Beige Luciano-Adams

The impulse toward preservation (of differences) and celebration (of shared experiences) guided Esparza and her daughter, graphic artist Rosanna Ahrens, as they wove their way through 300 archival photos and across the city’s imperceptible borders to create Altar to el Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, a permanent installation in the revamped “Becoming Los Angeles” exhibition at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County, which opened on June 1....

Four years and three locations in, Superchief L.A. has evolved from a colonial outpost — a clan of New York artists camping in the urban badlands of DTLA — to a center of Los Angeles' underground contemporary art and culture. On Friday, June 1, the gallery’s annual group show — opening simultaneously in New York, Los Angeles and its new 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Miami — reflected both deepening local roots and its owners’ raw, disruptive ambition....

Whether or not you're among his legion of maniacal fans, it's hard to deny the wicked genius of Neck Face — an artist whose singular style has retained its intensity from graffiti to gallery, always a step ahead of proliferative copycats....

At a recent launch party for Bridges in a Time of Walls: Mexican/Chicano Art From Los Angeles to Mexico — an exhibition that will bring an iconic collection of Chicano art from this city to the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City in September — the politicians, diplomats and artists gathered at LACMA’s Ray’s and Stark Bar highlighted the importance of overcoming distance (cultural, artistic, historic, geopolitical) between Mexico and its diaspora in the Southland....

Last week, a protracted battle over 454 Seaton St. – part of a proposed $200 million District Arts Center – came to a close as longtime artist-resident Michael Parker settled with the developer for an undisclosed amount. Less than a year after founding the Artist Loft Museum (ALMLA) as a means of resisting his own rent increases and eviction – and drawing attention to the broader threat to livable artist work space in the area – Parker agreed to vacate his 5,000-square-foot loft, which he shares with other artists, by June 30....

Barbara Carrasco’s legendary mural L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, a visual narrative tracing the city’s history, was commissioned and subsequently censored by the since-dismantled Community Redevelopment Agency in 1981. The 80-foot-long, portable mural has been shown only a handful of times since. But nearly 40 years later, the mural was unveiled in an exhibition at the L.A. County Natural History Museum....

The artist's pan-cultural (notably pre-Columbian and traditional Japanese) influences, channeled with a modernist sensibility, are expressed in tableware, figurines, ephemera and sculptural installation. Together, they trace a life shaped by external voyage and a driving internal vision that makes her a fascinating figure in 20th-century Los Angeles art....