From 1900 through the 1960s, Edward Steichen photographed gowns, buildings, artists, actresses and aircraft characters. Usually the images had an air of seriousness, even if they were melodramatic, like the one of sculptor Auguste Rodin staring at (and posed like) his iconic sculpture The... More >>

Late in the 1950s, when David Rockefeller decided Chase Manhattan Bank should have an art program, Sam Francis was one of the first painters the bank enlisted. The abstract expressionist, who had just started to establish himself, painted in primary colors. The shapes he rendered look like... More >>

No matter how thin your wallet, every first Tuesday the 50,000-year-old Simi Valley mastodon can be your date. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's halls of herpetology, ichthyology and mineralogy are open once a month to broke Angelenos dying to keep tabs on the world's ancient... More >>

It's up for debate whether James Turrell is a sculptor, painter, architect, Light and Space artist or earthwork artist. We vote for all of the above, and more. But however you cast your ballot, you can't help but be a fan of Turrell's transcendent Skyspaces -- specially built rooms (and... More >>

Just when you thought you'd figured out what art really is, Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer is where modern art and the Protestant work ethic weirdly intersect, which is to say that a 340-ton granite megalith painstakingly transported over two weeks from Riverside sits in a 456-foot-long slot,... More >>

The word "power" often connotes bigness -- the tallest buildings, the strongest weapons, the deepest bank accounts. So the smallness of the emblems in "Shaping Power," the debut exhibition in LACMA's newly opened African Art galleries, is striking. The show consists largely of exquisitely... More >>

His music is eerie, dreamy, jarring, richly harmonious -- an arresting blend of traditional and experimental classical motifs. Dutch cellist/composer Ernst Reijseger has long been a pioneer in jazz, improvisational and contemporary classical music, appreciated by, among other luminaries, Werner... More >>

Junipero Serra, the Franciscan friar who founded the first missions in California and famously compelled Native Americans to convert through fervent chest-beating, has been exhumed multiple times since his 1784 death. Once in 1882, a friar distributed threads from Serra's dug-up burial stole.... More >>