Video captured the moment of a direct hit by an Iranian missile on a residential building in Israel’s Haifa. Multiple injuries were reported and some people are feared trapped under the rubble of the partially collapsed structure.
Decades on, the city continues to impress with its newness.
It is gearing up to stage the country’s first World Cup match as Canada co-hosts the tournament alongside Mexico and the US.
There will be six games in Toronto — including Canada’s opening Group B match against Bosnia Herzegovina — and the region is prepared for an influx of visitors thanks to its Fan Festival with huge screens, music, art and food.
Toronto is one of the world’s most multicultural cities and you can experience a flavour of that at the Royal Ontario Museum.
If you are a sports fan but didn’t manage to bag World Cup tickets, head to the Rogers Centre to watch the Toronto Blue Jays.
Canada’s only Major League Baseball team, play in the shadow of the CN Tower.
Adrenaline junkies can walk the CN Tower’s EdgeWalk, 1,168ft in the air.
It’s not for the faint-hearted though, so if you have a fear of heights you may want to head to the observation deck instead.
STREETS MADE FOR WALKING?
Absolutely — make sure your footwear is sturdy.
But also pack your flip flops for a visit to the car-free Toronto Islands, home to gorgeous beaches and waters you can paddle in.
Ward’s Island Beach is the place to head for spectacular sunsets, while in the opposite direction is Hanlan’s Point, a nudist beach where shoes — and everything else — are optional.
ANYTHING FOR THE BUCKET LIST?
Niagara Falls hardly needs an introduction and it’s absolutely worth a visit.
The huge waterfall is jaw- droppingly magnificent and you can sail directly into its base on the Maid Of The Mist boat tour (adult tickets start from £22).
You will be provided with a poncho for the trip but it’s rather flimsy, so I’d recommend bringing your own waterproofs too.
Becky Parkinson at Niagara FallsCredit: Supplied
WHERE SHOULD I EAT?
The 206-year-old St Lawrence Market is the best choice for those who can’t decide as it is home to 120 vendors flogging an abundance of seafood, meats and artisanal cheeses.
The peameal bacon sandwiches from Carousel Bakery are legendary.
If you are after dinner with a view — and motion sickness isn’t an issue for you — try the 360 Restaurant inside the CN Tower.
True to its name, the restaurant slowly revolves to give you a full panoramic view of Toronto.
It takes 72 minutes to complete the rotation so, unless you’re a speed-eater, you’ll get the full cityscape with your meal.
I FANCY A DRINK . . .
King Street West in downtown Toronto is known for its thumping nightlife.
You may even spot a few A-listers, as Toronto International Film Festival holds its red carpets and premieres there.
For something a little less raucous, the Harbourfront area is lined with cool bars, many of which offer a skyline view of the Toronto Islands.
WHERE SHOULD I STAY?
The Chelsea Hotel is very well located.
From the airport, you can take the UP Express to Union Station, then jump on the subway and you arrive at the hotel in under ten minutes.
Moments from Sankofa Square (formerly Yonge-Dundas Square and Toronto’s answer to Piccadilly Circus) the hotel is in the heart of the action.
It’s Canada’s largest, with nearly 1,600 rooms spread across 26 floors.
Of course, Canada’s largest hotel isn’t short on entertainment, either.
The highlights include a rooftop terrace, two restaurants and a 130ft water slide in its family-friendly pool area.
GO: TORONTO
GETTING THERE: Flights from London Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester to Toronto start from £349pp return with Air Transat.
Slegers described an “unbelievable performance” in the second leg because of the fightback Arsenal knew Chelsea would give.
Goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar returned to the starting XI and put in a stunning performance, denying Sam Kerr on several occasions in the second half.
England defender Lotte Wubben-Moy was a rock at the back in the absence of Leah Williamson and Arsenal were not shaken when fellow centre-half Steph Catley went off with a calf injury at the end of the first half.
In-form striker Alessia Russo was full of tricks and flicks. The England international usually keeps touches on the ball to a minimum but she did what it took to escape tricky situations when pressure was building.
Slegers said her team were prepared to “suffer” in order to get what they wanted and it paid off in the end.
“It’s suffering for something you love. I think that’s what the team did really well. They were prepared for a difficult scenario and for momentum shifts,” she added.
“In the first 15 minutes, potentially at the end of the game when things changed again, they just stayed in the ‘controlled middle’, as we call it.
“They stayed in the game and were constantly in control of whatever scenario or momentum swing. They did their job. Mentally we were in control.
“Of course, we wanted to stop them getting chances and in an ideal world there are no shots but it was two really good teams going against each other.”
Former England captain Steph Houghton said Arsenal were “better in big moments” and deserved to progress on the balance of the tie.
Brighton forward Fran Kirby added: “Arsenal allowed Chelsea to have the ball, they were comfortable in their block and defensively worked really hard.
“With the opportunities that they had, they could even have gone on and won the game, so they will be really proud of the performance.
“It showed a different side to Arsenal. It showed what they can do when they have to defend.”
Arsenal will hope to book their place in the final when they take on the winner between Lyon and Wolfsburg – who play each other on Thursday night.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society released video showing rescuers in Tehran lowering a man strapped to a stretcher from the wreckage of a building severely damaged in an airstrike.
One of the most painstaking architectural renewals in recent Los Angeles memory has finally pulled a world-class jewel of modern architecture from obscurity.
Designed by pioneering Modernist architect Richard Neutra in 1928, with limited collaboration from another Modernist icon, Rudolph Schindler, the Jardinette Apartments had been hiding in plain sight on an unassuming Hollywood street for nearly a century. The complex was a technical and spatial breakthrough, and quickly gained international renown as one of the earliest International Style structures in the United States, not to mention Neutra’s first L.A. commission.
But the building’s original owner, Joseph H. Miller, went bankrupt during construction and skipped town to avoid his creditors, and the Jardinette slipped from view. “After that early burst, it just disappeared,” said Barbara Lamprecht, historical consultant for the Jardinette’s rehabilitation, which is just now wrapping up.
For decades the building stood quietly along West Marathon Street: an austere, four-story complex that most people passed without a second glance. Wedged between Western Avenue and Manhattan Place, amid stucco apartment blocks and scrappy bungalows, the edifice had, until recently, grown increasingly shabby as time and neglect took their unforgiving toll.
That changed with the intervention of a newcomer to historic preservation named Cameron Hassid. For years the tireless local developer and his tenacious team have willed the Herculean restoration project to the finish line. Hassid plans to bring the apartments to market before the end of the month.
Property owner Cameron Hassid, left, and Neema Ahadian, commercial real estate agent for Hassid, on the scenic rooftop of the Richard Neutra-designed Jardinette Apartments in Los Angeles. Neutra imagined the Jardinette Apartments as a prototype for future garden apartment buildings. Nearly 100 years later, the Jardinette is set to reopen after a lengthy redevelopment.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A Radical Design
When the Jardinette first opened it was featured prominently in a seminal survey of early avant-garde apartment housing called “The Modern Flat,” while European architectural publications from Paris to Moscow showcased it as an exemplar of functionalist design, noted Nicholas Olsberg, an architectural historian and curator who has written extensively about Neutra. “It was seen worldwide as one of the signal examples of the new architecture,” Olsberg added.
The Northeast corner of the Jardinette Apartments, circa 1930. When the building first opened in 1928 it was a technical and spatial breakthrough—but it suffered from years of neglect after falling from view.
(Richard and Dion Papers, Collection 1179, UCLA Special Collections)
Built inside and out with reinforced concrete — a modern industrial material that had rarely been employed for housing— the sculpted, U-shaped building, whose jogging corners, projecting sills and swaths of dark and light paint gave it a powerful visual rhythm, used its structural heft to liberate its facade.
Long horizontal bands of easy-to-open steel casement windows, some complemented with concrete balconies, drew daylight and air deep into its 43 efficiently organized units — studios and one bedrooms, ranging from about 400 to 700 square feet — and opened them to wide views of the street and, on higher floors, the Hollywood Hills. Hallways and stairs were saturated with natural light thanks to skylights and strategically placed windows. At the forecourt a modest garden, then dominated by a huge cedar tree, softened the building’s mass, giving the project its name: Jardinette, the little garden.
A roof covered the original skylights in the Jardinette Apartments, but they are now fully exposed.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“Arguably my father had more influence on apartment design than he did on house design,” said Neutra’s son Raymond, pointing to several Neutra designs offering indoor/outdoor lifestyles via “garden apartments.” Raymond, who was on site a few weeks ago, has toured the rehabilitation multiple times.
The Jardinette was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument two years later. Yet despite its formal protections, the building continued its long drift into disrepair.
In 2016 Jardinette’s previous owner, Robert Clippinger, began reviving it, hiring Lamprecht’s firm, Modern Resources, as well as June Street Architecture and land use consultants Cali Planners. The team filed a comprehensive Historic Structure Report that helped secure much-needed tax relief via the Mills Act, a state preservation program. But Clippinger soon faltered under the weight of the many developmental requirements to bring the historic building back. Lawsuits followed. Financing collapsed.
A carpeted hallway beneath an original skylight at the Richard Neutra-designed Jardinette Apartments in Los Angeles. The Jardinette was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument two years later.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Hassid bought the building in December 2020, in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping Clippinger’s core designers and consultants in place.
Decades of negligence and neglect had proved both a curse and a blessing. Many original steel windows had been swapped out for cheap vinyl replacements. Larger units had been subdivided. At one point the building had been repainted an unfortunate pastel peach and green. Electrical systems dated back nearly a century. Gas water heaters punched vents through the concrete walls.
Yet because the building never attracted a well-funded modernization campaign, much of its essential fabric remained intact.
“Had it been owned by people with more resources,” noted Lamprecht, “there might have been upgrades that blurred the sense of history.”
Corey Miller, a principal at June Street Architecture, described his first encounter with the almost empty property: “There had been 43 units with 43 different people who had been left to their own devices,” Miller said. “Every time we peeled back a layer, there was something worse.”
Unit 302, inhabited for four decades by a single tenant, retained the most original fabric, including an early icebox cabinet. But it also contained endless layers of grime and clutter. It was “disgusting,” Miller said bluntly, but invaluable as forensic evidence. Much of it — like tiles, windows and millwork — were reproduced around the building.
The 128 Jardinette Apartments were painstakingly restored with an eye toward preserving original details including kitchen cabinets, sinks and iceboxes.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The perils of rehabilitating a historic treasure
When Hassid called Miller to ask about buying the building, Miller remembers his response clearly. “You probably have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” he told him.
Hassid’s love of early modern architecture began as a child. His grandparents lived at 848 N. Kings Road in West Hollywood, with a balcony overlooking Schindler’s famed house. So Hassid was familiar with Jardinette’s geometric forms and clean lines. His mother reacted with angry skepticism when he first raised the idea of acquiring the building, but encouraged him to buy it after she learned about the connection.
Nostalgia did not make the rehabilitation any easier. Technical plans required approval, and fixes weren’t straightforward within a protected treasure. “You can’t just go into a historic building with a sledgehammer,” Hassid said. Every move had to align with federal preservation standards and the commitments embedded in the Mills Act contract. Lambert Giessinger, Los Angeles’ historic architect and Mills Act administrator, acted as liaison. Inspections were frequent. Conditions were exacting.
“It’s stressful to have people looking at everything,” Miller admitted. But he credits both Giessinger and Lamprecht with pragmatism. “They were under no illusion that this was going to be done 100% perfect,” he added.
“There’s a lot of wonky stuff in this building that will remain wonky forever,” noted Lamprecht, pointing to settling areas and imperfect details.
Michael Norberg, a land use consultant for the Jardinette Apartments preservation project, stands on the balcony of a unit at the Richard Neutra-designed complex, which will soon reopen after prolonged development issues.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The astonishingly complex rehabilitation revealed a simple-looking building that was anything but. The board-formed concrete carried a subtle wood-grain texture, which had to be left intact, even as seismic reinforcements were added beneath the surface. The finish on white stucco shifted from smooth to pebbled on the walls’ higher reaches, and this had to be carefully re-created.
Original trim had to be salvaged and repaired wherever possible. Kitchens were rebuilt based on archival drawings and surviving fragments. Bathrooms, originally designed around tubs, required discrete tile extensions to accommodate modern showers. The paint scheme, which has been returned to a warm, off-white concrete field with blackish-green bands emphasizing the window walls, had to be reconstructed from historic photographs. Wine red concrete lobby floors were revealed under ungainly tile. Large stairwell skylights were uncovered, while unique, cube-shaped stair post lights were rehabilitated.
Plenty of white tiles replicate the original look in this bathroom in the historic Richard Neutra-designed Jardinette Apartments. One floor of the newly preserved 1928 complex features original doors and kitchen cabinets.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Support infrastructure, threaded through the thick concrete frame, was perhaps the messiest challenge. Fire sprinklers, mandated by code, had to remain visible because they could not run through joists without compromising historic fabric. New electrical, plumbing and ventilation had to snake around (or burrow through) beams that original plans didn’t note.
Hassid chose to add air conditioning, and the resulting electrical loads required a 13-foot-deep vault beneath the courtyard. That addition will limit what can be planted in the central garden.
The view from the large windows in a newly restored unit of the Richard Neutra-designed Jardinette Apartments. Original skylights were also preserved during a remarkably complex historic preservation effort.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The team preserved as many original steel casement windows as possible on the primary north-facing facade. These are interspersed with custom reproductions throughout.
The rehabilitation costs climbed past $5 million — accounting for structural analysis, waterproofing, electrical overhaul, plumbing, mechanical, windows, flooring, sprinklers, cabinetry, landscaping — an ever expanding list.
“If I knew then what I know now,” Hassid said with a weary laugh, “I’m not sure I would have done it.” He paused. “But listen, I’m happy I did.”
Today, the building’s value is clear. The courtyard, with vegetation still waiting to grow, is again a communal garden framed by cantilevered balconies. The flat facades have regained their subtle play of depth and shadow. New systems hum quietly, concealed as carefully as possible.
But the building’s renewal has not made it immune to its surroundings. Portions of the exterior were tagged during construction, and some windows have even been shot out by BB guns. As it reemerges, Jardinette could become a lightning rod for those who fear gentrification.
Modernist architect Richard Neutra imagined his first Los Angeles project, the Jardinette Apartments, as a prototype for future garden apartment buildings, but the building fell into disrepair and obscurity for decades. A newly completed historic preservation project will allow it to reopen soon.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Hassid, who initially planned to keep the building, is now testing the waters for a sale with the help of local broker Neema Ahadian of Marcus & Millichap. He said he’s already gotten calls from potential buyers in both the affordable and market-rate sectors. Affordable housing, he added, would be fitting because the smaller units were originally used that way — often for people working in nearby Hollywood studios. The building’s lack of parking could be another factor pushing the sale in that direction.
“I want to leave my options open,” said Hassid. “It’s bittersweet, because we put so much into it.”
Despite swearing off the project more than once, he is hooked by the process.
“I’m looking for my next historic building. After doing it, I know the mistakes I made and how to minimize the lag,” he said.
“This is such a good niche. Others run away from it. I love it because I love the challenge.”
Spring is the season of creation, a time of renewal and new beginnings. In Los Angeles, alas, we were, last spring, a city of cinders. It was a time to mourn.
A hard year followed with floods, ICE, AI, etc., menacing our native optimism. Making matters worse, in December we lost L.A.’s grand visionary vizier, the architect who time and again built us out of civic funk and transformed L.A., inspiring the city he so loved to look good, feel good and do good.
But that is still the case. So many plans Frank Gehry imagined for L.A. still remain. Gehry bequeathed blueprints and models, sketches and concepts, for his large and devoted team of younger architects and next-generation visionaries equipped to fabricate our way out of angst.
Isn’t there supposed to be an Olympics on the way for which the city appears ill-prepared? Spring 2026 is the time to build.
A couple of springs ago, L.A. County dubbed the blocks around Gehry’s masterpiece, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Grand Avenue Cultural District. This includes the rest of the Music Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad and Colburn School. The Grand, Gehry’s resplendent complex across the street from Disney, had recently opened and ground was about to be broken for the Colburn Center, a 1,000-seat concert hall equipped to also serve dance, opera and whatever yet-to-be-invented genres Gehry designed it to enable.
The Colburn Center is well on its way to completion next year. Bits of the building’s pink skin have started to peek out like spring blossoms on the construction site at 2nd and Olive. The Broad has begun an expansion. But after two years, nothing else has been done to make this the cultural district it must become, one unlike anything else in any city.
Four springs ago I toured Grand Avenue with Gehry to gather what he had in mind for an arts district. When Disney Hall opened in 2003, it instantly became an enduring symbol of L.A., overtaking the Hollywood sign in many cases. The Dodgers want to parade joy in winning their second World Series in row last October, where else but in front of Disney? But not in front of all Gehry had in mind.
We will soon have a pair of futuristic new museum buildings to show off this year: the David Geffen Galleries, the controversial Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Peter Zumthor building (I predict it will prove a sensation), and the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (no predictions on that one) next door to the Coliseum. But the fact that each is a 15-minute ride away from the cultural district’s new Metro station only makes the district even more of a center.
A center, indeed. Gehry’s vision included completing the original plans cost-cut out of Disney a quarter-century ago, along with new modifications and much more throughout the area. Some are more costly than others. Enough could be done on Grand Avenue in time for the Olympics to make a difference if we begin this minute.
Since its opening, Disney has been — shamefully — the most poorly lit building of its stature in the world. Gehry had chosen the specific steel for its capacity to reflect light. His idea was to project on the building whatever concert was taking place that night. No sound, just imagery. Belt-tighteners didn’t want to commit the $2 or $3 million or whatever and go through the trouble.
It was spectacularly tested at the hall’s 10th anniversary, but with tacky prerecorded video and crummy amplification. Facilities are now included in the Grand for projectors. It would have been amazing in 2003 and will be amazing now. The Grand has been disappointingly slow to attract the restaurants, bars, cafes and shops it needs to create a scene. The projections could change all that and even create enough of a ruckus to get a reluctant, car-crazed city to make that Grand Avenue block pedestrian.
There is much more for Disney. Gehry wanted to turn BP Hall, where preconcert talks occur, into a small chamber music hall with a suspended balcony. He had plans for reconfiguring the seldom-used small outdoor Keck Amphitheater into an enclosed jazz club for Herbie Hancock and turning the little-used 1st Street entrance into a glass-enclosed bar that would be named the Ernest, in tribute to Ernest Fleischmann, the L.A. Phil executive director who was responsible for building Disney.
Disney was supposed to have a pit for the orchestra, allowing for staging opera and dance. The plans exist. That could be done in a summer for a couple million. Bottom-liners had also nixed Gehry’s original design for a more gracious lobby with a cafe out front, not the gloomy one installed against his will.
The Colburn Center has the potential for being another game changer for the area, a vibrant new hall where we are promised upward of 200 events a year from all walks of musical life, local and international. But Gehry had in mind even more.
He intended to lower the steep and pedestrian unfriendly 2nd Street hill, so that it would be an easy walk from the new Metro station two blocks away, and add two more pedestrian blocks by diverting traffic to the 2nd Street tunnel. This would connect the cultural district with Grand Central Market on one end and the Broad on the other. Then 2nd could itself become a lively street with the stores and restaurants a “district” needs.
A model of architect Frank Gehry’s design of an addition for Colburn School.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
The extraordinary original plans for the Colburn Center included turning the parking lot across 2nd from the hall into a public plaza with a giant video wall and high-end outdoor sound system, for projecting nightly concerts in the hall. Gehry was a devoted outdoor-indoor architect, and he designed for the hall a balcony on which musicians can perform.
That initiative has thus far been blocked by City Hall officials, fearful of the tunnel’s aging infrastructure. Although if that’s the case, I’m not all that eager to be in the tunnel as it currently is when the Big One comes along. This is where L.A. shows its moxie. Upgrade the tunnel. Now! If this were Beijing, New Delhi or Hanoi, it would be a no-brainer.
Gehry next proposed building low-cost artist housing in Grand Park directly across from the Music Center, which would further create a true arts community. There has been talk of renovating the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for three decades and that’s all it’s been. The corporate-esque recent Music Center plaza could use a little excitement, maybe a Phase II.
Arts make a city. The Edinburgh Festival in Scotland was created after World War II to help bring the city back to life. After its fire-bombing, Tokyo founded a bevy of symphony orchestras as a phenomenal experiment in mass antidepression. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony played no small role in lifting the collective mood, preparing Tokyo to create what now feels like the world’s most arresting capital.
Unlike Scotland, unlike England, unlike Germany, unlike France, unlike Italy, unlike Poland, unlike Russia, unlike Finland, unlike the Czech Republic, unlike China, unlike any number of countries, America has no major international arts festival these days. We had one in L.A. in 1984 with the Olympic Arts Festival. The Cultural Olympiad in 2028 has shown no bones. But if we make the cultural district what it could be, there would be no better place anywhere for a major festival.
We have the goods. L.A. artists helped make the modern Salzburg Festival the meaningful model for all others. In 1992, the summer before Esa-Pekka Salonen became music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he and the orchestra were invited to shake up clinging Austrian tradition. With the help of director Peter Sellars, they staged Messiaen’s epic opera “Saint François d’Assise,” with pyramids of televisions, resulting in music and monitors upending, in Mozart’s hometown, the role of the modern opera and, so to speak, the sound of music.
Over succeeding decades, both Sellars and Salonen have been Salzburg Festival lodestars. Last summer they were back staging two monodramas, Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” and “Abschied” (the last movement of Mahler’s symphonic song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde”). Conductor and director looked with shocking depth into the “Expectation” of death and gave a “Farewell” to the “Song of the Earth” we all await. I saw it twice and can’t imagine how anyone came away from it quite the same person, not more alive, not more fragile. Art on the stage doesn’t get deeper than “One Morning Turns Into an Eternity,” as Sellars named the production. Salonen, who conducted the production with Vienna Philharmonic, is now about to become the L.A. Phil creative director in the fall and will bring the production to Disney with the L.A. Phil next season. It is thus far the most important opera news of next season in America. All the more reason to build that pit in the hall and get started on much bigger plans.
Salzburg, which manages to come up with around $80 million from here and there, also helped with the question I’ve evaded: Who’s going to pay for all this? I’ve evaded it because it’s the wrong question. Money only started pouring into the building of Disney Hall when people got wind of what it was going to become. Five years ago, Crypto.com paid more than $700 million to change the name of Staples Center. That amount, which created nothing but an advertisement for a product of dubious value to society, is the price of two Walt Disney Concert Halls and probably all of Gehry’s projects put together. It is the amount that could fund nearly nine Salzburg-scale festivals.
If we let ourselves believe that L.A. wealth only cares for mega-crypto advertising, mega-mansions and mega-yachts, then L.A. is over. It isn’t. Do we want to show only that to the world? Downtown, and prominently Crypto.com Arena in L.A. Live, have been designated a center for LA28, as we’re calling the Olympics. That makes a graciously glorifying cultural district, which functions as creation being existential not commercial, just up the road from L.A. Live, L.A. live.
When one morning turns into an eternity, you don’t ask for the bill.
This year marks a veritable museum-palooza as Los Angeles debuts four new major arts complexes, with three in the wings likely to open in advance of the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Immerse yourself in a psychedelic explosion at Meow Wolf, plan an afternoon liaison with Van Gogh at LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries, inhale the scent of nature inside Refik Anadol’s AI arts museum, Dataland, or simply geek out over George Lucas’ jaw-dropping collection of “Star Wars” memorabilia.
Whatever your arts craving may be, this astoundingly rich new lineup of new local museums has you covered.
LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries
The new David Geffen Galleries, opening in 2026, are composed entirely of Brutalist concrete.
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleries are set to debut this April to members, before opening for general admission at the beginning of May. The $720-million Geffen Galleries will display 2,500-3,000 objects from LACMA’s collection.
The building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, is described by supporters as a “concrete sculpture” and will host 90 exhibition galleries across 110,000 square feet. The Wilshire Boulevard museum’s inaugural exhibition will organize artwork by the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea instead of by medium or period.
“The idea is for you to make your own path — not to speak at you, but to let you wander like you would through a park or a place,” LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan said in an interview with The Times. “That change in attitude, and how the building is built, is really exciting.”
Some of the most-anticipated works on display include Georges de La Tour’s “The Magdalen With the Smoking Flame” (1640), Henri Matisse’s “La Gerbe” (1953) and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Tarascon Stagecoach” (1888).
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
The gardens at the Lucas Museum, designed by Studio-MLA, on Monday, May 19, 2025.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
After more than 10 years of anticipation, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson’s museum will open in Exposition Park this September. With over 10,000 square feet of galleries, the museum will feature a wide array of artwork and pop culture ephemera, including Lucas’ personal trove of “Star Wars” film franchise treasures, “Peanuts” comic strips, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” illustrations, a Richard Sargent painting and covers of the Saturday Evening Post.
Lucas donated his collection to curate the Lucas Archives, which, in addition to “Star Wars,” will encompass props and production art from Lucasfilm projects, such as the “Indiana Jones” franchise.
One of the museum’s defining features is its massive green-roof garden designed by Mia Lehrer and her landscape architecture firm Studio-MLA.
“This brings everything together,” Lehrer said in an interview with The Times. “Design, ecology, storytelling, infrastructure, community. It’s the fullest expression of what landscape can be.”
Meow Wolf
A work-in-progress piece set to be featured in Meow Wolf L.A. as seen during a walk through at the group’s warehouse in Santa Fe on Oct. 15, 2025.
(Gabriela Campos/For The Times)
Meow Wolf’s L.A. location will reimagine a ’90s movie theater with its takeover of the Cinemark at West L.A.’s Howard Hughes entertainment complex outside Culver City. Meow Wolf’s sixth permanent exhibition comes on the heels of the immersive art creator’s 52,000-square-foot psychedelic art installation in Las Vegas, which was disguised as a dystopian grocery store called Omega Mart and promptly went viral on TikTok.
Complete with sci-fi elements, a meditative space and a 30-foot-tall mushroom tower, Meow Wolf’s new location will open at the end of 2026. Although organizers have kept much of the exhibition under wraps, visitors can expect to be transfixed by a thoroughly Los Angeles tale.
“It’s cool that we’re creating a story about a pilgrimage, because L.A. is that for so many artists, especially people involved in storytelling,” Shakti Howeth, Meow Wolf‘s creative director, told The Times. “It’s one of those places that’s built on layers and layers of dreams, and we’re really exploring that here. Not only dreams but broken dreams — the compost that can happen when you digest broken dreams.”
Refik Anadol’s Dataland
Refik Anadol’s Infinity Room is meant to be a multisensory experience.
(Dataland)
Opening this spring at the Frank Gehry-designed Grand L.A., Dataland dubs itself the world’s first museum of AI arts. Turkish American artist Refik Anadol designed his own AI model, named the Large Nature Model, which only sources material with permission from original creators, making it what Anadol calls “ethical” AI. Partners include the Smithsonian and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
“I’m calling this new art form not AR, not VR, not XR — so we are still finding a name for it. The best name so far, and people love it, is generative reality,” Anadol told The Times.
Dataland will feature five galleries, including the Infinity Room, which Anadol first created in 2014 as a student at UCLA. In another exhibit, he trained an AI model on half a million scents and built a machine to push those scents into the gallery to create a totally immersive viewing experience.
Opening Later
The Armenian American Museum and Cultural Center of California
Slated to complete construction in downtown Glendale in late 2026, the 51,000-square-foot Armenian American Museum has been in the works for more than a decade. With a $67-million budget, the museum will include permanent and temporary exhibitions, as well as an auditorium, learning center, archives collection and a demonstration kitchen.
The museum is an initiative of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee Western US, and planning began as the group prepared to mark the the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in 2015. The museum is adorned with the 36 letters of the Armenian alphabet and a glass hazarashen skylight, inspired by traditional roofs in homes across the Armenian Highlands.
“The Armenian American Museum was once an idea, then a vision, and today is rising before our eyes,” museum Executive Chairman Berdj Karapetian said in a statement. “This progress is the result of an extraordinary collective effort by Armenians and non-Armenians here in California, across the United States and around the world.”
The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center
The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center in Los Angeles is a major expansion of the California Science Center.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A solid opening date has not yet been announced, but the $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center in Exposition Park is busily preparing for liftoff. Construction on the building began in 2022. The shiny new building will be home to the Korean Air Aviation Gallery, Kent Kresa Space Gallery and the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery, which will host the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Endeavour will be displayed in launch position, making it the tallest authentic spacecraft displayed vertically in the world, with a height of 20 stories. One of three surviving space shuttles, Endeavour made 25 successful missions into space.
The center is also expected to have 20 planes and jets, including a Boeing 747, a mock flight deck and a pair of introductory films produced by J.J. Abrams’ company Bad Robot, one of which will end with a simulated launch.
“It is an amazing experience, and we want to really build it up,” Jeffrey N. Rudolph, president and chief executive of the California Science Center, told The Times. “It’s not just about the hardware but about the people and the educational aspects.”
The Broad Expansion
Exterior rendering of the future Broad expansion from Hope Street.
Opening in 2028, the Broad expansion will contain 70% more gallery space, two outdoor courtyards, a live programming space and views of the museum’s art storage vault. First announced in 2024, the $100-million addition is slated for completion before the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Located in downtown L.A., the expansion was deemed necessary after the museum significantly exceeded visitor projections. The new building will invert the existing Broad museum’s architectural design, with a smooth, gray structure attached to the original construction.
“The idea is that it adds new facets to the visitor’s journey through the expanded Broad,” said Joanne Heyler, founding director and president of the Broad, in an interview with The Times. “In a way, the existing building is always sort of talking to you. And there will be a similar thing happening with the expansion, but just a slightly different conversation, like you’re listening to its sibling.”
Several central neighbourhoods in Beirut have been attacked in a series of Israeli strikes. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr has been at the scene of one attack that flattened a multi-storey residential building.
It was so big it couldn’t use the English Channel, Suez Canal or Panama Canal.
The biggest ship in the world was taller than iconic buildings(Image: Cheunghyo/Getty)
The biggest ship in the world was longer than both the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. It was known as the Seawise Giant and became one of the longest self-propelled ships in history.
The boat, later called Happy Giant, Knock Nevis and Mont, was built in Japan between 1974 and 1979. It had the greatest deadweight tonnage of a ship ever recorded.
Fully laden, it was 657,019 tonnes and was the heaviest in the world. Seawise Giant had a draft of 24.6 meters (81ft) and a length of 458.45 meters (1,504.1 ft).
Due to its size, it was incapable of navigating the English Channel, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal.
The ship has a long history, and was created by Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan, as an Ultra Large Crude Carrier.
It remained unnamed for a long time and was identified as its hull number, 1016. The ship suffered severe vibration problems during sea trials, and an unknown Greek owner refused to take delivery of it.
Eventually, the Japanese shipyard sold the ship thanks to a deal with Hong Kong Orient Overseas Container Line. Yet, they wanted to lengthen the ship by several meters and add 146,152 tonnes of cargo capacity.
Two years later, the ship relaunched as the Seawise Giant. In 1988, it was damaged during the Iran-Iraq war after fires erupted aboard the ship, and oil spread into the water.
The ship was still intact but was so damaged it was not deemed economical to repair.
However, a Norwegian investment firm bought the damaged ship. Over the next few years, it was repaired and renamed Happy Giant.
Up until 2004, the ship was owned by various Norwegian investment firms. It was then purchased by First Olsen Tankers and renamed Knock Nevis.
The ship was converted into a primarily moored storage tanker in the Persian Gulf.
However, it was then taken on by new owners Amber Development and named Mont. It had one final voyage to India where the ship was scrapped.
The ship was beached in December 2009 and due to its size, it took until the end of 2010 for it to be scrapped. The Seawise Giant’s anchor was saved and is on public display in Hong Kong.
It goes down in history as the longest ship ever constructed at 458.45 meters and is taller than many of the world’s tallest buildings. The Eiffel Tower stands at 330 meters and the Empire State Building at 443 meters.
An Israeli air strike has heavily damaged a building in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district.
An Israeli air strike has heavily damaged a building in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district as Israeli forces continue to attack across the area. The army says it is targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure and has warned residents south of the Litani river to leave.
A suspected Iranian attack on a high-rise residential building in Bahrain’s capital of Manama has killed a 29-year-old Bahraini woman and injured several others.
Iran’s IRGC had earlier said they targeted radar systems in locations including Al-Kharj, home to Prince Sultan base.
Published On 8 Mar 20268 Mar 2026
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At least two people have been killed after a projectile fell on a residential location in Saudi Arabia‘s Al-Kharj city, Saudi authorities reported, as Iranian counterattacks on Gulf nations hosting US military assets entered a second week.
The Saudi civil defence said in a post on X on Sunday, without mentioning Iran, that an unspecified “military projectile” had hit a residential area in Al-Kharj, killing two foreign nationals – one Indian and one Bangladeshi – and injuring 12 people.
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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had said earlier that it had targeted radar systems in locations including Al-Kharj governorate, which is home to the Prince Sultan airbase used by United States forces, and has come under repeated attack over the past week in the US and Israeli war against Iran.
Reporting from Doha, Al Jazeera’s Laura Khan said the projectile had landed on a residential site belonging to a maintenance and cleaning company.
“This is getting very volatile and dangerous for people across the Gulf,” she said. “It’s really important to emphasise that over 200 nationalities live and work across the Gulf nations. Many of these could be labourers.”
On Sunday, the Saudi Defence Ministry reported intercepting 15 drones, including an attempted attack in the diplomatic quarter of the capital Riyadh.
Kuwait, meanwhile, said an attack hit fuel tanks at its international airport, and Bahrain reported a water desalination plant had been damaged.
Sunday’s attacks came after Israeli warplanes hit five oil facilities around the Iranian capital, killing several people, according to a state oil executive, and blanketing the city in acrid smoke.
A spokesperson for the IRGC said Iran would retaliate if US-Israel attacks on its energy infrastructure did not let up.
“If you can tolerate oil at more than $200 per barrel, continue this game,” said the spokesperson.
As the war extended into its ninth day, the IRGC said it had enough supplies to continue drone and missile attacks across the Middle East for up to six months.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary-general of the Arab League, said Iran’s attacks on several member states were “reckless”, urging Tehran to reverse what he called a “massive strategic mistake”.
Iran’s Health Ministry said Sunday that at least 1,200 civilians had been killed and around 10,000 wounded since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28.
