Contrary to what people might think anywhere else in the country, the cultural scene out here in the Golden West doesn’t begin and end at the sidewalk outside the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. And, no, the major event of the fall season won’t be the retirement of the venerable Submarine Voyage at Disneyland–sad as it may be.
Southern California and Las Vegas have always made convenient whipping boys for international art snobs, but guess who’s been beating a path to our doors since the opening last December of the Getty Center?
Fact is, now that the kiddies are back in school, it’s easy for adults to visit the West Coast and not have to think once about standing in line at Universal Studios Hollywood. This region’s museums, galleries and theaters are the place to be this fall.
ART
The Getty is still the foremost draw on the cultural scene in Southern California, and the wait for parking reservations now stretches into 1999 (even scoring reservations for the museum’s lovely hilltop restaurant can be difficult). Anyone who can find alternative means of transportation shouldn’t have much trouble getting in on weekdays, however, especially if they don’t plan on arriving in L.A. during the Thanksgiving and Christmas rushes.
A new exhibit of German drawings, “Fuseli to Menzel,” opens this month and runs through Nov. 29, while the popular “Walker Evans: New York,” “Ten Centuries of Manuscript Illumination” and “The Stammheim Missal” shows extend into mid-October. (For information, call 310-440-7300.)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art currently is staging the blockbuster exhibit, “Picasso: Masterworks From the Museum of Modern Art.” Continuing through Jan. 4–after which a major Van Gogh show will arrive–the retrospective includes more than 115 paintings, drawings, sculptures, collages and prints representing the years 1904 through 1971.
It’s rare that more than a dozen of so works from MOMA’s permanent Picasso collection are on display at any one time in New York, so regular visitors to that institution will find much of interest here as well. Among the masterpieces on display are “Boy Leading a Horse” (1906), “Three Musicians” (1921) and “Girl Before a Mirror” (1932).
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster, 323-462-ARTS, and other information is available at 323-857-6000. LACMA’s “Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance” ends Oct. 19.
In downtown’s Little Tokyo district, starting Sept. 20, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s warehouse-like Geffen Contemporary facility will feature an installation of large-scale steel works by controversial sculptor Richard Serra. The seven “Torqued Ellipses” represent the artist’s first one-person museum exhibition in L.A.
“These pieces force you to walk, and every time you walk, they change,” Serra told the Los Angeles Times. “So, if you think there is a center, they decenter you. It’s not that they have a sense of disequilibrium, but they kind of throw you.” (Through Jan. 3; 213-626-6222.)
After a long period of renovation–under the guidance of architect Frank O. Gehry–the galleries of Pasadena’s often-overlooked Norton Simon Museum of Art again will be in full view, starting in mid-November. The interior spaces have been extensively redesigned to provide higher ceilings, better lighting and more open corridors, while the outdoor sculpture garden has been re-landscaped to add a waterfall, pond and tree-lined paths.
All of the heavyweights are represented in the private institution, including Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens . . . The South Asian sculpture collection includes major pieces from India, Nepal, Thailand and Cambodia (626-449-6840).
As unlikely as it may sound, critics from around the world soon will be flocking to the Las Vegas Strip to survey two major exhibits of art and antiquities being unveiled within shouting distance of the craps tables and slot machines.
Steve Wynn’s $1.8 billion Bellagio hotel-casino finally opens on Oct. 15, and one of its major attractions will be a museumlike presentation of more than $270 million worth of Impressionist and contemporary paintings and sculptures, including works by Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne and Giacometti. Unlike the tigers at the Mirage, a peek at the paintings in “the Las Vegas Louvre” will require a separate admission fee, with proceeds going to charity.
Visitors also will be attracted to the Bellagio for its outdoor water show–staged by Cirque du Soleil, on the hotel’s nine-acre lake–a half-dozen four-star restaurants and a botanical conservatory, which will cost $8 million a year to maintain (888-987-6667). Wynn’s other Picassos already are on view in the Melange restaurant, down the street at the Mirage.
At the Rio Suite Hotel & Casino, just down Flamingo Road from the Bellagio and Caesars Palace, a special exhibition space has been constructed to house “Treasures of Russia,” which is being billed as the largest collection of Romanov Dynasty pieces ever shown in the United States. The exhibition will include 1,150 important Imperial items from the palaces of the Peterhof Reserve-Museum, including paintings, porcelains, tapestries, furniture, jewelry, gowns, religious artifacts, Wedgwood dinner services, a Faberge eggs and the throne of Peter the Great.
“Treasures of Russia” will be on exhibit from Nov. 7 through April 15, 1999, and then return to the museum, outside St. Petersberg. The Rio also features a colorful and free “Masquerade Show in the Sky,” which regularly re-creates the pageantry of Mardi Gras over the heads of gamblers, and impressionist Danny Gans, who last year was voted Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year (702-474-4000).
Regular visitors to the city also should note that the new show at New York-New York, replacing “MADhattan,” is “Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance,” while downtown’s Golden Nugget has introduced a splashy new production, “The History of Sex.”
THEATER
Movies rule the Southern California entertainment landscape, but, with some work, excellent theater can be found and enjoyed with the added benefit of plenty of elbow room.
The highlight of Los Angeles’ fall season, presented by the Ahmanson Theater at the Music Center complex downtown, will be “Fosse: A Celebration in Song and Dance,” which is described as a “journey through the extraordinary career of showman Bob Fosse.” The Broadway-bound production, co-directed by Ann Reinking, features a cast of 36 dancers and includes rarely seen dance numbers from the films “All That Jazz,” “My Sister Eileen” and “Cabaret,” as well as such signature pieces as “Steam Heat,” “Big Spender” and “Sing, Sing, Sing.” It runs from Oct. 9 through Dec. 6 (213-628-2772).
Next door, at the Mark Taper Forum, Stephen Sondheim is revising his “Putting It Together”–and adding songs “from his entire canon of work”–to accommodate the comedic, dramatic and musical skills of Carol Burnett. Also appearing in the cast are Michael Nouri and Bronson Pinchot. It will be staged from Oct. 4 through Nov. 29 (213-628-2772).
Stargazers might also want to catch Rhea Perlman in the Tony Award-winning play, “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” which opens on Oct. 11 and runs through Jan. 3 at the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills (310-859-2830).
Housed in a historic Mediterranean-style building on the fringe of the UCLA campus, Westwood’s Geffen Playhouse is presenting the West Coast premiere of Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” a comedy about what happens when a documentary maker begins production of his film on a remote Irish island. It will be staged Oct. 20-Nov. 22 (310-208-5454).
Down the coast, the La Jolla Playhouse caps its 1998 season with a world premiere of “Dogeaters,” from Filipino-American playwright Jessica Hagedorn. Adapted from her novel of the same name, Hagedorn examines the social and political scene in the Philippines over the course of several decades. It continues through Oct. 11 (610-550-1010).
In Orange County, Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory currently is presenting Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness,” which will be followed on the mainstage by the West Coast premiere of David Margulies’ “Dinner With Friends,” from Oct. 16 to Nov. 22. Keith Reddin’s McCarthy-era piece, “But Not for Me,” will be given its world premiere on the Second Stage (714-708-5555), Nov. 3 to Dec 6.
