USC School of Architecture
Senior lecturer at the USC School of Architecture; producer of Iconic Wilshire Boulevard; longtime editor and reporter for Chicago Public Radio and NPR, including the host of Hello Beautiful, a radio show about architecture and urbanism that ended in 2008; former Annenberg Fellow at USC where he studied the specialized journalism of architecture
LACMA by Zumthor: An 'Inkblot' on the Landscape If you head West on that ride, the endpoint will be the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which right now is itself the subject of a PSTP exhibit, " The Presence of the Past : Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA." T he exhibit's restrained title masks the surprise you get on seeing the show. In addition to plans and models telling the story of the site, dating back to prehistory and the tar pits, the main event is towards the back of the Resnick Pavilion -- a huge dark gray concrete model of a dramatic new building being proposed for the site, by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, that has been described variously as an "inkblot," an "amoeba" and a "black flower." In the first of an ongoing look at this project, architecture reporter Edward Lifson and LACMA director Michael Govan give us a brief history of the site and how the new building would remake this part of Wilshire.
Lynell George on Wilshire Boulevard In the fourth "Iconic Wilshire Boulevard" story for cicLAvia and Pacific Time Standard Presents: Modern Architecture in LA, Lynell George talks to producer Edward Lifson about the dreams and disillusionment embodied in Wilshire Boulevard. As a writer, she equates the strip to a sentence or a river of words, "a great unscrolling street;" as a daughter, she associates Wilshire with a painful reminder of racism, experienced by her mother on arriving in Los Angeles full of high hopes. (Special thanks to Rima Snyder for assistance with audio production.)
Is LACMA Ready for the World Stage? Even before becoming director of the LA County Museum of Art seven years ago, Michael Govan was talking with Swiss architect Peter Zumthor . The subject was a re-creation of LACMA , and the conversation is still going on. The goal is to elevate Los Angeles to become a center of art in the same league as Paris, Rome, Athens and —especially — New York. In June, LACMA will open an exhibition to showcase Zumthor's design. In the meantime, Goven is building interest by talking about it in various forums.
Wilshire Boulevard PSTP has sponsored another exploration of a defining Los Angeles boulevard, but it's one you'll be able to take in outside of the museum space, and not at the speed or kind of mobility it was built for. We are talking Wilshire Boulevard and on June 23, bikers and walkers are invited to join in CicLAvia: Modern Architecture on Wilshire Boulevard . Part of the project is an accompanying series of stories, about Wilshire's iconic buildings, produced by veteran radio producer and architecture writer Edward Lifson. We are airing some of them on DnA, starting today with "Tar Pit Death Trip," told by memoirist D.J. Waldie, set against original music by Steve Wight. Waldie takes us back to the primordial ooze of LACMA's tarpits , a reminder that despite Angelenos conviction to the contrary, death is not an option and we will be one day replaced by new generations who will have stories to tell about us.
First Man Here’s the radical notion behind Damien Chazelle’s “First Man”: Tell the story of mankind’s boldest adventure thus far, the Apollo 11 mission that reached the moon nearly a half-century ago, but tell it through a taciturn, emotionally closed-off hero, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the lunar surface.
The hidden histories of exclusive LA homes We talk to an author who writes biographies of houses in Los Angeles. He tells us about the fascinating details he has uncovered about the homes of Shirley Temple, David Selznick, and more.
Will viewers go for 'The Conners' without Roseanne? ABC premieres 'The Conners' this week. This is of course, 'Roseanne' sans Roseanne. After the network fired Roseanne Barr for racist tweets, the fate of the show was unclear. Now, it's back with the core family intact, except for the matriarch.
The ‘Moral Correctness’ Debate How political is black art, and how much can black people critique it? A recent New York Times piece by Wesley Morris suggests that black art in this day and age is being critiqued for its politics rather than for its quality. Justin sits down with writers Chuck Hayward and Jarrett Hill to discuss.