Recommended reading for art and culture professionals in the Coachella Valley and beyond.
ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Channel Your Inner Sinatra at Palm Springs’ Modernism Week (The Mercury News)
Many Modernism Week (Feb. 15-25) events have already sold out, but you can still get tickets for some of the most popular and irresistible offerings. From a Rat Pack-worthy bash to a Modern Moroccan showcase, double-decker architectural tours, and Frank Sinatra peeks, here’s what to see at this year’s Palm Springs Modernism Week.
Desert Dreamers: The Architects (Palm Springs Life)
In time for Modernism Week, the seventh installment of the magazine’s Desert Dreamers series focuses on midcentury modern architects Albert Frey, William Cody, John Lautner, Hugh Kaptur, John Porter Clark, William Krisel.
Constructing Dessert: A New Wave Of Pastry Chefs Trained As Architects (The New York Times)
“Why [make] such a radical career shift? In interviews, several said they realized while working in architecture that pastry required a similar skill set, and they found baking a cake a lot more interesting — and immediately gratifying — than designing a building.”
ARTS MANAGEMENT
Does Community Participation Scale to Destination Institutions (Museum 2.0)
The principles of community participation — seeing the public as partners, inviting folks to get meaningfully involved, welcoming their talents and perspectives — work at any organization size. But the strategies differ.
Audiences Bring Their creativity, Not Just Their Bodies, to the Theater (The Stage)
The audience is a genuine collaborator in the theater, Lyn Gardner writes in this opinion. “We bring ourselves and our imaginations to the experience. We make the imaginative leap with ease. We don’t learn to do it; we know instinctively what is required of us.”
LITERARY ARTS
Rancho Mirage Writers Festival Mixes Humor With Jabs at Trump (The Desert Sun)
The Rancho Mirage Writers Festival “completed its quixotic mission to turn intellectual thought into recreation and the city library into a playground,” The Desert Sun reports. The fifth annual event featured Karl Rove, humorist Dave Barry, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, and fiction and nonfiction authors ranging from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead to Suzanne Somers.
Coachella Valley Storytellers Project returns for 2018 (The Desert Sun)
The Coachella Valley Storytellers Project returns with a lineup of new themes and a renewed focus on its mission: to lift up diverse community voices for entertainment and insight.
MUSIC
Indian Wells Music Fest Will Lead Into Coachella, Stagecoach (The Desert Sun)
Indian Wells Tennis Garden will host the new two-day festival, April 6-7, in partnership with Jim Fitzgerald, co-promoter of the longtime McCallum Theatre series “Fitz’s Jazz Café.”
J. Scott Beaty on 25 years as House Pianist at McCallum Theatre (Palm Springs Life)
J. Scott Beaty is celebrating 25 years as house pianist at the McCallum Theatre, a gig he got on the recommendation of former President Gerald Ford. He has performed at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and events around the country.
VISUAL ART
Art Palm Springs Honors Andy and the Late Ed Moses (Palm Springs Life)
Art Palm Springs honors Ed and Andy as artists of the year, an award previously given to Lita
Albuquerque, Larry Bell, Judy Chicago, and Mel Ramos. In addition to being fêted Feb. 16–19 at the festival at Palm Springs
Convention Center, Ed and Andy feature in solo installations in the booths for William Turner Gallery and Melissa Morgan Fine Art, respectively.
CREATE Center Celebrates Anniversary With New Home (CV Independent)
A year ago, CREATE Center opened in a converted thrift store on Highway 111 in Palm Desert. The 12 months since have been marked by accomplishment, tragedy, and a dogged determination to survive.
BKB Handcrafted Brings Joshua Tree-area Artists to Palm Springs (The Desert Sun)
Walk into BKB Handcrafted on Palm Canyon Drive, and immediately you’re surrounded by the heart and soul of the high desert. Weavings from Andrea Zittel’s collective, A-Z West, hang from the wall, while ceramic planters made by Jonathan Cross in Twentynine Palms are filled with small cactuses. There are even “Snack-Rocks” and “Brick-Brushes” by Bob Dornberger of Hole Foods Pit Stop (a secret Joshua Tree restaurant) acclaim. Kristin Scharkey reports.
We Need Protests. And Paintings. (The New York Times)
To defend the place of millions of immigrants and their progeny in American society, we need not only protest of political changes but also more art, writes Hector Tobar in The New York Times. We need to bring the ambitions, the foibles and the soul of immigrant America into the collective American mind. And for that we need television shows and movies, and more novels, poems, paintings and songs. High art and low.
Here’s Why You’re Enchanted by that Google Art-Selfie App (The Washington Post)
Who wasn’t wasting precious work time texting and posting pictures of themselves matched to obscure 18th-century portraits of cravat-wearing aristocrats with weird facial hair? That’s the beauty of it for the Google Cultural Institute, which purports to use technology to spread the good news about art and cultural heritage.
