Civic Park | Model by Los Angeles Grand Avenue Authority
Scheduled to open in the summer of 2012 in Downtown LA, Civic Park will stretch from Grand Avenue at the Music Center to Spring Street at City Hall. The 12-acre park will have four distinct areas, featuring the restored Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain, an intimate performance lawn, a community terrace, and a grand event lawn. The new Civic Park allows for a strong visual and physical connection from Grand Avenue via a series of stairs, accessible ramps and sloped walks as well as a new elevator to invite more pedestrians into a vibrant garden environment, a gathering place that will bring together Angelenos from all walks of life in a welcoming and distinctly urban oasis.
The Broad | Rendering by Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Los Angeles will welcome a new, public museum of contemporary art in 2013, when The Broad opens on Grand Avenue in Downtown LA. The stunning design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro creates a 120,000 square-foot, three-level facility, and will include 50,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors, a lecture hall for up to 200 people, and a public lobby with display space and a museum shop. The museum’s exhibition programming will focus on the contents of the renowned contemporary art collections of Eli and Edythe Broad, encompassing 2,000 artworks by more than 200 artists and unparalleled, in-depth groupings of works by select artists such as Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat and many others. The Broad is the latest addition to a world class cultural center that includes the Music Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Metro Rail Expo Line, USC/Expo Park station. | Rendering via Wikimedia Commons
Visitors and residents alike can already Go Metro and go everywhere in Los Angeles. The public transit options will expand even further with the opening of the Metro Expo Line, which will bring light rail to the Exposition Corridor, with 12 stations serving popular destinations like USC, Exposition Park, the Mid-City Communities, the Crenshaw District, Culver City, and West Los Angeles. Phase 1 of the line will travel from Downtown LA to Culver City, and Phase 2 will extend the line out to Santa Monica. Phase 1 is scheduled to begin operation in Spring 2012.
Photo by California Science Center via Facebook
The California Science Center is known as the West Coast's largest hands-on science center and offers special and permanent exhibits, LA’s largest IMAX screen and much more. From May to December 2012, the Science Center welcomes the only West Coast appearance of Cleopatra: The Exhibition, a dramatically staged 13,000-square-foot exhibit that features the largest collection of Cleopatra-era artifacts ever assembled in the U.S. The California Science Center is the future home of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which will go on public display beginning in late 2012. Best of all, admission to the Science Center’s permanent exhibition galleries is free!
Dinosaur Hall, Natural History Museum | Photo by veganbakesale via Flickr
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) has amassed one of the world’s most extensive and valuable collections of natural and cultural history — more than 35 million objects, some as old as 4.5 billion years. Its curatorial staff not only cares for those collections, but uses them for groundbreaking scientific and historic research. The landmark Dinosaur Hall opened in 2011 and established the Museum as the definitive West Coast destination for dinosaurs. The opening of Dinosaur Hall is part of the greatest transformation in the Museum's history. When NHM celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2013, the Museum will have re-imagined seven galleries, installed five new permanent exhibitions and reclaimed approximately 3.5 acres of green space to create an innovative outdoor learning laboratory in the heart of the city.
Cirque du Soleil® made its American debut in Los Angeles over 20 years ago. Now, the globally acclaimed production company has returned to LA with an exclusive extravaganza in its permanent home at the famed Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center. IRIS, a Journey through the World of Cinema™ is the story of two young heroes who experience the art of cinema, as only Cirque du Soleil® could tell it. IRIS features a cast of 72 performers bringing together dance, acrobatics, live video, filmed sequences and animation and taking audiences into the heart of the moviemaking process. IRIS is directed by Philippe Decouflé, with music by Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman.
NOTE: IRIS will be dark from Jan. 22-Mar. 24, 2012 to make way for the Academy Awards.
“Urban Light” at LACMA | Photo by Jason Fris via Flickr
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest encyclopedic art museum in the western United States. LACMA attracts nearly a million visitors annually to its seven-building complex in LA’s Miracle Mile District. Its collections include more than 100,000 works that span the history of art from ancient times to the present. LACMA is undergoing a multi-phase, ten-year expansion and renovation known as the Transformation, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Completed projects include: the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), a three-story, 60,000 square foot space that opened in 2008; and in 2010, the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world. The Transformation took a significant step in October 2011, when LACMA and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences entered into an agreement to establish the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in the historic May Company building, currently known as LACMA West.
King Kong 360 3D, based on the Oscar®-winning 2005 Peter Jackson film, is Universal Studios Hollywood℠’s latest signature attraction. Riders on the Studio Tour tram are transported, via a darkened soundstage, back to King Kong’s home - Skull Island. The action, which takes place before King Kong ever makes his way to the modern world, culminates in a ferocious battle between the worlds’ most famous ape and a 35-foot dinosaur. Through the magic of the world’s largest Surround Digital 3D projection system, visitors are thrust into the middle of the action and feel the tram jolt and reverberate as the 3D battle unfolds around them.
Photo by LA ZooThe new LAIR (Living Amphibians, Invertebrates, and Reptiles) facility at the Los Angeles Zoo is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012, and will provide magnificent and complementary homes to the Zoo’s outstanding reptile collection, one of the rarest among North American zoos. The LAIR collection is the result of a a two-year sting operation headed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which confiscated a smuggler's cache of Komodo dragons, Chinese alligators, false gavials, Burmese and star tortoises, and the ploughshare tortoise of Madagascar, perhaps the rarest in the world. Valued in excess of $750,000, the entire confiscation was placed in the care of the Los Angeles Zoo because of the agency’s high regard for its professional animal care staff and the quality of care provided.
The Huntington Library is undertaking a restoration and expansion of its Japanese Garden, one of the oldest and most elaborate landscapes of its kind in America. The Japanese Garden has been visited by more than 30 million people since it opened to the public in 1928, and remains one of the institution’s most popular destinations. The $6.8 million restoration is taking place to coincide with the historic garden’s 100th anniversary in spring 2012. The nine-acre garden closed on April 4, 2011 for the year-long renovation, which includes a restoration of the Japanese House, repairs to the central pond system and water infrastructure, renovation of the original faux bois (false wood) ornamental trellises, improved accessibility, and other updates. One of the project’s highlights will be the installation of a ceremonial teahouse, donated to The Huntington by the Pasadena Buddhist Temple. Built in Kyoto in the 1960s, the teahouse (called the Arbor of Pure Breeze) will be rebuilt on a picturesque ridge on the southwest side of the Japanese Garden, surrounded by an authentic tea garden.
