Kusamas

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist known for her hypnotic, repetitive polka dot artworks, died earlier this week at the age of 97. Hers was the third in a string of deaths this week that left me feeling quite melancholy. First Dolly Parton, then Tim Curry and finally, Kusama.

The silver lining in the death of an artist, whether they be musician, actor, writer or visual artist, is that they leave a trail of comfort for fans through their work. I can (and did) sit in my breakfast nook weeping to the sound of Parton’s voice in songs including 1971’s “Coat of Many Colors.” When it comes to mourning Kusama, I am planning a trip to the Broad museum in downtown L.A., which houses two of her famous Infinity Mirror Rooms.

“Longing for Eternity” (2017) is on view on the third floor and can be accessed with a free general admission ticket. “Infinity Mirrored Room —The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away” (2013), however, requires a separate free reservation. A rep for the museum said reservations are currently available through September with many time slots already completely full. The museum is also accommodating as many walk-ups as capacity allows — and these walk-ups have increased in the wake of Kusama’s death.

In an email to The Times, Broad founding President and Director Joanne Heyler wrote that Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, “have been among the most beloved works at The Broad since we opened in 2015.”

Heyler noted that the Broad’s 2017 exhibition, “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors,” “was an incredible moment in the museum’s early history. It was a beautiful show, and unprecedented operationally: the only time our ticketing system broke down due to demand, minutes after release. Her work is both wildly popular and conceptually rigorous; her journey as an artist is complex, full of resilience and a refusal to be limited. Visitors have found deep connection inside the Infinity Mirror Rooms at The Broad — smiles, tears, even marriage proposals. We’re grateful to be one of the places where people can go to spend time with her work and remember her, and we’ll keep working to ensure her art is experienced as she intended: by everyone, infinitely.”

This is welcome news, and the devoted interest makes sense. In many ways, these physically small but emotionally vast rooms encapsulate the essence of Kusama’s practice throughout her life. Built in a distinctively analog way, the rooms create the illusion of endless space through the use of light, mirrors and splashes of color. Kusama incorporated hand-sewn cloth, and later, multimedia video projections, but at their core the rooms remained largely technology-free.

The irony being that a decade ago they emerged as social media sensations, and were ubiquitous in selfies across the internet as they traveled from blockbuster show to blockbuster show.

It’s a pity because all the people who stepped into those rooms with their cellphone cameras at the ready missed a profound opportunity to inhabit a floating dreamscape of true peace and quiet — the kind we rarely grasp in our digital-notification suffocated world.

I can still remember the first time I had the opportunity to experience one of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. It was dark and glittering with tiny pinpricks of colored light. I felt as if I were suspended in a deep, black pool of energy that extended beyond me in all directions. I could hear my blood rushing in my ears and briefly wondered if this could be what it felt like in the womb.

I got dizzy and recovered, and then — for what felt like a long time but was only a matter of seconds — I was free.

I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt taking moments of solace where I can get them. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Babatunde Akinboboye
The baritone fuses classical opera with hip-hop on “Toreador,” “Funiculi, Funicula,” “O Sole Mio” and more.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

Director Richard Linklater at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Richard Linklater
A three-movie American Cinematheque tribute featuring Q&As with the Texas filmmaker. In a recent interview, Times film writer Mark Olsen asked Linklater what it’s like to reflect on his work: “What resonates with me in my mind is the experience of making the movie more than the movie itself — all the people you worked with and the cast and all those good feelings.”
“Boyhood,” 7:30 p.m. Friday; “Waking Life,” 4 p.m. Saturday. Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; “Dazed & Confused,” 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Directors Village, 961 Broxton Ave. Westwood. americancinematheque.com

Pericles
Boston Court, in partnership with Play On Shakespeare, presents the West Coast premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation of Shakespeare’s rarely performed adventure tale. Directed by Margaret Shigeko Starbuck.
Through Sept. 27. Boston Court Pasadena, 70 N. Mentor Ave. bostoncourtpasadena.org

Romeo & Juliet
A site-specific, immersive, queer adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Sassafras Saloon, 1233 Vine St. eventbrite.com

SATURDAY

Place Is the Space
A four-hour immersive performance experience created by artist Edgar Arceneaux and co-creator Frank Lawson employs live jazz improvisation, theatrical storytelling and multimedia design inspired by Sun Ra’s philosophy and his film “Space Is the Place.” Presented by CAP UCLA, the event includes an audience procession to the Hammer Museum in conjunction with the current exhibition, “Space Is the Place,” for a final performance.
1 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Joshua Smith Untitled (Yellow Heart), 2026 Acrylic on canvas 14 ¾ x 14 ½ in.

(839 Gallery)

Joshua Smith: Hearts and Triangles
The artist’s first Los Angeles solo show includes brightly colored monochrome paintings on shaped canvases.
Opening reception, 5-8 p.m. Saturday; exhibition continues through Oct. 17. 839, 839 N. Cherokee Ave. 839gallery.com

Winter’s Bench
The world premiere of Mike Kenny’s play about a woman who returns to a park where she thinks a tree once spoke to her. Starring Anne Gee Byrd and Shih-wei Wu. Directed by Debbie Devine. All performances will feature Spanish supertitles.
Previews, 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sept. 4; 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m.; Sundays, 8 p.m.; Sept. 7 and 14; through Oct. 25. 24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St. 24thstreet.org

SUNDAY

Element Band
Led by Ara Dabandjian, the ensemble features 12 musicians and vocalists, including Soseh Aramouni Keshishyan and Natalie Avunjian, in a celebration of Armenian heritage, creativity and live music.
7:30 p.m. The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East. theford.com

TUESDAY

Dvořák & Bruch
Conductor Anja Bihlmaier and violinist Bomsori join the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

THURSDAY

Amadeus in Concert
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by conductor Norman Huynh, conductor, and the Pacific Chorale perform live to Milos Forman’s 1984 Oscar-winning best picture starring Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

The Arsonists
Max Frisch’s 1953 absurdist satire, translated by Alastair Beaton and directed by Luke Harlan.
8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 5 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sunday; through Sept. 20. Skylight Theatre, 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave. skylighttheatre.org

Under the Oaks
A weekly salon series featuring performance and music: “Currents: Composers in Concert” (Sept. 3); “Beer! A New Musical-in-Development” (Sept. 10); “Cabaret Theatricum Sings Marvin Gaye” (Sept. 17); and “The Voice of Dr. King” (Sept. 24.
7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Sept. 24. Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd. Topanga. theatricum.com

Arts everywhere

Sarah Bareilles in the documentary “Sarah Bareilles: Good Grief.”

(A Group Effort Films / Naked Edge Films)

Sara Bareilles: Good Grief
The Grammy-winning Broadway star and pop singer’s return to the recording studio for the first time in seven years is captured in this intimate documentary directed by Josh Alexander receiving a one-night-only theatrical release. The film looks at Bareilles’ experience of channeling her own pain to create art and the healing journey that accompanied it. Bareilles will perform at the Dolby Theatre, Oct. 12-14.
7 p.m. Wednesday. Laemmle and AMC theaters. sarabmusic.com

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Dolores Huerta photographed at Dolores Huerta “Help Wanted/Leave Now” exhibit at California Museum.

(Beth Baugher / California Museum)

Dolores Huerta has prioritized involving herself in projects relating to labor and women’s rights in the wake of going public with sexual abuse allegations against former labor leader Cesar Chavez. One of those projects can now be seen at the California Museum in Sacramento in an exhibition called “Help Wanted/Leave Now: ‘Operation Wetback’ and the Revolving Door of Mass Deportation,” which, according to a story by contributor Isa Farfan, “examines decades of the federal government’s deportation campaigns against Mexican immigrants even while it recruited millions of these farmworkers and rail workers to fill labor shortages during and after World War II.”

Contributor Leah Ollman reviews a new Eileen Cowin retrospective called “Between Panic and Paradise” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Labeling Cowin a “wry disruptor,” Ollman notes that over the artist’s nearly six-decade career, she has toyed with time in a novel way: “By deviating from straightforward chronology, the installation resonates smartly with one of Cowin’s key operating principles — that we don’t experience time as a continuous line moving in one direction, but as episodic, fragmented, interrupted, layered.”

Gustavo Dudamel at the end of the first half his show at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 20.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Gustavo Dudamel is really leaving — although it feels as if the city has been mourning the eventuality for years. Times classical music critic Mark Swed was, of course, on hand to bear witness to Dudamel’s final farewell: a four-night Hollywood Bowl extravaganza. “Dudamel addressed the audience, sounding very much like he had 17 years ago at the Bowl, extolling in our being a crowd of many types together for many musics. L.A., he said, made him an Angeleno,” Swed wrote.

Swed also attended a Tuesday night show at the Hollywood Bowl after the Dudamel farewell extravaganza and found it rather empty and a bit “forlorn,” a situation, he writes in a review, that “left Anna Handler, who becomes the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s conductor-in-residence this fall, with the trickiest conducting assignment of the summer anywhere.”

Theater Director Bart DeLorenzo on the set of “Enemy of the People” at the Odyssey Theatre on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Times theater critic Charles McNulty recently sat down for a lunchtime conversation with Bart DeLorenzo, “L.A.’s most playfully provocative theater auteur,” about his decision to direct (and adapt) Henrik Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” at Odyssey Theatre. “If ever there was a moment to revive ‘An Enemy of the People,’ it’s now,” McNulty writes. “The demoralizing spectacle of the U.S. Senate’s inquisition of Dr. Anthony Fauci last month, led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in unapologetic witch-hunt mode, was yet another reminder that Ibsen’s drama about a public health crusader being targeted by politicians and business leaders when his medical advice goes counter to their interests hasn’t lost its punch.”

The drama never stops at the beleaguered Kennedy Center as it deals with the continued tumult resulting from President Trump’s takeover early last year. Most recently the Justice Department claimed in a recent court filing that Trump’s “efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal.” If the center isn’t shut down for the two-year renovation Trump demands, it may need to be demolished, the filing reads.

Visitors line up outside the Japanese American National Museum for a 2022 event recalling World War II incarceration camps.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

After closing in early January, 2024, the Japanese American National Museum has announced it will reopen its newly renovated Pavilion on Jan. 23, 2027. Renovations include a new main entrance and new first-floor galleries for a brand new exhibition titled “In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy.” The special exhibition galleries on the second floor have also been updated and will feature the inaugural exhibition, “Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo.”

The Broad has announced its next fall exhibition, “Has the myth been shattered,” opening Nov. 21. The exhibition is set to include recent acquisitions by Guadalupe Rosales, Hank Willis Thomas and Mickalene Thomas. “Gathered together, works in the exhibition create unexpected connections across six decades, prompting an examination of how media has shaped history, memory, and collective experience,” a news release notes.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

A little rare bird is making people happy, and I’ll take the moment of levity.