugue.”
7:30 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the Von Trapp family in a scene from the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.”

(20th Century Fox)

The Sound of Music
A 70mm screening of the 1965 Robert Wise-directed movie musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer that won five Oscars, including best picture.
3 p.m. Sunday. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. academymuseum.org

TUESDAY
L.A. Phil Gala: Gustavo’s Fiesta
Gustavo Dudamel conducts the orchestra in a few of his favorite things: De Falla’s “Three-Cornered Hat,” selections from Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony (featuring musicians from YOLA, Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), Beethoven’s Seventh, “Fairy Garden” from  Ravel’s Mother Goose  Suite and Revueltas’ “Night of Enchantment.”
7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

THURSDAY
Draw Them In, Paint Them Out
Trenton Doyle Hancock confronts the work of painter Philip Guston in this dual exhibition that examines the role the artist plays in the pursuit of social justice.
Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday–Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday–Sunday. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. skirball.org

Yunchan Lim
For his Disney Hall debut, the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition performs Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” alongside “…Round and velvety-smooth blend…,” a new piece, written especially for the pianist, by Korean composer Hanurij Lee.
8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

San Cha, photographed in 2020, performs Thursday-Saturday at REDCAT.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

San Cha
The L.A.-based composer, musician and performance artist presents “Inebria Me,” a new experimental opera that reimagines the melodrama of telenovelas through a queer, genre-bending lens as adapted from her 2019 album, “La Luz de la Esperanza.” In Spanish with English supertitles. Postshow Q&A with San Cha on Oct 17.
8 p.m. Thursday, Oct.18. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Bisserat Tseggai, Claudia Logan, Victoire Charles and Jordan Rice, clockwise from top left, of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
Currently staging its L.A. premiere at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum, “Jaja’s” is an uproarious workplace comedy that packs a serious political punch. I had the pleasure of interviewing four of the lead actors during a roundtable at a downtown rehearsal room a few days before the run started. The women talked about their love of the show and of the playwright, Jocelyn Bioh. They also discussed the country’s fraught political climate and how it’s laying waste to the idea of the American Dream — the one that has attracted immigrants seeking a better life for their families for hundreds of years. Their thoughts have a direct throughline to the show, which takes place on a single hot day at a West African salon in Harlem.

Times theater critic Charles McNulty caught the opening Sunday night and wrote a glowing review of the touring production, which he noted was “bursting with gossip, petty fights, audacious fashion, dazzling hair styles, full-body dancing and uncensored truth about the vulnerable lives of immigrant workers.”

Hammer biennial
Made in L.A. 2025 has officially opened at UCLA’s Hammer Museum and I recently toured the highly anticipated seventh edition of the biennial exhibition in the company of curators Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha. The pair told me interesting backstories about the 28 participating artists, including that the four large sculptures of doors made by Amanda Ross-Ho represent a door at the nursing home where her father lived.

Artist Alake Shilling stands in front of a 25-foot inflatable psychedelic bear driving a convertible titled “Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A,” at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

I also ate lunch with the charming and kind artist Alake Shilling, whose adorable sculptures of cuddly animals featuring melancholy faces are part of the show. I trailed Shilling as she watched a test inflation of a 25-foot sculpture titled “Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A.,” which will be on display on an outdoor pedestal on Wilshire Boulevard through March. I made this fun video with the help of video editor Mark Potts.

LACMA Gifts
Big news keeps coming out of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which announced Wednesday that it had been gifted more than 100 works of Austrian Expressionism worth “well over” $60 million by the family of Otto Kallir, a renowned art dealer who immigrated to America in 1938 after the German Reich annexed Austria. The art will be transferred to the museum over the next several years and includes the museum’s first paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl. The exciting news comes two months after LACMA was gifted its first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet by the Pearlman Foundation.

Best Friends Forever
Finally, I got an update from the “satirical activist” artists with the Secret Handshake. They told me they had once again received a permit to reinstall their controversial Trump-Epstein statue (dubbed “Best Friends Forever”) on the National Mall. “Just like a toppled Confederate general forced back onto a public square, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein statue has risen from the rubble to stand gloriously on the National Mall once again,” a rep for the Secret Handshake wrote in an email.

“Arabesque over the Right Leg, Left Arm in Front,” by Edgar Degas

(Norton Simon Museum)

Norton Simon acquires sculpture
The Pasadena museum announced the acquisition of a bronze sculpture by Edgar Degas titled “Arabesque over the Right Leg, Left Arm in Front.” The museum already holds more than 100 pieces by Degas in its collection, which is known as one of the largest public collection’s of the artist’s work in the world. “This significant acquisition, long sought after, completes a critical gap in the Museum’s renowned Degas collection,” a rep for the museum wrote in an email. The sculpture went on view in the museum’s 19th century wing late last week.

Mushroom Boat
Ever heard of a boat made out of mushrooms? Neither had I until someone told me about an exhibition at Fulcrum Arts in Pasadena called, “Sam Shoemaker: Mushroom Boat.” As the title implies, the artist built a kayak out of mushroom mycelium. He then proceeded to use the unusual vessel to cross the Catalina Channel — a total of 26 nautical miles. He chronicled his journey the whole way, and the results of that work are on display alongside the boat. It includes large-scale projections, time-lapse videos, and soundscapes from his sometimes wild and turbulent journey.

Los Angeles Ballet dancers in pointe shoes stretch before beginning rehearsals in 2015.

(Los Angeles Times)

An anniversary for Los Angeles Ballet
Los Angeles Ballet announced its 2025-26 season, which also happens to mark the company’s 20th anniversary, and its Music Center debut — “Giselle” at the Ahmanson Theatre in the spring. The season launches in December with LAB’s acclaimed annual presentation of “The Nutcracker” at Royce Hall and the Dolby Theatre. This season the company continues its residency at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and is set to stage a triple-bill anniversary production, “20 Years of Los Angeles Ballet,” featuring George Balanchine’s “Rubies,” Hans van Manen’s “Frank Bridge Variations,” and a third new work by Artistic Director Melissa Barak, who assumed her position in 2022.

K.A.M.P. fundraiser
The Hammer Museum is back this Sunday with its annual fundraiser — Kids Art Museum Project, better known as K.A.M.P. Tickets support the Hammer’s free year-round family programming. Each year, the museum shuts down on a Sunday and presents an art-filled wonderland for children and families, with interactive art stations created and helmed by participating L.A. artists, as well as a special reading room featuring well-known actors. This year’s readers will be actor Justine Lupe and baseball star Chris Taylor. Artists include Daniel Gibson, Sharon Johnston & Mark Lee, Annie Lapin, Ryan Preciado, Rob Reynolds, Jennifer Rochlin, Mindy Shapero, Brooklin A. Soumahoro and Christopher Suarez.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Everybody, it seems, loves Cyndi Lauper. Readers have been going absolutely bananas for Times pop music critic Mikael Wood’s engaging profile on the iconic, red-haired pop star in advance of her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

UC Irvine has officially acquired Orange County Museum of Art, bringing the two organizations together under a new name: UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. I first reported on the possibility of the merger in June when the two entities first signed a nonbinding letter of intent that needed approval by the University of California Board of Regents.

With the legal details now set, UC Irvine is absorbing OCMA’s 53,000-square-foot, $98-million Morphosis-designed building on the eastern edge of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus. According to UC Irvine, no money changed hands in the acquisition, which also finds the university taking over OCMA’s assets, employees and debt.

Just how much debt the Costa Mesa-based museum was in has not been disclosed by either organization, and a rep for UC Irvine declined to comment on that number.

OCMA’s board has been dissolved, and CEO Heidi Zuckerman, who announced her intention to step down in December, vacated her role. She had been planning to stay until her successor was found, but UC Irvine is now that successor and has launched a search for a new leader to take over the merged museums. A rep for the university said it is hoping to announce a candidate by early next year.

UC Irvine had long planned to build a museum for its California art collection, including its celebrated Gerald Buck Collection, but it now intends to move it to OCMA when the lease on its current off-campus space, on Von Karman Avenue, expires in late 2026. The Buck Collection, bequeathed to UC Irvine by Gerald Buck when he died in 2017, is the museum’s crown jewel, consisting of more than 3,200 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by some of the state’s most championed artists, including Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney and Ed Ruscha.

OCMA opened to much fanfare in 2022 and its expansive contemporary art collection drew museum-goers from across the country. More than 10,000 visitors arrived in its first 24 hours, and admission was to remain free for the first decade of operation thanks to a grant from Newport Beach’s Lugano Diamonds.

All did not seem well at the new museum, however. Times art critic Christopher Knight and former Times architecture columnist Carolina Miranda wrote that the highly touted building remained oddly unfinished. Murmurs about the museum’s financial problems persisted when Zuckerman announced her departure three years later.

According to a rep for OCMA, the museum had a $7.7-million annual budget and had attracted 600,000 visitors since 2022, which is a healthy number by industry standards. Still, questions circulated among museum insiders about what OCMA’s long-term financial plan was, and how much it might have been struggling toward the end.

A rep for UC Irvine would say only that the museum had done its due diligence before the acquisition.

The museums at both locations remain open as usual, with OCMA in the midst of its 2025 California Biennial: “Desperate, Scared, But Social.”

“UC Irvine is committed to ensuring that the region benefits from a world-class art museum that enriches the cultural fabric of Orange County, advances groundbreaking scholarship, nurtures the next generation of creators and thinkers, and inspires curiosity and connection across diverse audiences,” said Chancellor Howard Gillman in a news release.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, looking to acquire a healthy breakfast in a few minutes. Here’s your arts news for the week.

On our radar

Martha Graham Dance Company performs “Night Journey” and other works Saturday at the Soraya.

(Brigid Pierce)

Martha Graham Dance Company Centennial
The Soraya continues its celebration with Graham’s 1947 ballet “Night Journey,” which is based on the Oedipus myth and has not been widely performed; a 2024 piece titled “We the People,” featuring folk music by Rhiannon Giddens; and the world premiere of “En Masse,” which builds on the Soraya’s exploration of Graham’s collaborations with various composers. The last — a new commission choreographed by Hope Boykin — marks the first time Graham’s work has been paired with the music of Leonard Bernstein. The posthumous partnership was inspired by a musical excerpt that was found in correspondence between the two arts legends. Christopher Rountree’s experimental classical ensemble Wild Up will perform a new arrangement of Bernstein, as well as William Schuman’s score for “Night Journey.”
— Jessica Gelt
8 p.m. Saturday. The Saroya, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. thesoraya.org

Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism tour hits town for five shows at the Forum in Inglewood.

(Katja Ogrin / Getty Images)

Dua Lipa
Lipa has found a formidable second life as a public intellectual with her fantastic book club, Service95. (This month’s suggestion: David Szalay’s novel “Flesh.”) But on the heels of last year’s (unfairly!) slept-on “Radical Optimism,” the singer returns to SoCal for five nights at the Forum, where that record’s exquisite catalog of disco-funk effervescence will hopefully get its due on the dance floor.
— August Brown
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday. Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com

Pat O’Neill, “Los Angeles — From Cars and Other Problems,” 1960s, gelatin silver print

(Graham Howe)

Made in L.A. 2025
UCLA Hammer Museum’s seventh biennial survey of mostly recent art from the sprawling region will include 28 artists and collectives — including influential elder statesman Pat O’Neill, 86. The artists work in every imaginable medium, from traditional painting and sculpture to theater and choreography. The always much-discussed result will reflect the diverse artistic interests of the changing curatorial team, which this time is composed of independent curator Essence Harden, Art Institute of Chicago (and former Hammer) curator Paulina Pobocha and Hammer curatorial assistant Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow.
— Christopher Knight
Sunday through March 1, 2026. Closed Mondays. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY
🎭 Family Meal
A famous chef serves his last meal, and you’re invited to this immersive theatrical experience that seats the audience at the dinner table for a round of foodie “Succession.”
7 p.m. Friday-Sunday; Oct. 10-12; Nov. 7-9; 14-16. Rita House, 5971 W. 3rd St. speakeasysociety.com

🎶 🎤 Ledisi: For Dinah
The Grammy-winning singer’s new album pays tribute to Dinah Washington, “The Queen of the Blues.” 
8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Untitled, 2025, by Calvin Marcus. Oil on linen, 48 by 72 inches, 49 by 73 inches framed.

(Karma)

🎨 Calvin Marcus
Building on a coat of deep umber, the artist adds layers of lime, Kelly, forest and other shades of green to mimic the growth cycle of his subject in the Grass Paintings. This isn’t the type of nature you can touch, but the vivid compositions of the series may offer their own sense of the sublime to the viewer.
10 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday through Nov. 1. Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. karmakarma.org

🎹 🎺 🎶Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble
UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance presents an evening with the Grammy-winning octet, featuring pianist and composer O’Farrill, son of the late Cuban jazz pioneer Chico O’Farrill.
8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Music director Rafael Payare and the San Diego Symphony open their new season Friday.

(Courtesy of Gary Payne)

🎼 French Fairytales: Ravel and Debussy
San Diego Symphony music director Rafael Payare opens his orchestra’s second season in the brilliantly renovated Jacobs Music Center by staging Ravel’s one-act opera, “The Child and the Magical Spells” (commonly known by its French title, “L’enfant et les sortileges”). A kind of French “Alice Wonderland,” this is the most enchanted work by a composer for whom enchantment was bedazzling second nature. The stellar cast is headed by mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and soprano Liv Redpath. The stage director is by the orchestra’s creative consultant, Gerard McBurney, who recently created for Esa-Pekka Salonen a new version of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which was the hit of this year’s Salzburg Easter Festival. Plus Debussy’s “The Joyful Isle (L’isle joyeuse)” and “The Box of Toys (La boîte à joujoux).” (Mark Swed)
7:30 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Jacobs Music Center, 1245 Seventh Ave, San Diego. sandiegosymphony.org

SATURDAY
🎼 🎤 Current: Reflections in Song
Countertenor John Holiday, pianist Lara Downes and an 18-piece Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra lineup glide through Chris Walde’s arrangements of Gershwin, Ellington, Strayhorn, Korngold, Chaplin and more in a program that unites cinematic romance with the elegance of jazz.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Cicada Restaurant and Lounge
617 S Olive St., downtown L.A. laco.org

🎨 The HWY 62 Open Studio Art Tours
For a 24th year, High Desert artists open their studios and share their work for three weekends of free self-guided tours.
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; Oct. 11-12 and 18-19. Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms and surrounding areas. hwy62arttours.org

🎭 Public Assembly’s Soirée
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” director Daniel Scheinert, actor Jena Malone and other celebrities gather for this fundraiser for the non-profit theater company featuring staged readings of the group’s earlier works.
6 p.m. VIP-only cocktail party; 7:30 p.m. staged readings. Eagle Rock (location to be sent along with ticket purchase). publicassembly.us

📚Rare Books LA Union Station
This year’s fair features antiquarian books, maps, fine prints and book arts, while celebrates Guillermo Del Toro’s new film adaptation of “Frankenstein,” streaming on Netflix this November. (A Frankenstein Fundraiser, hosted by Netflix in association with Rare Books LA and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, is scheduled Friday night in Hollywood).
10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday. Union Station, 800 N. Alameda Street. rarebooksla.com

🎨 🚘 🎶 Venice Afterburn
This official Burning Man Regional brings art cars, installations, theme camps and music to the beach.
Noon-10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Windward Plaza, Venice Beach. veniceafterburn.com

SUNDAY

Jiji performs Sunday at BroadStage.

(BroadStage)

🎼 🎸 Jiji: ‘Classical Goes Electric’
The Korean guitarist and composer who goes by Jiji Guitar and is a member of the L.A. new music collective Wild Up exchanges her acoustic guitar for electric in a solo recital program that ranges across centuries as part of the endearing Sunday morning series at BroadStage (bagels and cream cheese included). Jiji begins with an arrangement of a vocal piece by the mystical 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen, who happens to be the subject of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new opera, “Hildegard,” that L.A. Opera presents Nov. 5-9 at the Wallis. Elsewhere on the program, the guitarist electrifies a neglected Baroque composer, Claudia Sessa (all women Baroque composers suffer obscurity), with Max Richter and new music including neglected electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. (Mark Swed)
11 a.m. Sunday. Broad Stage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St. broadstage.org

🎼 Two Titans: The Music of Beethoven and Verdi
The Los Angeles Master Chorale performs the epic works “Mass in C” and “Four Sacred Pieces” by Ludwig Van Beethoven and Giusseppe Verdi, respectively.
7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. lamasterchorale.org

Claude Monet, “The Water Lily Pond (Clouds),” 1903, oil on canvas

(Brad Flowers/Dallas Museum of Art)

🎨 The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse
Is there anyone who doesn’t like Impressionist paintings and sculptures? As the Dallas Museum of Art renovates and expands its building, a selection of 50 Impressionist and early Modern works from its permanent collection, dating from the 1870s to 1925, has embarked on a three-year, five-city tour. Six paintings by Claude Monet and four by Piet Mondrian are featured. (Christopher Knight)
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; Oct. 5 through Jan. 25, 2026. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St. sbma.net

TUESDAY
🎨 Glass Sukkah: This Home Is Not a House
Sukkot, an ancient Jewish harvest festival, and its messages of the temporary nature of shelter, the value of welcome and belonging, the importance of honoring ancestors and the preciousness of the natural world are themes of artist Therman Statom’s work, including glass face jugs and paintings.
Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday–Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, ongoing.
Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. skirball.org

🎵 🎭 Les Misérables
Cameron Mackintosh’s evergreen production of Boublil and Schönberg’s Tony Award- winning musical – billed as “the world’s most popular” – arrives for a two-week run.
7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, through Oct 19. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd. broadwayinhollywood.com

🎼 Strauss, Pärt & Glass
Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform 20th century chamber music.
8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

THURSDAY
🎼 Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’
The conductor’s “Second Symphony” is performed by Soprano Chen Reiss, mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the L.A. Phil, under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel, for only the second time in the maestro’s tenure.
8 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m. Oct. 10; 8 p.m. Oct. 11; 2 p.m. Oct. 12. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

🎭 Paranormal Inside
Playwright Prince Gomolvilas’ latest is a sequel to “The Brothers Paranormal,” which had its Los Angeles premiere at East West Players in 2022. In returning to the ghost-hunting business launched by two Thai American brothers, the author continues his examination of intergenerational trauma through the lens of the occult. Jeff Liu directs what sounds like a wild ride into the Freudian uncanny, where the repressed makes a startling return. (Charles McNulty)
8 p.m. Thursday, through Nov. 2; check days and times. David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 N Judge John Aiso Street, Little Tokyo. eastwestplayers.org

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Francesca Zambello’s staging of “West Side Story.”

(Todd Rosenberg / Lyric Opera of Chicago)

The legendary Broadway musical “West Side Story” is getting the L.A. Opera treatment as it opens the company’s 40th anniversary season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Times classical music critic Mark Swed caught a show and gives a bit of history in his review — namely that when choreographer Jerome Robbins talked with Leonard Bernstein in 1949 about the idea of updating ‘Romeo and Juliet’ into a contemporary musical, “Robbins didn’t know what it would be, but he knew what it wouldn’t be: An opera!” Nonetheless, the show is operatic, Swed notes, and redoing it as an opera means one important thing: more attention is given to the music.

Gustavo Dudamel is currently straddling two worlds as he kicks off his final season at the Los Angeles Philharmonic while at the same time assuming the role of music director designate at the New York Philharmonic, prior to becoming the orchestra’s artistic director in 2026. The opening concerts for both orchestras were a mere two weeks apart, with New York coming first. Swed invokes Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” to explore the new state of affairs that finds one city losing a beloved figurehead to another. In both cities, however, Dudamel is making superb music.

I spoke with a member of the anonymous “satirical activist” group the Secret Handshake, which recently installed a 12-foot-tall statue of President Trump holding hands with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The statue was removed less than 24 hours later by the National Park Service despite having a permit. The NPS claimed the statue had violated height restrictions, but the Secret Handshake rep said that it should have been given 24 hours to fix the problem before the statue was removed. The following day the group again tried to get a permit to reinstall the statue, and was denied without explanation. On Thursday afternoon, however, the statue was reinstalled for a limited time. Stay tuned.

A mural of Misty Copeland by El Mac.

(Lex Motley)

A brand new mural of ballet star Misty Copeland by the artist El Mac is being unveiled on Oct. 5 in San Pedro. The colorful painting takes up an entire outside wall of San Pedro City Ballet at 13th Street and Pacific Avenue, and was made possible by Arts United San Pedro. The unveiling also includes the renaming of the building in homage to donor Dr. Joseph A. Adan. “I’m incredibly honored to be featured in this stunning mural by El Mac at San Pedro City Ballet, my very first ballet studio and a place that will always feel like home,” Copeland said in a news release. “What he’s captured through my image is so much bigger than me, it represents every young person from this community and beyond who deserves access to the arts. This is such a beautiful tribute to where it all began for me.”

Long Beach Opera has named former L.A. Opera Production Director Michelle Magaldi its new chief executive officer. While at L.A. Opera, Magaldi oversaw the company’s popular Santa Monica Pier simulcasts; helped guide operations for L.A. Opera Off Grand; was responsible for hiring and training various producers and technical staff and also helped spearhead the world-premiere production of Ellen Reid’s “Prism,” which later won a Pulitzer Prize. Magaldi has a long working history with LBO’s Chief Creative Officer and Artistic Director James Darrah. Magaldi succeeds Marjorie Beale, who served as interim managing director since 2024.

Doja Cat will be the musical guest for Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art+Film Gala, the museum announced earlier this week. The always glitzy soiree is set to take place on Saturday, Nov. 1, and will honor artist Mary Corse and filmmaker Ryan Coogler. It’s co-chaired by LACMA trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Christine Vendredi has been apponted Palm Springs Art Museum’s new executive director, the board of trustees announced Monday. It’s a role Vendredi has occupied on an interim basis since April 2025. Prior to that she served as chief curator — a role she took on after serving as global director of art, culture and heritage at Louis Vuitton.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Join me in a moment of silence for Jane Goodall. She communicated across species, showing the world that we have more in common with all living creatures than we think. It’s a lesson we would do well to remember in these trying times.

Carlos Ulberg dropped Dominick Reyes in the opening round for his ninth straight win at UFC Fight Night in Australia.

New Zealand’s Carlos Ulberg made short work of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight title challenger Dominick Reyes on Saturday night with an effortless first-round stoppage at 4:27 at UFC Fight Night in Perth, Australia.

Ulberg (13-1 MMA) kept his messaging simple following his ninth consecutive UFC win, confirming his attendance for next Saturday’s UFC 320 title fight rematch in Las Vegas between Russian Magomed Ankalaev (21-1, 1 NC, or no contest) and ex-light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira (12-3) of Brazil.

“I’m coming [for the belt],” Ulberg said following the fight.

Ulberg dominated the main event bout from the outset, relentlessly coming forward and stifling Reyes’s punches.

Following a straight left punch that appeared to stun Reyes, Ulberg then seized his opportunity with less than a minute remaining in the opening round, unleashing a huge right hook that knocked the American to the ground, ending the fight.

Reyes’s (15-4 MMA) loss on Sunday snapped his three-fight winning streak, and it was his first knockout/technical knockout (KO/TKO) loss since November 2022 to Ryan Spann.

“My goal with Reyes was to box him, and he felt the power early, and I saw in his eyes that he didn’t want to feel that again, so the next opportunity I went with the two and dropped him,” Ulberg said.

 The co-headliner event at light heavyweight saw the home country’s Jimmy Crute (14-4-2) win back-to-back fights, this time beating Croatia’s Ivan Erslan (14-6) by rear-naked-choke at 3:19 of the first round.

Erslan is still without a UFC win through three appearances, last coming away with a victory in February 2024. Meanwhile, Crute’s submission was the sixth of his career.

Featherweight Jack Jenkins of Australia used his volume striking and forward movement to overcome the always durable Ramon Taveras of the United States by unanimous decision: 30-27, 30-27, 29-28.

Jenkins (14-4) has won five of his last seven, while Taveras (10-4) has lost three of his last five and has gone more than 20 months without a win.

For the second straight fight, UFC welterweight veteran Neil Magny of the US kept the submission trend rolling with a D’arce choke against Australian fan favourite Jake Matthews at 3:08 of the third round.

Magny (31-14) survived an early onslaught from Matthews (22-8) before rallying to secure his 24th UFC win and improve his winning streak to two.

When I was in high school in the 1990s, I worked the box office at Tucson’s sole art house, the Loft Cinema. My favorite shift was Saturday night when a parade of true characters began lining up for the weekly midnight screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

The shadow cast arrived before the audience, a ragtag group of aspiring and established actors and fans, costumes in hand. They’d decamp in the bathrooms on either side of the lobby without regard for who was in the women’s or men’s, and proceed to cake on makeup and rib each other in delightfully uncouth terms.

The actors would wait by the theater doors to make their appointed entrances beneath the screen after the film began, and soon the theater was a sweaty mess of wild hair, dripping foundation, torn fishnet stockings, smeared lipstick, thrown popcorn, spilled soda and ribald song and dance.

There was no doubt in my 16-year-old mind that this was underground musical theater at its finest. At that time — when one of my best friends was struggling with how to come out as gay, fearing fierce social backlash — the topsy-turvy sexuality of the show, with its outlandish, cross-dressing lead, felt deliciously subversive. This was not “Grease” or “Godspell,” it had more in common with the stage shows in “Cabaret.”

Week after week, the same shadow cast arrived, treating the show as its professional run. If someone was out sick, an eager understudy would step in. This was one small art theater in Tucson. The “Rocky Horror” phenomenon, with its live shadow casts, has been ongoing around the world for decades now. That means thousands of shadow casts in thousands of cities beneath thousands of screens — each engaging in their own form of participatory community theater.

As the film honors its 50th anniversary this year with special engagements and talks across the country (see below for an Academy Museum screening), star Tim Curry is being celebrated for breaking boundaries with his onscreen portrayal of the eccentric, cross-dressing scientist Frank-N-Furter. But it’s important to remember that the show began as a stage musical in London in 1973 — with Curry originating his role upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre. The musical then moved to L.A.’s Roxy Theatre for an electric yearlong run.

“Rocky Horror” is now known as as the longest continuous theatrical release in cinema history. But thanks to the talent and dedication of its legions of shadow casts — it just might be the longest continuous piece of live musical theater too.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, inviting you to do the Time Warp. Here’s this week’s round-up of arts and culture news.

On our radar

Wei Wang and Max Cauthorn in Liam’s Scarlett’s ballet “Frankenstein.”

(Erik Tomasson)

Frankenstein
San Francisco Ballet brings Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror story to life in a three-act production of British choreographer Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein.” The ballet originally premiered at the Royal Ballet in 2016 and has gone on to become a modern classic with a score by Lowell Liebermann and stage design by critically acclaimed ballet and opera artist John MacFarlane.
– Mark Swed
7:30 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 3; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4;and 1 p.m. Oct. 5. Segerstrom Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org

Brittany Adebumola, left, and Dominique Thorne in a New York production of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” in 2023.

(Matthew Murphy)

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
Playwright Jocelyn Bioh (“School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play”) captures the camaraderie and competitiveness, solidarity and rivalry of workplace relations in this entertaining comedy about the African immigrant employees of a Harlem hair salon earning their daily bread as they work their fingers — and mouths! — to exhaustion. The play is wildly amusing, but Bioh isn’t just kidding around. By familiarizing us with the workday rhythms of these flamboyant women, she makes us feel all the more acutely the threats that accompany their marginal status in a not-always-welcoming America. Whitney White, who directed the impeccably acted Broadway premiere, helms this much-praised co-production.
— Charles McNulty
Wednesday through Nov. 9. Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org

Laufey performs Driday and Saturday at Crypto.com Arena.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Laufey
This young pop-jazz singer from Iceland shot a concert movie last year at the Hollywood Bowl; now she’s doubling down with two adopted-hometown shows at Crypto.com Arena just as her album “A Matter of Time” is garnering substantial Grammy buzz.
— Mikael Wood
7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Crypto.com Arena, 1111 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. cryptoarena.com

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

“Something Else No. 61,” 2020, by Edith Baumann. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches.

(Alan Shaffer)

🎨 Acts of Surface
A three-artist show featuring works by Edith Baumann, Chip Barrett and Vincent Enrique Hernandez that explore the literal and emotional facets of surface as a repository for memory, transformation and abstraction.
Noon-5 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Friday or by appointment, through Oct. 23. 7811 Gallery, 7811 Melrose Ave. 7811gallery.com

📷 Corita Kent: The Sorcery of Images
A trove of more than 15,000 35mm slides from the archive of the activist nun offers a peek into her artistic practice, her life as a teacher at Immaculate Heart College and the world she lived in between 1955 and 1968.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, through Jan. 24. Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Blvd. marcianoartfoundation.org

🎤 Tate McRae
The main pop girls have been expanding their portfolios of late. After showing off a limber pop sound on 2023’s “Think Later” that made full use of her dance gifts, McRae proved her staying power with this year’s “So Close to What,” which topped the Billboard 200 by pulling from a rich seam of Y2K R&B and club jams. Yet she scored her first No. 1 single with the Morgan Wallen collab “What I Want.” Whatever you think of Wallen — and McRae’s young, queer fan base had thoughts — the song showed that McRae’s Alberta roots could drop right into a pop-country setting. (August Brown)
7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Nov. 8. Kia Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com

🎭 Parallel Process
Writer-director David Kohner Zuckerman’s drama stars Alan McRae and Tom Jenkins as brothers facing down a 50-year divide over the Vietnam War.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 2 (except Oct. 26). Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. parallelprocesstheplay.com

🎞️ The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Shiver with anticipation as star Tim Curry, producer Lou Adler and a shadow cast performance alongside a 4k screening of the movie mark 50 years of delectable decadence.
7:30 p.m. Friday. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

🎼 🎹 Daniil Trifonov
One of the most impressive pianists of his generation, the 34-year-old Daniil Trifonov, who starred in a Rachmaninoff week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in August, opens the Soka Performing Arts fall series at Soka University in Aliso Viejo with a recital program that features seldom heard solo piano works by three early 20th century Russian composers — Taneyev, Prokofiev and Myaskovsky — along with a Schumann sonata. In the meantime, Deutsche Grammophon recently released a stunning new Trifonov recording of overlooked, intimate solo piano works by Tchaikovsky. (Mark Swed)
8 p.m. Friday. Soka University Concert Hall, 1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo. soka.edu 7 p.m. Wednesday. UC Santa Barbara, Campbell Hall, campuscalendar.ucsb.edu

SATURDAY
🎭 Anthropology
Prolific and popular playwright Lauren Gunderson gravitates toward brainy subjects. Here, she delves into a fraught philosophical question: Can AI substitute for the human comfort we need, or are we only hastening the demise of our species by depending on digital simulations of people who actually care about us? John Perrin Flynn directs the North American premiere of a play by a dramatist whose work (“I and You,” “The Book of Will”) is as thought-provoking as it is emotionally resonant. (Charles McNulty)
Through Nov. 9, check specific dates. Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave. roguemachinetheatre.org

🎞️ Dazed and Confused
Vidiots’ third annual celebration of Richard Linklater’s 1993 coming-of-age classic includes screenings, a takeover of the Microcinema with games on freeplay, a unique commemorative T-shirt, giveaways, food and drinks, all-vinyl DJ sets from KCRW’s Dan Wilcox and Wyldeflower and more. Close out the festivities with the period-appropriate 1976 Led Zeppelin concert film “The Song Remains the Same” at 9:30 p.m.
3 and 6:45 p.m. Saturday. Vidiots, Eagle Theatre, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. vidiotsfoundation.org

🎭 Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol
The artistic collective’s “Centroamérica” tells the story of a Nicaraguan woman on the run from Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship, exploring history and the present to discover the region’s diversity, conflict and resilience.
8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Installation view, “Echoes,” at 839.

(Vanessa Wallace Gonzales/839)

🎨 Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales
“Echoes,” a solo exhibition by the multiracial Black and Mexican artist originally from Southern California, now based in New York, features cyanotypes, sculptural vessels and a multimedia installation in a hybrid home/gallery.
Noon-6 p.m. Saturday or by appointment, through Oct. 18. 839 Gallery, 839 N. Cherokee Ave. 839gallery.com

🎼 Quintessential Classical
The Colburn Orchestra opens its season with conductor Nicholas McGegan, clarinetist Minkyung Chu and masterworks from Bach, Haydn and Mozart.
7 p.m. Colburn School, Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. colburnschool.edu

TUESDAY

“The Buddhist Deities Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi,” Tibet, circa 15th century; pigments on cotton.

(©Museum Associates / LACMA)

🎨 Realms of the Dharma Gallery Tour
LACMA conservator Soko Furuhata and curator Stephen Little discuss preservation and highlights from the exhibition of pan-Asian Buddhist art created across centuries.
7-8:30 p.m. LACMA, Resnick Pavilion, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org

Writer Roxane Gay is the guest Tuesday at Oxy Live!

(David Butow / For the Times)

📘 Oxy Live!
Occidental College’s speaker series kicks off a new season with a new host, artist Alexandra Grant, and bestselling author and feminist icon Roxane Gay. Future guests include Taylor Mac and Robin Coste Lewis.
7 p.m. Occidental college Thorne Hall, 1600 Campus Road. oxy.edu

WEDNESDAY

Alex Hernandez, left, and Marlon Alexander Vargas rehearse for “Littleboy/Littleman” at the Geffen Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

🎭 Littleboy/Littleman
Nicaraguan brothers have different ideas about the American dream in the world premiere of playwright Rudi Goblen’s drama, which mixes poetry, live music and ritual. Alex Hernandez and Marlon Alexander Vargas star for director Nancy Medina.
Through Nov. 2. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood. geffenplayhouse.org

THURSDAY
🎼 The Rite of Spring with Dudamel
In an online note, the conductor writes, “if the LA Phil has a signature piece, it’s The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky shocked the world when it was first performed more than a century ago, and even today, it still feels bold, modern, and full of energy — just like this orchestra.” The evening also includes John Adams’ “Frenzy” and Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”
8 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 4; 2 p.m. Oct. 5. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Ken Gonzales-Day, “The Wonder Gaze, St. James Park (Lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes, San Jose, 1933),” 2006, digital print on vinyl

(USC Fisher Museum of Art)

Times art critic Christopher Knight reviewed “Ken Gonzales-Day: History’s ‘Nevermade’,” a poignant retrospective at USC’s Fisher Museum of Art. The show features a mural-sized photograph titled, “The Wonder Gaze, St. James Park (Lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes, San Jose, 1933),” which shows the scene beneath a tree used to lynch two men accused (but not convicted) of kidnapping and murder. To create the image, Gonzales-Day photographed the original photo of the brutal scene and digitally removed the ropes and the victims, leaving only a bare tree and the many humans milling about beneath it. “What’s left is a spectral scene, ghosted by the limitations of old black-and-white photographic technology and further heightened by the uneven glow generated by the camera’s flashbulb. The mob has become the subject,” Knight writes.

A trio of vibrant 99-seat theaters are in the spotlight of Times theater critic Charles McNulty’s newest column, which features reviews of Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” at Boston Court; the West Coast premiere of Brian Quijada’s play, “Fly Me to the Sun,” at the Fountain Theatre; and Rogue Machine Theatre’s world premiere production of “Adolescent Salvation” by Tim Venable. McNulty was particularly taken by the fine production of the not-often-revived “Night of the Iguana,” writing, “Williams is the humane, humorously defiant playwright we need when authoritarianism is on the march.”

Earlier this week, I got to spend the morning in the company of artist Jeff Koons as he arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to install the celebratory first planting of a diminutive succulent in his monumental topiary sculpture, “Split-Rocker,” which is set to anchor the east side of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries when it opens in April of next year. LACMA CEO and Director Michael Govan was also on hand, and the two men walked into the not-yet-finished building to regard the sculpture from the floor-to-ceiling windows above. “It’s an outdoor sculpture and indoor sculpture,” Govan said.

Museums across the country are feeling the chill from the Trump administration’s push against DEI, as well as its pressure campaign against the Smithsonian Institute for what it calls “divisive, race-centered ideology.” This hasn’t stopped the Getty from continuing to ramp up a growing slate of programs and grants aimed at preserving and strengthening Black arts and cultural heritage in Los Angeles and across the country. I spoke with a variety of curators, researchers and administrators at Getty about the institution’s efforts.

A statue depicting President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands is seen near the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 23 in Washington, DC. A plaque below the figures states “In Honor of Friendship Month.”

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

A 12-foot-tall statue showing President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands while engaged in a gleeful dance was removed from the National Mall earlier this week — a day after it was first erected there. The statue, created by an anonymous group that received a permit to place it on the mall, was titled “Best Friends Forever” and featured a plaque that read, “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein.” The National Park Service removed the sculpture before it was scheduled to be taken down, saying it was “not compliant with the permit issued.”

LA Opera is staging its annual free simulcast on Saturday — this time for “West Side Story.” Per usual, one simulcast will take place on the Santa Monica Pier (bring a blanket, it will get chilly), but for the first time, a second simulcast will take place at Loma Alta Park in Altadena. The community event comes as fire recovery efforts continue, and excitement is building with a variety of local performers and vendors expected to take part in pre-show events, including “the Jets” from JPL.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which awards fellowships to artists and curators worldwide, is being targeted by President Trump’s Justice Department as part of Trump’s efforts to crack down on what he calls the “radical left.”

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Take a break from doomscrolling to read this delightful story by Deborah Netburn about how a shoemaker in East L.A. ended up with shoe forms for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

A defining image of the horrors of slavery has emerged as the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s quest to root out what Trump has called “divisive, race-centered ideology” from the nation’s museums and national parks.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post broke the news that the administration had ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, “including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.”

The photo in question — “The Scourged Back,” 1863 — is among the most famous images of the Civil War era and has been credited with driving home the brutality of slavery to the masses in what would become a turning point for the abolitionist movement. The image, which appeared in the political magazine Harper’s Weekly the day after the battle of Gettysburg, showed the deeply scarred back of an escaped slave-turned-Union soldier referred to as “Gordon,” but whose real name may have been “Peter.”

The photo was copied and distributed far and wide in pamphlets and on cards, eliciting shock and raising awareness wherever it appeared. Today, the image is housed in the collections of major museums including the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery of Art, as well as at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The New York Times reported that the copy of the photo the administration has targeted for removal is on display at Georgia’s Fort Pulaski National Monument, which was a Union-captured Confederate stronghold that served as a prisoner-of-war camp. The story notes that a spokeswoman for the Interior Department wrote in an email that “all interpretive signage in national parks is under review”; she also “accused media outlets of spreading ‘false claims’ and ‘misinformation’ about the review, although she did not specify what information was incorrect.”

The review of signage, monuments and display materials at national parks, as well as at the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, stems from a March executive order titled “Restoring truth and sanity to American history.” In the order, Trump wrote that the Secretary of the Interior would work to identify “improper partisan ideology” at properties within its jurisdiction.

In August, Trump made it clear in a post on Truth Social that focusing on the country’s history of slavery was unacceptable. He criticized museums for being the last bastions of “woke” in the country, and zeroed in on the Smithsonian in particular for exhibits that discuss “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

It’s unclear if the indelible photo of Peter will remain on display in national parks, but one thing seems certain: The controversy surrounding the way we engage as a country with our shared history is likely to rage on for quite some time.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, looking back to make sense of the present. Here’s your arts news for the week.

On our radar this week

Lee Byung-hun in the movie “No Other Choice.”

(Neon)

Beyond Fest
The event “proves once again why it has become much more than a genre festival and is now the best film festival in L.A.,” says Times film writer Mark Olsen, ”playing movies straight from Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto with guests including Conan O’Brien, Al Pacino, Luca Guadagnino and John Carpenter.” The award-winning “No Other Choice,” Park Chan-wook’s adaptation of the Donald Westlake thriller “The Ax,” opens the festival, 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Aero.
Through Oct. 8. Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd.; Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N. Vermont Ave. americancinematheque.com

Gustavo Dudamel performs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in April.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Gracias Gustavo
Gustavo Dudamel’s farewell season as the Los Angeles Philharmonic‘s music and artistic director begins as all his 17 seasons in Walt Disney Concert Hall have begun — with a world premiere. Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans,” a co-commission between the L.A. Phil and New York Philharmonic (which Dudamel will take over in 2026), evoking nature’s command of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) as they operate in both cities. In our case, that involves contending with fires and our swelling oceans but also the promise of a future of unity through celebration of our multicultural communities. The opening program also includes Richard Strauss’ nature-saturated “Alpine Symphony.”
— Mark Swed
8 p.m. Thursday-Sept. 27 and 2 p.m. Sept. 28 Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Francesca Zambello’s staging of “West Side Story.”

(Todd Rosenberg / Lyric Opera)

West Side Story
L.A. Opera turns to Broadway for this Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim-Jerome Robbins masterwork, which was originally conceived as an opera. James Conlon conducts the orchestra in such classic songs as “America,” “Somewhere” and “I Feel Pretty” as director Francesca Zambello utilizes Robbins’ original choreography in a “maximalist” production.
Through Oct. 12. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laopera.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

The cast of South Coast Repertory’s production of ”Million Dollar Quartet,” includes Chris Marsh Clark as Johnny Cash, JP Coletta as Jerry Lee Lewis, Armando Gutierrez as Carl Perkins and Rustin Cole Sailors as Elvis Presley.

(Scott Smeltzer / SCR)

🎭 🎶 Million Dollar Quartet
On a December night in 1956, music legends Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gather to jam on “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” “Who Do You Love?” and more in this jukebox musical written by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux.
Through Oct. 11. South Coast Repertory, Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scr.org

🎥 Mysterious Skin
The Academy Museum presents a 4K screening of Gregg Araki’s haunting 2004 coming-of-age drama. In his review, Times critic Kevin Thomas wrote, “It’s hard to imagine a more serious or persuasive indictment of the horrors inflicted on children by sexual abuse.” Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker will moderate a Q&A with Araki, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and novelist Scott Heim.
7:30 p.m. Academy Museum, Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

SATURDAY
🎥 Born in East L.A.
Cheech Marin’s 1987 comedy about a third-generation Chicano who is inadvertently deported following an immigration raid is a chilling reminder that this type of behavior from the government isn’t new, just more flagrant. Filmmaker Jorge R. Gutierrez will moderate a Q&A with Marin.
7 p.m. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

Derek Fordjour
“Nightsong,” a solo exhibition that combines painting, sculpture, live performance and video to create an immersive, multifaceted experience.
6-10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Oct. 11. David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Place. davidkordanskygallery.com

🎭 Go Play!
Three strangers meet for the first time at a dog park, while their four-legged companions — a flamboyant show poodle, a pampered Yorkie and a scrappy rescue — offer a running commentary in writer-director Barra Grant’s new stage comedy.
2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 2. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. GoPlayOnStage.com

🎨 Habitat: Making the California Environment
Period landscape paintings depict the radical change in the region between the state’s late-19th century genocide of Indigenous people and the urbanism that erupted in the 1920s.
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, UC Irvine, 18881 Von Karman Ave. imca.uci.edu

🎥 🎶 La La Land in Concert
Moonlit screening of Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-winning 2016 romantic musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling with a live concert conducted by the film’s composer Justin Hurwitz. Food trucks and local vendors offer gourmet fare, and themed cocktails will be available from a full bar.
7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, door opens 4:30 p.m. Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St. streetfoodcinema.com

💃 San Pedro Festival of the Arts
Eighteen dance companies perform a wide variety of styles including modern, ballet, Indian, jazz and flamenco.
1 p.m. Peck Park near the Community Center, 560 N. Western Ave. triartsp.com

🎨 Manoucher Yektai
A survey of early paintings of the Iranian-born artist and poet, “Beginnings” charts the first decades of his career and early experimentation with genre, color, shape and form.
6-8 p.m. Saturday, opening reception; 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, through Nov. 1. Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. karmakarma.org

THURSDAY
Carol Bove
The industrial heritage of Cold War-era Los Angeles is evoked in “Nights of Cabiria,” a new exhibition that incorporates the artist’s sculptures into the architecture of the gallery.
6-8 p.m. Thursday, opening reception; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, through Nov. 1. Gagosian Beverly Hills, 456 N. Camden Drive gagosian.com

🎨 The Other Art Fair
Larger than ever, the quirky event presents affordable works from more than 150 independent artists alongside immersive installations, performances, DJs and and a fully stocked bar.
6-10 p.m. Thursday; 5-10 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. 7 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Ave., Santa Monica. theotherartfair.com/la/

📷 Paul Outerbridge
The exhibition “Photographs” celebrates the work of the provocative artist (1896–1958), presenting a rare selection of Carbro prints, silver gelatin photographs and platinum prints.
7-9 p.m. Thursday, opening reception; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 8. The Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave..faheykleingallery.com

📷 Matthew Rolston
A multi-venue Los Angeles exhibition of the photographer and artist’s latest series “Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits,” in which he uses “expressionistic lighting” to document dozens of 500-year-old mummified remains in Sicily’s Capuchin Catacombs, accompanying the release of a special limited-edition monograph from Nazraeli Press.
7 p.m. Thursday, opening reception; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 8. Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave. faheykleingallery.com; 6 p.m. Saturday, opening reception; 8 a.m.-7 p.m. daily through Nov. 9. ArtCenter College of Design (South Campus), Mullin Transportation Design Center – Oculus Space, 2nd Floor, 950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. artcenter.edu; 1 p.m. Oct. 26, Opening reception, artist talk and book signing; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 2. Leica Gallery, 8783 Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood. leicagalleryla.com

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Roxana Ortega in “Am I Roxie?” at Geffen Playhouse, directed by Bernardo Cubría.

(Jeff Lorch)

The fall theater season is in full swing and Times critic Charles McNulty has been busy seeing as much as possible. First up this week: his review of the world premiere of Groundlings Theatre alum Roxana Ortega’s world-premiere, one-woman show, “Am I Roxie?,” which has the actor exploring what it was like being the caregiver for her mother as she suffered from the increasing effects of dementia. “The show is more of a personal essay composed for the stage than a deeply imagined performance work. Ortega’s approach is friendly and wryly conversational,” McNulty writes.

McNulty was effusive in his praise for the concert version of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish, which staged its West Coast premiere at the Soraya. He begins his review with one word, “Magnificent,” and the plaudits keep coming from there. If you were not in the audience for the show’s three performances, reading McNulty’s words will make you very sorry indeed.

“Eureka Day,” a comedy that skewers the vaccine-mandate debate at a liberal private school in Berkeley, is making its L.A. premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse. In many ways, the play is more topical than ever given the current “anti-science” moment of the Trump era, but it was first performed in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic. “The production, directed by Teddy Bergman, has a field day with the woke-run-amok ethos of Eureka Day, where kids at the school cheer the other team’s goals at soccer games,” McNulty writes.

Gustavo Dudamel officially stepped into his role as the New York Philharmonic’s music and artistic director designate on the 24th anniversary of 9/11, and Times classical music critic Mark Swed was there to take stock. The New York orchestra, Swed writes, “is basically his baby now.” From here on out, Dudamel will increase his presence on the East Coast while winding down his work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during his final season in L.A. Read Swed’s review of Dudamel’s inaugural performance, here.

Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, “Bout Round Eleven,” 1982. Mixed media assemblage, 90 x 97 x 92 inches. SBMA, Gift of Private Collection, Topanga, CA. © 2022 Estate of Nancy Reddin Kienholz.

(Jeff McLane / L.A. Louver)

Big news for L.A.’s gallery scene as Venice Beach’s L.A. Louver, established in 1975 by Peter and Elizabeth Goulds, announced that it’s winding down its public exhibition program in order to “shift to a new model that embraces private art dealing, artist support, consulting, and projects.” As part of that move, the gallery said it is donating its archive and library, including correspondence, photography, publications, records, objects, graphics and related ephemera, to the Huntington by 2029. “Until that time, L.A. Louver and Huntington archivists and librarians will collaborate to process and prepare the collection to facilitate its transfer, and optimize access and use,” L.A. Louver said in a news release.

School children’s access to the Getty Museum received a significant boost with the establishment of the Mia Chandler Endowment for School Visits — a $12-million gift from the Camilla Chandler Family Foundation in support of the Getty Museum’s Education Department and its engagement with the city’s students and educators. The money will go toward the Getty’s free bus service for field trips to both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. The gift is the largest financial contribution received by the organization since J. Paul Getty’s original bequest, the Getty says. Camilla “Mia” Chandler Frost died in 2024 at the age of 98; she was the granddaughter of Harry Chandler and daughter of Norman Chandler, former publishers of the Los Angeles Times.

A new one-hour PBS documentary on the Getty’s 2025 PST: Art and Science Collide, which, according to a news release, “highlights collaborations between artists and scientists in Southern California to address some of humanity’s most urgent challenges, from climate change and space exploration to biodiversity and environmental justice,” is scheduled to air Friday, Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. on PBS SoCal and at 10 p.m. on PBS stations nationwide. It will also stream on PBS.org and the free PBS App.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Spooky season is just beginning, and features columnist Todd Martens checks in with a creepy séance at Heritage Square Museum called “Phasmagorica.”

United States television host Jimmy Kimmel’s live show was pulled off the air by Disney-owned ABC after he made comments about conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last week in what has been deemed by right-wingers in the US a political assassination.

But critics claim Kimmel’s removal is a violation of his free speech rights, which are enshrined under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

On Thursday, hundreds of Kimmel fans gathered on the streets in Burbank, New York and Hollywood, protesting the removal of his show.

Here is a closer look at what happened and what the US Constitution says about free speech rights.

What happened to Jimmy Kimmel?

Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in front of a crowd of about 3,000 people on September 10 while he was speaking at a university event in Utah.

After a 33-hour manhunt, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was arrested on suspicion of killing Kirk. Robinson has since been charged with aggravated murder.

Some right-wing figures, affiliated with US President Donald Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) wing, have described Robinson as “left-wing”.

On Monday, Kimmel said on his show: “The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Kimmel continued, criticising the response by Trump – who described Kirk as being “like a son” – to his death. “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,” Kimmel said.

Following a backlash, broadcasters Nexstar and Sinclair said they would pull Kimmel’s late-night show from their affiliated stations.

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), also said he had a strong case for taking legal action against Kimmel, Disney and ABC.

Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, criticised Carr’s response in an interview with CNN. “This administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression,” Gomez said.

The FCC has the authority to grant licences to broadcasters, including ABC and its affiliated stations.

Democratic critics have said that pulling his show off the air is an infringement of Kimmel’s right to free speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

What does the First Amendment say?

The First Amendment protects free speech from government interference. It states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In 1963, the US Supreme Court issued a key ruling that the government cannot create a “system of informal censorship” by putting pressure on private companies.

This was issued after a Rhode Island agency had threatened to prosecute book and magazine distributors for selling publications it considered objectionable.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that, in such situations, plaintiffs must demonstrate that the government’s actions exceeded allowable persuasion and directly caused them harm.

Was the removal of Kimmel’s show unconstitutional?

Experts say Kimmel’s show being pulled is unconstitutional since it infringes the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Ronnie London, a general counsel with free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told PolitiFact that Carr’s actions are “a classic case of unconstitutional jawboning”, which means improperly using government threats to pursue policy goals.

“The FCC has long held that ‘the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views,’” the FCC says on its website.

“Rather than suppress speech, communications law and policy seek to encourage responsive ‘counter-speech’ from others. Following this principle ensures that the most diverse and opposing opinions will be expressed, even though some views or expressions may be highly offensive.”

How have people reacted to Kimmel’s removal?

Many Democrats, politicians, Hollywood stars and fellow talk-show hosts have stressed the importance of protecting free speech rights.

Former US President Barack Obama shared a series of articles and commentary on X on Friday, saying: “This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents.”

This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 19, 2025

In another post, Obama wrote: “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent – and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”

Former late-night host David Letterman said during an event in New York on Thursday: “I feel bad about this, because we all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media. It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.”

Ken Martin, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement: “The state under Donald Trump has amassed a chilling record of restricting speech, extorting private companies, and dropping the full weight of the government censorship hammer on First Amendment rights.”

Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff posted on X on Thursday: “This administration is responsible for the most blatant attacks on the free press in American history. What will be left of the First Amendment?”

By contrast, the suspension of Kimmel’s show has drawn celebration from the political right.

“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” Trump continued, referring to late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly wrote on X on Thursday: “I’m not sure who needs to hear this but Jimmy Kimmel got on the air and falsely stated as a fact that Charlie Kirk’s killer was MAGA, smearing an entire movement and Trump in particular with a vile disgusting lie.”

Nassourdine Imavov beats Caio Borralho in Paris, then issued a title challenge to UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev.

Nassourdine Imavov outlasted Caio Borralho in the main event of UFC Fight Night in France, earning a unanimous decision and consolidating his claim as a potential title challenger to middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev.

Imavov, fighting in front of his home crowd at Accor Arena in Paris, secured a fifth straight UFC victory, with the three judges delivering a clear win for the 84kg (185-pound) fighter: 50-45, 49-46, 49-46.

The Saturday night bout was one-sided, with Imavov (20-4 MMA) controlling the distance for the fight’s duration with clean boxing and pressure volume, not allowing Borralho (17-2 MMA) to find openings, as he entered the contest with an imposing 62 percent of his wins by either KO/TKO or submission.

Imanov, who laid claim to the UFC middleweight division’s No 2 ranking, was hard on himself about not finishing Borralho as he had planned.

Despite not earning a stoppage victory, he had one message for Chimaev (15-0 MMA).

“I am next,” Imavov said as the crowd erupted during his post-fight speech. “[Borralho] was unbeaten for 10 years. I just beat him, and beat him with style as well. I need to be the next one [to fight for the UFC middleweight title].”

The loss for the No 7-ranked Borralho marked his first inside the UFC. After the fight, he acknowledged Imavov as one of the toughest opponents of his career.

“Thank you, Nassourdine, for the respect,” Borralho said. “Thank you so much… I think Nassourdine was the better man today. He was very fast, as I was expecting. He did very good in the fight. I couldn’t really adapt [my strategy] that much. I wanted to make this fight entertaining for the fans and the UFC. So, I tried to strike with one of the best strikers in the world, and that’s what you guys saw: a great war.”

In the co-headline fight, lightweight Benoit Saint Denis secured a rear-naked choke over Mauricio Ruffy at 2:56 of the second round.

Saint Denis (15-3 MMA) got a large lift from the hometown crowd and became the first fighter to submit Ruffy (12-2 MMA) in his career.

Ruffy’s loss to Saint Denis snapped a seven-fight winning streak dating back to November 2019.

Stability is a thing of the past at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which this past week fired its director of dance programming, Jane Raleigh, as well as two other full-time dance programmers, Mallory Miller and Malik Burnett.

A few days later, the center announced its new dance director — a young Washington Ballet dancer named Stephen Nakagawa, who, according to the New York Times, sent a letter to the center’s president, Richard Grenell, lamenting “radical leftist ideologies in ballet.”

Nakagawa also wrote that he was “concerned about the direction the ballet world is taking in America,” that he was upset by the “rise of ‘woke’ culture,” at various dance companies and that he “would love to be part of a movement to end the dominance of leftist ideologies in the arts and return to classical ballet’s purity and timeless beauty.”

If “woke” is a MAGA dog whistle for diversity, equity and inclusion, then restoring “purity” to classical ballet could lead to a regressive whitewashing of the art form.

“With God, all things are possible,” Nakagawa wrote in a social media post announcing his appointment. “I am excited and honored to begin working with the incredible Kennedy Center and this amazing administration.”

The Kennedy Center did not respond to a request for comment about how its dance programming might change now that Nakagawa has taken over, but a person close to the situation, who declined to be identified said, “The [terminated] individuals were given multiple opportunities to come up with new ideas and failed to offer any.”

In interviews following their dismissal, Miller and Burnett said they had attended a meeting with Grenell in which he told them that they needed to prioritize “broadly appealing” programming in order to attract corporate sponsorship. Grenell reportedly used the reality TV competition “So You Think You Can Dance” as an example of what he had in mind.

What Grenell seems to be missing is that, under Raleigh, dance programming at the Kennedy Center was among the best in the nation — with broad appeal. The current season, which had been programmed before Raleigh and the others were fired, included some of the country’s most vaunted and popular companies including Martha Graham Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet.

The Kennedy Center also commissioned great work, including Mark Morris’ “Moon,” which staged its world premiere at the center in April. Times classical music critic Mark Swed caught the show at an “unusually quiet” venue shortly after President Trump staged his February takeover of the center.

“‘Moon,’” Swed told me, “served as a marvelous example of how [the] dance series already provides what both its audiences and new administration want. It celebrates American greatness, representing the historic Moonshot and Voyager space missions through wondrous dance, sanguine 1930s swing music and cavorting spacemen. There is even bit of cheerful conspiracy theory with the help of a cuddly alien or two.”

It doesn’t take a MAGA apparatchik to know that’s a winning formula.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, dancing my way to a better tomorrow. Here’s your arts news for the week.

Best bets: On our radar this week

Prince on his 1987 Sign O’ The Times tour at the Palais Omnisports in Paris.

(FG/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images)

Prince – Sign O’ The Times
The purple one’s 1987 film featuring live performances of songs from his ninth studio album gets the Imax treatment this weekend. Neither a commercial nor critical success upon its original release, interest in the project has only increased as the artist’s stature continued to rise, even after his death from an accidental overdose in 2016. Ranking Prince’s singles in 2021, Times pop music critic Mikael Wood wrote, “Inspired in part by the bad news he saw splashed across the front page of the Los Angeles Times one summer day in 1986, the title track of Prince’s magnum opus addresses AIDS and the crack epidemic in language as haunted and unsparing as the song’s rigorously pared-down groove.” The movie opens Thursday in limited theatrical release; check theaters for showtimes. www.imax.com/prince

“Villagers on Their Way to Church from Book of Hours,” c 1550, by Simon Bening (Flemish, about 1483 – 1561) Tempera colors and gold paint Getty Museum Ms. 50 (93.MS.19), recto

(J. Paul Getty Museum)

Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages
As we wrap up our own summer excursions, what better time to vicariously explore how it was done in medieval times through this exhibition of Getty Museum manuscripts illustrating the subject, augmented by an interactive component inspired by early 8-bit arcade video games. Times art critic Christopher Knight has described Northern European manuscripts as “one unmistakable strength of the Getty’s collection.” The show opens Tuesday. 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Tuesday–Friday and Sunday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday; closed Monday, through Nov. 30. J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive. getty.edu

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers performs Arturo Márquez’s concerto “Fandango” with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl in 2021.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Márquez’s Fandango & Shostakovich’s Fifth
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers performs Arturo Márquez’s Latin Grammy-winning composition with the L.A. Phil, conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero, Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl. The orchestra will also perform the Mexican composer’s “Danzon No. 2” and Shostakovich’s popular “Symphony No. 5.” When “Fandango,” commissioned by the L.A. Phil and written for Meyers, had its world premiere in 2021, Times classical music critic Mark Swed called it “substantial. It is based on the Mexican fandango Márquez grew up with in Sonora. His instrument is the violin, and his father was a mariachi violinist. But Márquez’s goal in the concerto was to use his folk and dance roots in a formal classical way, taking as his example such European composers as Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albéniz. In Márquez’s concerto, he allows Meyers to revel in her virtuosity. He writes melodies that sound old and worth keeping. Dance rhythms do what they’re supposed to, making feet tap and nerves tingle.” The gates open at 6 p.m. with the music scheduled to start at 8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY
🎭 Masala Dabba
Food, cooking and the titular spice box are central to playwright Wendy Graf’s world-premiere drama about an Indian/African American family directed by Marya Mazor.
7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 14. International City Theatre, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach. InternationalCityTheatre.org.

🎭 NOIR!
A Hollywood thriller is the milieu for a new immersive theatrical experience from the creators of “It’s Alive” and “The Assassination of Edgar Allan Poe.”
7:50 p.m. Friday-Sunday, Sept. 6, 13 and 20. Heritage Square Museum, 3800 Homer St. downtownrep.com

SATURDAY
🎥 Barry Lyndon
The American Cinematheque marks the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s visually sublime adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel about an 18th century English rogue, starring Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson, with the L.A. premiere of a new 4K restoration.
7 p.m. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. americancinematheque.com

🎥 Drop Dead Gorgeous
Actor Denise Richards will be in person for a 35 mm screening of the 1999 small-town beauty pageant mockumentary, a darkly comedic cult favorite written by Lona Williams, directed by the State’s Michael Patrick Jann and co-starring Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin and Kirsten Dunst.
7:30 p.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. academymuseum.org

🎭 Just Another Day
“Wonder Years” dad Dan Lauria wrote this romantic comedy on the enduring nature of love and stars with Academy Award nominee Patty McCormack (“The Bad Seed”) as a septuagenarian couple who meet every day on a park bench to verbally spar and reminisce.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 28, with 8 p.m. Wednesday shows on Sept. 17 and 24. Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com

🎨 Rising Sun, Falling Rain: Japanese Woodblock Prints
An exhibition exploring the growth of Edo-period ukiyo-e printmaking and the later shin-hanga movement through more than 80 works from the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts features work by Katsukawa Shunshō, Utagawa Toyokuni, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Kawase Hasui.
11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday–Sunday and Tuesday–Thursday, closed Monday, through Nov. 30. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu

🎨 Martin Wittfooth: Deus ex Terra
The Canadian artist examines the repeating patterns of nature and the ways it serves as both muse and a mirror of the human soul in this solo exhibition.
Opening reception, 7 p.m. Saturday; noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Corey Helford Gallery, 571 S. Anderson St., Los Angeles. coreyhelfordgallery.com/

SUNDAY

The cast of “One Man, Two Guvnors” at a Noise Within: Trisha Miller, from left, Kasey Mahaffy, Ty Aldridge and Cassandra Marie Murphy.

(Daniel Reichert)

🎭 One Man, Two Guvnors
Richard Bean’s swinging ’60s British farce won James Corden a Tony Award and largely introduced him to American audiences. The show, based on “The Servant of Two Masters” by Carlo Goldoni, is directed by A Noise Within producing Artistic Directors Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott, with songs by Grant Olding.
Previews: 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sept. 5; opening night: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6; 2 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, through Sept. 28. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org

TUESDAY
🎥 Who Killed Teddy Bear?
The Los Angeles premiere of a newly struck 35 mm print presents Joseph Cates’ uncensored director’s cut of his 1965 neo-noir thriller starring Sal Mineo, Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray and Elaine Stritch with footage seen for the first time in six decades.
7 p.m. Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N. Vermont Ave. americancinematheque.com

WEDNESDAY
🎭 Am I Roxie?
Written-actor Roxana Ortega’s one-woman comedy is a wild ride through her mother’s mental decline. Directed by Bernardo Cubría.
7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 5. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. geffenplayhouse.org

THURSDAY
🎭 Oedipus the King, Mama!
Troubadour Theater, a.k.a. the Troubies, applies its brand of commedia dell’arte-inflected slapstick to Sophocles’ classic Greek tragedy, infused with the music of Elvis Presley.
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, through Sept. 27. The Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades. getty.edu

🎼 Mozart’s Requiem
Conductor James Gaffigan leads the L.A. Phil in the composer’s final, uncompleted Mass, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, preceded by Ellen Reid’s “Body Cosmic” and Brahms’ “Song of Destiny.”
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Danielle Wade as Maizy, left, and Miki Abraham as Lulu in the North American Tour of “Shucked” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

(Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

If you’re a sucker for puns, you’ll love “Shucked,” the musical comedy running through Sept. 7 at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre. The show, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty, “never met a pun it didn’t like.” But there’s more to the folksy tale of mixed-up love in a place called Cob County — “Shucked” is a “folksy farcical riot, wholesome enough for widespread appeal but with just enough flamboyant oddity to tickle the funny bone of urban sophisticates.” The actors are also top-notch, including Danielle Wade, who plays the female lead Maizy. Wade, writes McNulty, “sounds like an ingenue Dolly Parton, exquisite to listen to, especially when her heart is in play.”

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s annual Art+Film Gala returns for its 14th year. This year’s honorees are filmmaker Ryan Coogler and Light and Space artist Mary Corse. The elaborate dinner — which always attracts a high-powered Hollywood crowd — is co-chaired by LACMA trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s scheduled to take place on Nov. 1 and will be the last such event to occur before the museum opens its new Peter Zumthor-designed building next spring.

Tyrone Huntley, an usher at the Hollywood Bowl.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Remember the fabulous actor who played Simon in the Hollywood Bowl’s unforgettable “Jesus Christ Superstar”? The one who also served as an understudy for Cynthia Erivo’s Jesus? His name is Tyrone Huntley, and his story is similar to those of countless working actors in L.A. Namely that he also has a day job. Only in Huntley’s case, his day job is working as an usher at the Hollywood Bowl. One day he was onstage in one of the season’s hottest shows, and the next he was showing people to their seats at the very same venue. Read all about it here.

A scene from the 2022 documentary “¡Viva Maestro!”: Gustavo Dudamel smiles as he wraps up Encuentros performance in Palacio de Bellas Artes.

(Gerardo Nava / The Gustavo Dudamel Foundation)

Gustavo Dudamel is still the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but he’s already got one foot in New York City, where he is scheduled to become the music director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2026. This week the N.Y. Phil issued a news release highlighting Dudamel’s presence in its 2025-26 season. As the orchestra’s music and artistic director designate, Dudamel will lead six weeks of subscription programs, as well as the season-opening concerts. Next month he will conduct the world premiere of Leilehua Lanzilotti’s “of light and stone.”

Almost two years ago, Holocaust Museum LA broke ground on a $65-million expansion. It is now a less than a year out from opening at its new Jona Goldrich campus, which includes a 200-seat multipurpose theater, a 3,000-square-foot gallery, two classrooms, an interactive theater featuring a virtual Holocaust survivor, a pavilion with an authentic boxcar, a gift shop and a coffee shop, as well as a variety of outdoor community spaces. Designed by architect Hagy Belzberg, it will double the museum’s footprint in Pan Pacific Park.

The Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists issued a news release voicing concern “over the recent and evolving casting decisions in the Broadway production of ‘Maybe Happy Ending’,” created and written by Hue Park, with music by Will Aronson. The Michael Arden-directed Broadway adaptation won six Tony Awards this year, including for best musical, direction of a musical and lead actor in a musical (Darren Criss). However, after the award wins, Criss, who is of Filipino descent, took a leave of absence from the show and was replaced by a white actor, Andrew Barth Feldman. “This is not just about one casting decision, even if only momentary. It reflects a longstanding pattern of exclusion, whitewashing, and inequity that AAPINH and global majority artists have confronted for decades in U.S. theater,” the news release said.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Ojai’s Hotel El Roblar, which first welcomed guests in 1919, has officially reopened. The newest hotel in Ojai is now also its oldest, writes Times Travel writer Christopher Reynolds. See you there!

The White House on Thursday issued a press release titled, “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian.” The missive arrived in inboxes the day after Trump took to Truth Social to lash out at museums across the country — and the Smithsonian Institute in particular — for being too “woke.”

The president vowed to have his attorneys deal with the Smithsonian in the same punitive and litigious way it has handled colleges and universities that don’t hew to MAGA ideals, and a rep for the White House said that Trump would start with the Smithsonian, “and then go from there.”

The idea that Trump might find some surprising legal loophole to pressure or punish museums that don’t share his appetite for revisionist history, is chilling to many critics, including the the American Alliance of Museums, which recently issued a statement warning of “growing threats of censorship against U.S. museums.”

Trump’s beef with the Smithsonian and affiliated museums is centered on his assertion that its exhibits focus on “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

The follow-up press release cataloged 22 examples of how the Smithsonian allegedly “prioritizes exhibits that undermine our values and rewrite the American story through a lens of grievance and exclusion.”

But the examples given are all about inclusion — the inclusion of voices that have often been left out of a mainstream dialogue about our nation’s history. Rather than seeming radical, the list appears straightforward and kind.

“The National Museum of the American Latino features programming highlighting ‘animated Latinos and Latinas with disabilities’ — with content from ‘a disabled, plus-sized actress’ and an ‘ambulatory wheelchair user’ who ‘educates on their identity being Latinx, LGBTQ+, and disabled,’ reads one entry.

Then there are the entries that simply rankle Trump based on his own politics of grievance.

“The National Portrait Gallery commissioned a ‘stop-motion drawing animation’ that ‘examines the career’ of Anthony Fauci,” reads another.

There are also bald attempts to censor free artistic expression based on its subject matter: “An American History Museum exhibit features a depiction of the Statue of Liberty ‘holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch, and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet’”; and “The National Portrait Gallery was set to feature a ‘painting depicting a transgender Statue of Liberty’ before the artist withdrew it.”

A desire to exclude is apparent, as in this entry: “The American History Museum prominently displays the ‘Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag’ at its entrance, which was also flown alongside the American flag at multiple Smithsonian campuses.”

You can take a look at the full list here. Trump must find something inherently threatening in each example, which can and should be filed under the absurd.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, holding a drawing of Fauci in my right hand and a Pride flag in the other. Here’s your weekly arts news roundup.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Tom Wilkinson, left, and George Clooney in the Oscar-winning 2007 drama “Michael Clayton,” screening Monday at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

(Myles Aronowitz / Warner Bros. Pictures)

Friends of the Fest
The American Cinematheque’s third Podcast Film Festival pairs local podcasters with memorable movies, including “Michael Clayton,” “Mississippi Masala,” “Mahogany,” “Carnival of Souls,” “Bottoms” and more.
Through Wednesday. Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N. Vermont Ave.; Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave. Santa Monica. americancinematheque.com

The Hollywood Bowl’s annual tribute to John Williams returns this weekend.

(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)

Maestro of the Movies: Celebrating the Music of John Williams
David Newman conducts the L.A. Phil in blockbuster scores from “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Superman” and “Star Wars,” as well as dramatic epics including “Far and Away,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” and more.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

‘Protest’
Fountain Theatre hosts Bricolage Production Company’s revival of Václav Havel’s 1978 two-person, one-act drama set in Communist Czechoslovakia. Jeffrey Carpenter directs actors Steven Schub and Robert Anthony Peters in this limited three-performance run.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday. Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave. fountaintheatre.com

SATURDAY
Our Lady’s Dowry: Marian Music from Tudor England
Director Bryan Roach and Musica Transalpina demonstrate the evolution of sacred music in England following the Reformation with “Missa O bone Jhesu” by Robert Fayrfax, as well as works by Christopher Tye and William Byrd.
7:30 p.m. Saturday. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

Carlo Maghirang’s art installation “ANITO” is on display Aug. 23–Sept. 7 at Los Angeles State Historic Park.

(Carlo Maghirang)

Carlo Maghirang: ANITO
The artist explores ancestral veneration through queer self-portraiture and the repetitive making of “taotao” figurines, reimagined as a collection of modular forms in a triptych installation at the River Station Roundhouse turntable. There will also be performances by dancer and choreographer Jobel Medina, Saturday at 1 p.m., and artist, musician and healer Anna Luisa Petrisko, Aug. 30, 1 p.m.
8 a.m. to sunset. Saturday through Sept. 7. Los Angeles State Historic Park, 245 N. Spring St. welcometolace.org

Lula Washington Dance Theatre: 45th Anniversary Celebration
The distinctly L.A. contemporary dance troupe presents two North American premieres: “The Master Plan,” a tribute to the late saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and Tamica Washington-Miller’s “And We Can Fly,” inspired by an the African American folktale. The evening also includes a revival of Donald McKayle’s “Songs of the Disinherited,” two Martha Graham solos — “Deep Song” and “Satyric Festival Song” —and Talley Beatty’s “Mourner’s Bench.”
8 p.m. Saturday. The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East. theford.com

Youssef Nabil’s ‘I Saved My Belly Dancer’
The artist’s surreal 2015 video short, inspired by his movie-fueled childhood in Cairo, stars Tahar Rahim and Salma Hayek. The exhibition also features related photographs and contemporaneous Egyptian movie posters.
Through Jan. 11. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Resnick Pavilion, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org

SUNDAY

Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the film “Boom,” which screens Sunday as part of a triple bill.

(Express Newspapers / Getty Images)

Summer camp with Elizabeth Taylor
A trio of films starring one of Hollywood’s greatest stars leans into the sometimes garish glamour and kitschy melodrama of “Secret Ceremony,” co-starring Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum, “Boom!,” with Taylor’s on-again, off-again husband Richard Burton — both 1968 releases directed by Joseph Losey — and Brian G. Hutton’s 1972 marital skirmish, “X, Y & Zee,” featuring Michael Caine and Susannah York.
2:30 Sunday. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

TUESDAY
Beethoven Under the Stars
The L.A. Phil, conducted by Giedrė Šlekytė, is joined by Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, “Nobu” to his fans, for an evening entirely devoted to the great German composer’s work.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

WEDNESDAY

Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs, from left, Glynn Turman and Corin Rogers in the 1975 movie “Cooley High,” screening Wednesday at the Academy Museum.

(American International Pictures)

Cooley High
The Academy Museum presents a 35 mm screening of the influential 1975 coming-of-age drama about two best friends in 1964 Chicago with in-person guests director Michael Schultz, actors Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs and Glynn Turman, and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

THURSDAY

Yo-Yo Ma and Angélique Kidjo perform Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl.

(L.A. Phil)

Sarabande Africaine
Singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo and cellist Yo-Yo Ma continue their collaborative creative musical conversation exploring the many centuries of interaction between African musical idioms and Western classical music. They’ll be joined by multi-instrumentalist Thierry Vaton, Grammy-winning producer David Donatien and genre-blending musician Sinkane.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Culture news

A cast of immigrants and the children of immigrants are set to stage a live reading of the cult comedy “Superbad” on Sunday. Participating actors include comedian Hasan Minhaj, Cobie Smulders, Melissa Fumero and Harvey Guillén. The event is free, and it will be livestreamed on the website for Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a social justice law firm that has been working with Southern California’s Latino residents threatened by ongoing ICE raids. De Los’ Andrea Flores has the full story.

Giovanni Guida and his grattage on canvas, “Apotheosis.”

(Daniela Matarazzo)

The uncle of an Italian artist named Giovanni Guida recently wrote me an email to alert me to the inclusion of his nephew in the Getty Vocabularies’ union list of visual artists. What is notable about Guida, his uncle told me, is that he is one of the youngest painters recognized in the resource for his use of the grattage painting technique pioneered by surrealist artist Max Ernst. Grattage is made by placing a painted canvas over a textured object and rubbing the paint off with often unexpected results. Since grattage has now been in use for about 100 years, today seemed like a nice day to highlight it, and to say congratulations to Guida.

The SoCal scene

The North American tour of “& Juliet” at the Ahmanson.

(Matthew Murphy)

Swedish hitmaker Max Martin showed up at the Ahmanson Theatre Friday for the opening of the jukebox musical “& Juliet,” which features dozens of Martin’s chart-topping collaborations with the likes of Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. A few days earlier, I interviewed Martin and the show’s writer, David West Read, who won an Emmy for his work on the comedy “Schitt’s Creek.” The pair happily broke down the genesis of the musical, which was more than a decade in the making. The most important part of development, said Martin, was that the songs not be shoehorned into a subpar plot.

That didn’t happen, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty in his review. As an example, McNulty cited a song by the Backstreet Boys called “I Want it That Way,” which was “redeployed in a way that has little bearing on the lyrics but somehow feels coherent with the original emotion.” Overall, McNulty concludes that the show, which reimagines what would happen if Juliet decided not to kill herself after she finds Romeo dead, “establishes just the right party atmosphere.”

Gustavo Dudamel is an extremely difficult act to follow, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed. The beloved Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor was scheduled to perform two weeks at the Hollywood Bowl this summer but had to cancel his second week with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra due to the Trump administration’s new travel restrictions. The orchestra filled the second week with “two talented conductors who were Dudamel fellows and are now enjoying prospering careers, Elim Chan and Gemma New,” writes Swed in a review that examines the high and low points of the substitutions. “These concerts give hope and reaffirm that life goes on. All acts, no matter the challenge, must be followed,” Swed writes.

Tami Outterbridge, daughter of artist John Outterbridge, takes a break from sifting through the ashes of her father’s home in Altadena.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Writer Lynell George pens a thoughtful first-person piece about her experiences with the circle of artists in the orbit of famed artist John Outterbridge in Southern California’s Black Arts Movement. Outterbridge died in 2020, and his home and studio in Altadena were both destroyed in January’s devastating Eaton fire. His daughter Tami soon developed a plan to gather friends to sift through the ashes in search of art — metal, shards of ceramics and glass, the same kinds of materials Outterbridge used in his own potent assemblages.

Exterior of the Eames House, Case Study House #8, in a eucalyptus grove.

(Buyenlarge / Getty Images)

The Eames House reopened late last month after a five-month closure necessitated by smoke damage from January’s Palisades fire. Now that the property has been cleaned and restored, the Eames family has unveiled its adjacent creative studio to the public — making it a space for exhibitions, lectures, podcasts and more. It also launched a new and expanded Charles & Ray Eames Foundation with the goal of building on the Eames design legacy globally. In addition, admission will now be free to first responders as well as residents of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

The X account for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office has gone full Trump parody with often hilarious results.

Graffiti mars the crumbling walls of the main thermal baths in one of Europe’s oldest spa towns, Baile Herculane.

Yet after decades of neglect, a dedicated team of young architects is working to revive the picturesque Romanian resort that once drew emperors to its healing waters.

“Someone once said that if you drink water from the spring from Herculane, you never leave,” said 31-year-old architect Oana Chirila.

“I was struck by the beauty of the place,” she explained about the town in Romania’s southwest, nestled among mountains and bisected by a river. “And at the same time [I was] shocked by its condition,” she added, referring to the dilapidated state of the historic thermal baths.

Chirila first visited Baile Herculane eight years ago entirely by chance, she said.

Her group’s restoration project represents one of several recent civil society initiatives launched to safeguard Romania’s historic monuments.

Approximately 800 such monuments have deteriorated to an advanced state of decay or risk complete collapse. Some already pose significant public safety hazards.

Constructed in 1886, the Neptune Imperial Baths once welcomed distinguished guests seeking its warm sulphur treatments.

Among these illustrious visitors were Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth, commonly known as Sisi. Franz Joseph himself described the town as Europe’s “most beautiful spa resort”.

Today, the baths stand closed, their interior walls defaced with graffiti, floors littered with debris, and rain seeping through the ceiling.

Despite the deterioration, tourists regularly pause to admire and photograph the long, rusted facade, with some attempting to glimpse the interior through broken windows.

Currently, Chirila and her volunteer team can only perform conservation work on the baths’ exterior structure. Full restoration remains impossible until legal conflicts between authorities and private owners are resolved, she explained, adding, “There’s always this fear that it might collapse.”

“Most of the historical monuments are in their current state – meaning constant decay – because they are legally blocked,” preventing utilisation of public or European funds for restoration.

For now, along one side of the riverbank, visitors can enjoy three sulphur water basins – what Chirila calls “little bathtubs”.

Her team refurbished these basins and constructed changing booths and wooden pavilions, one of several projects they have undertaken throughout the town.

In recent years, Baile Herculane, home to 3,800 residents, has experienced a steady increase in tourism, according to local officials. Some 160,000 tourists visited in 2024 – up from 90,000 in 2020 – many seeking spa treatments, but also hiking and climbing opportunities.

“The resort has changed,” Aura Zidarita, 50, a doctor, told the AFP news agency. She remained optimistic that it could reclaim its status as a “pearl of Europe”.

There was much ado Wednesday about President Trump’s picks to receive the coveted Kennedy Center Honors in December. Journalists and culture watchers combed through the histories of the president’s nominees — including actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam-rock band KISS, disco singer Gloria Gaynor, country music star George Strait and English actor Michael Crawford — in order to better understand his choices.

Gaynor left some scratching their heads, especially because the disco queen’s most iconic song, “I Will Survive,” is an established anthem on dance floors at LGBTQ+ clubs. But Stallone — fondly known as Sly Stallone — seemed an obvious option. He was part of a cohort of tough-guy performers, including Jon Voight and Mel Gibson, named by Trump as “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, and he once called Trump the “second George Washington” while introducing at a gala in Palm Beach, Fla.

But the heart of an artist apparently beats beneath the “Rocky” star’s hardened pectorals. His Instagram is littered with abstract paintings featuring thick, brash strokes with obvious nods to the work of Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He is exclusively represented by Provident Fine Art in Palm Beach, and regularly posts his canvases to social media with captions like, “No hesitation. No overthinking. Just color, motion, guts. Sometimes you don’t wait for the perfect moment—you throw the punch and make it count.”

Another, of a twisted yellow and red face, reads, “A portrait I did of Rambo’s state of mind before he enters a BATTLE, called ‘…SEEING RED’.”

Not all of Sly’s fans are happy about his affiliation with Trump. A comment on his most recent painting read, “Sorry to hear you are taking part in the Kennedy honors. Linking your self to trump is not a good look. I hope you reconsider.”

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, wondering if the “Tulsa King’s” oil paintings might now make it into the Smithsonian. Here’s your arts news for the week.

Best bets: On our radar this week

Antigone
Frederique Michel directs Neil Labute’s adaptation of the Jean Anouilh play exploring the effects of authoritarianism (inspired by Sophocles, it was first produced in 1944 Paris during the Nazi occupation).
Friday through Sept. 21. City Garage Theatre, Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave. T1, Santa Monica. citygarage.org

Pirates Wanted
Last Call Theatre presents an immersive adventure experience featuring swashbuckling, knot tying, navigation, liar’s dice, sea shanties and more. Recommended for landlubbers 13 and over. Younger mateys must be accompanied by an adult.
Aug. 16-17, 22-24. Pine Ave. Pier, Long Beach. ticketleap.events/tickets/lastcalltheatre/lastcallpirateswanted

Russian pianist performs with the L.A. Phil Tuesday and Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl.

(L.A. Phil)

Rachmaninoff Under the Stars
Two nights, two different programs of the Russian romanticist’s work featuring Russian pianist Daniil Trifinov and the L.A. Phil conducted by Daniel Harding.
8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

The Broadway production of “Shucked” in 2023; the national tour arrives Tuesday at the Hollywood Pantages.

(Mathew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Shucked
The corn and puns are higher than an elephant’s eye in this Tony-winning musical comedy with a book by Robert Horn, music and lyrics by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and directed by Jack O’Brien.
Tuesday through Sept. 7. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. broadwayinhollywood.com

Multi-instrumentalist Herbie Hancock performs Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl.

(Amy Harris / Invision / AP)

Herbie Hancock
The versatile performed is joined by trumpeter Terence Blanchard, bassist James Genus, guitarist-singer Lionel Loueke and drummer Jaylen Petinaud for a freewheeling night of jazz.
8 p.m. Wednesday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Culture news

Perry Picasshoe and his father walk through downtown Riverside while looking for a good spot to place another ice block on July 3, 2025.

(Daniel Hernandez)

Riverside artist Perry Picasshoe found a way to address the pain and upheaval of seeing people in his community pursued and deported by ICE. In a symbolic effort, Picasshoe melted 36 ice blocks on sidewalks of the Inland Empire where enforcement raids took place. “I took it as a metaphor of what’s happening,” Picasshoe said in an interview with De Los. “I was also thinking a lot about having these blocks of ice as almost a stand-in for people.”

Times Theater Critic Charles McNulty attended a Black Out matinee performance of the two-character play “Berta, Berta,” by Angelica Chéri. The show is receiving its West Coast premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre directed by Andi Chapman. The action, which takes place in 1923 Mississippi, unfolds as the titular character wakes in the middle of the night to find the love of her life covered in the blood of a man he killed. The play’s themes were enhanced by the unique community environment of the performance, McNulty writes. “I was more alert to the through line of history. Although set in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era, there appeared to be little distance between the characters and the audience,” he notes.

A new museum is set to open in a historic building in Miami, honoring, “the history of Cuban exiles with immersive, state-of-the-art exhibits that explore the meaning of migration, freedom and homeland,” writes Joshua Goodman. The building that houses the new enterprise was once the city’s tallest structure and was known as the “Ellis Island” of Miami.

The SoCal scene

Dancer Michael Tomlin III, with the Lula Washington Dance Company, rehearses in Los Angeles in January 2020.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Lula Washington Dance Theatre is celebrating its 45th anniversary on Aug. 23 at the Ford. Washington has been a seminal figure in the arts world, including in her home base of South L.A. — guiding and shaping hundreds of young community members and dancers at her studio over the years. The company has toured extensively around America and the world, and in 2021 received a nearly $1 million Mellon Grant. “Where there’s a will there’s a way. We are still here! After all of the trials and tribulations, riots, earthquakes, COVID and Project 2025, we are still dancing! Dance has saved us and it will save us all,” Washington told The Times in advance of the anniversary. The tribute at the Ford will include performances of historic Washington pieces alongside new works by Martha Graham, Donald McKayle and more. For tickets and additional information, click here.

The Old Globe announced that actor Katie Holmes will kick off the theater’s 2026 season in a new production of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” directed by the Globe’s Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. The classic stage play is being given fresh life in a Globe-commissioned new version by playwright and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson. The show marks Holmes’ return to the Globe after Edelstein directed her in a 2023 production of “The Wanderers.” Performances are scheduled to run from Feb. 7 to March 8, 2026, and tickets are currently available by subscription only at TheOldGlobe.org.

The Broad is back with its summer concert series. On Aug. 16, guests can attend a show called “PAST + FUTURE = PRESENT, Pt. 1.” The after-hours event (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) includes access to the special exhibition, “Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me,” as well as two performance stages on several museum floors. Haisla hip-hop duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids will rock out upstairs while indie rockers Black Belt Eagle Scout will take to the lobby stage.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Wondering what Trump’s Kennedy Center Honors announcement felt like to watch? Here are the first 13 minutes, although it went on for much (much) longer.

Khamzat Chimaev overpowers title holder Dricus Du Plessis in a lopsided UFC title bout in the Octagon.

Khamzat Chimaev is the new undisputed UFC middleweight champion after a dominant display against title holder Dricus Du Plessis at the United Center in Chicago.

Billed as a battle between the undefeated UFC middleweights, Du Plessis put his belt on the line for the third time on Saturday against Chimaev, the No 3-ranked contender and considered one of the most feared pound-for-pound fighters on the UFC roster.

But Chimaev was in control of the bout from the beginning until the end in one of the most one-sided title fights in UFC history; all three judges scored the bout 50-44 for the Chechen fighter, who holds dual Russian and United Arab Emirates citizenship.

“I am happy, always,” Chimaev said post-fight. “I never have a game plan, just go in and work like I do in the gym. That guy [Du Plessis] is strong. I couldn’t finish. I respect that guy. He is the only champion that would say my name. This guy has big heart.”

The victory extends Chimaev’s unbeaten UFC win streak to 15. Du Plessis experienced his first UFC loss and drops to 23-3 for his mixed martial arts (MMA) career.

Chimaev, who first entered UFC in 2020 and has previously defeated former champions Kamaru Usman and Robert Whittaker, was rarely threatened against Du Plessis, and despite being denied a finish by the South African he relentlessly took down the defending champion in the opening minute of every round.

The 31-year-old converted 12 of 17 takedown attempts in the bout and spent 84% of the 25-minute fight in control of Du Plessis, according to official UFC match data.

Du Plessis’s only moment to stage a come-from-behind victory came in the final round when he spun his way on top of his tiring opponent and executed a guillotine. Unfortunately for the reigning champion, the choke only lasted a couple of seconds as Chimaev methodically fought his way out and again resumed his control of the fight until the final bell.

“The man has incredible control on top,” Du Plessis said. “It wasn’t a matter of strength; it wasn’t physical; it was almost like he knew what your next move was. I could almost taste that victory [with the guillotine choke hold], but he beat me fair and square. He was the better man tonight. I’ll be coming to get my belt back, but for now, it’s his. He deserves it.”