Despite rumors that the historic Eames House burned in the wildfire raging in Pacific Palisades, The Times has confirmed that this gem of midcentury design — one of Los Angeles’ most important architectural landmarks — remains undamaged. Some of Los Angeles’ treasured cultural institutions and historic architecture are at risk, however, as fires spread in the Palisades, Altadena, Pasadena, Sylmar, Topanga and points beyond. Here is the status of cultural destinations near the fires; check back for our updates as the emergency continues to unfold.
The Getty Villa: J. Paul Getty Trust President and Chief Executive Katherine E. Fleming said Wednesday that the Getty Villa in the Palisades was still safe. Trees and vegetation caught fire Tuesday, but the staff and collection of antiquities were safe. The Villa will be closed until early next week and perhaps longer. Fleming said the Getty Center in Brentwood would remain closed through at least Sunday in an effort to alleviate traffic in the area.
Will Greer Theatricum Botanicum: The beloved open-air Topanga theater — known for its annual Shakespeare-under-the-stars performances — is under a mandatory evacuation order. A representative said that the complex was safe for now but it’s “a waiting game.”
Thomas Mann House and Villa Aurora: A statement on the website for Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann house noted that both structures were safe but “the impact of the fires on our two houses will only become fully visible in the coming days. The situation in immediate vicinity of Villa Aurora is especially dire and we must expect the worst.” The Spanish-style Villa Aurora mansion was built in 1943 for the German author Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife, Marta, and was the site of gatherings for German and Jewish immigrants during World War II. It has been an artists’ residence since 1995. The Thomas Mann House is a two-story villa completed in 1942 for writer and Nobel Prize laureate Mann and his family. They lived in the residence from 1942 through 1952, during Mann’s exile from Germany. The house offers residency programs for visiting fellows.
Theatre Palisades: The theater, founded in 1963 by three TV writers, appeared in news reports to have been largely destroyed in the wildfire. The organization’s website said that all operations at its 125-seat community theater are suspended until further notice.
Advertisement
The Gamble House: The historic Craftsman home built in Pasadena in 1906 for Procter & Gamble founder James Gamble’s son David B. Gamble, is part of a Level 2 evacuation warning for the Eaton fire, meaning a mandatory evacuation could come but hasn’t yet.
Descanso Gardens: The 125-acre historic La Cañada Flintridge property filled with winding pathways and lush landscapes including a Japanese garden and an oak forest, is in the evacuation zone for the Eaton fire. But a Descanso representative said Wednesday that the grounds were safe and out of immediate danger. The gardens will remain closed until further notice.
Norton Simon Museum: The museum, which has more than 44,000 objects in its collection including European sculptures, paintings and tapestries as well as Asian art and woodblock prints, sits just outside of the Level 2 evacuation warning for the Eaton fire. A representative said that the museum is safe and that security and facilities staff members are on-site and in close contact with Pasadena emergency teams. “Our grounds are kept clear of brush and our building is constructed with fire resistant materials,” the museum said.
Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens: Nestled in the flatlands of San Marino, away from the hills of Pasadena and Altadena, the Huntington and its historic buildings, priceless books and gorgeous gardens are not close to evacuation zones. The museum, however, will be closed Wednesday due to the threats from high wind. In an email, a rep said that the Huntington lost a few trees due to the high winds, but so far has sustained only minor damages to the property from falling debris. “While we are currently outside the range of active fires, our buildings are equipped with features designed to enhance the safety of our art and library collections. Our HVAC systems continue to maintain safe collection storage environments, including the filtering of outside air,” the rep wrote.
Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanic Garden: The 127-acre complex is south of the 210 Freeway, below the mandatory evacuation zones. It was closed Tuesday and remains closed Wednesday due to the fires but does not appear to be in imminent danger.
Advertisement
Eames House: The historic 1949 home — formally known as Case Study House No. 8 — has been unharmed by the wildfires so far. Eames Foundation founder Lucia Atwood, granddaughter of legendary designer Charles Eames, confirmed the house’s states as of noon Wednesday. “Windblown fires continue to claim other homes in the community and bring the fires nearer,” she said by email. “We are closely monitoring the situation and the Eames Foundation has taken every precaution to protect the site.” The foundation’s team removed some objects from the house on Tuesday before evacuating the building themselves.
In 2008, when The Times assembled a panel of residential architecture experts to choose their favorite L.A. houses of all time, the Eames House finished No. 4, ahead of other landmarks such as John Lautner’s space-age Chemosphere, Greene & Greene’s beloved Gamble House in Pasadena and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. The accompanying photo gallery beautifully captured the eclectic bohemian modern vibe that continues to inspire generations of design fans.
The house has faced fire threats before, most notably the 2019 Getty fire, whose mandatory evacuation area included the Eames property.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
Advertisement
He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
Advertisement
Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
Advertisement
An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
Advertisement
Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
