A series of brightly colored sculptures on Park Boulevard, artist Roberto Salas’s “Night Visions,” will remain in the city’s public art collection. They’re in disrepair, which led public art manager Dana Springs to recommend their de-installation last fall. But the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture voted Friday to conserve them. The department will figure out how to best do that in the coming months.
Art patron and collector Robert Shapiro worked in Barrio Logan for more than 40 years and championed the neighborhood’s business development. He died in December at age 85. Among the interesting sides to Shapiro’s story, as told in his U-T obituary: He displayed a mural by Salas when the gas station it was painted on was being torn down.
You’re reading the Culture Report, our weekly compilation of the region’s arts and culture news.
Bringing Shakespeare Back
• The new boss at The Old Globe, Barry Edelstein, wants to bring Shakespeare “back toward the center of the theater’s mission.” (U-T)
• Spooky-looking termite tents on houses in San Diego caught photographer Robert Benson’s eye, and camera lens. (Wired)
• “What’s it like to be a reporter in Tijuana? Or a gay man in Uganda? A female athlete in Iraq?” All of these compelling questions connect to some of the films that will feature in the Museum of Photographic Arts’ Human Rights Watch Film Festival this weekend. (Balboa Park Beat blog)
• Local arts blogger Susan Myrland has an exhibition of photographs centered on her mother’s last few years of life, on display now at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. (ArtSlant)
• What do you think needs innovation: health care, climate change or water? A group of cultural nonprofits in Balboa Park will work with a $2.6 million National Science Foundation Grant to address one of those, using arts-based techniques like improvisation. It’s “one of the largest, if not the largest, grant to a San Diego cultural organization from a federal agency in recent memory,” writes the U-T’s James Chute. You can vote for your choice here through Jan. 27.
• The story of homeownership, neighborhood rights and racial relations plays out in “Clybourne Park,” which San Diego Repertory Theatre is staging now. Director Sam Woodhouse talked about the emotional connections between homeowners, houses and neighborhoods in a radio discussion on KPBS.
• In honor of David Copley, the late newspaper publisher and arts patron, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will open its doors for free admission on Thursday, which would have been Copley’s birthday. Next year, the museum will also mount an exhibition of work by Christo, an artist with whom Copley had a close friendship. (U-T)
• A business complex in La Mesa is moonlighting as a new venue to see visual art. (U-T)
About San Diego
• A South Park couple invented several popular board games, including Quelf. (San Diego Magazine)
• The “Hotel San Diego” sign that used to perch atop a rooftop downtown has been sitting, upside-down, in the former Naval Training Center in Point Loma. Now the NTC Foundation is hoping to raise $50,000 to rehab the sign and display it in the arts district there.
• Eveoke Dance Theatre is performing “Agape,” inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s push for nonviolent action. “Agape” is the Greek word for the kind of love that is rooted “in the idea that we are all human beings and should treat each other how we wish to be treated,” director Ericka Aisha Moore tells the U-T.
• February is Museum Month in San Diego: You can pick up a pass at Macy’s and take up to four people for half-price admission to many participating museums. (San Diego Magazine)
• A film pulled from the cloisters features La Jolla’s coastline in the 1960s and has a big name attached: Andy Warhol. But the New York Times looked closer, and asks whether attributing the film to the renowned artist — instead of to his former manager and assistant, who edited the footage in the 1990s — is appropriate. The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego plans to screen the film in March.
• Assembling wigs, lights and singers from Slovakia, Poland and the East Coast makes getting ready for “The Daughter of the Regiment” tricky for San Diego Opera. The performance opens this weekend. (KPBS)
• Stephen Costello is the American tenor who’ll be singing the part of Tonio in that production. That’s the role that made Luciano Pavarotti famous when he performed it in New York City. (U-T)
• Architect Sebastian Mariscal and a posse of protégés have left their mark on Little Italy, Carlsbad, the airport and places across the globe. Mariscal’s own house in La Jolla has an amphitheater in the backyard. (Riviera)
• Friends of mine made a film that screened at Sundance last year, set in San Diego’s independent music and art scene. (Yep, that’s me playing the fiddle in the folk band for the house party scene.) “There’s a really special creative community based in San Diego,” filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton said in an interview with Film Threat last week:
It’s a lovely mix of musicians, painters, sculptors, designers, and filmmakers. Whenever someone needs help with a project, or is showcasing something they just completed, everyone comes out to support. That’s the only way we could have made this movie.
• Leave it to the chocolatier. “To me, romance is … critical!” confesses Eclipse Chocolate’s owner, Will Gustwiller, to San Diego Magazine. “The world revolves around love.”
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Kelly Bennett is a reporter for VOSD. You can reach her directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531. Or you can keep up with her on Twitter @kellyrbennett or on Facebook.