Arts

If any line item in the state or federal budgets cries out for more resources, or even just a little more respect, it's the arts and humanities. Never mind that many writers, artists and scholars have the fresh ideas that our times so desperately need. When politicians and columnists call for increased spending on STEM projects - that's science, technology, engineering and mathematics - don't they know they're alienating at least half the country? Let's reckon with the extent of the neglect.

Harkham will appear at the Festival of Books Saturday at 2 p.m. on the panel "Drawing the Story" with Leela Corman and Derek Kirk Kim. More information:  latimes.com/festivalofbooks Sammy Harkham is like a lot of comics fans: He's cared deeply about the genre since adolescence and feels both joy and pain as it continues to soar and occasionally stumble from the cultural backwater. He also wants it to be art, to aim high (and low) without ever losing its raw, unpredictable energy.

"The Island President" (PBS, Monday, 10 p.m.). Comprising 2,000 pancake-flat islands in the Indian Ocean, with a mean elevation of about five feet above sea level, the Maldives will be the first nation to go, literally, when the oceans rise. Jon Shenk's documentary follows then-president Mohamed Nasheed on a mission to save his country, his people and maybe the world. A frequently jailed activist who once spent 18 months in solitary confinement in a corrugated iron shed, Nasheed hits the road to make his quixotic case for environmental responsibility.

In the old days, worlds collided. Artists slammed incompatible realities together, pitting high against low, painting against screen printing, and functionalism against art for art's sake. Today, that's impossible because the borders between art and design, as well as craft, entertainment, recreation, activism, and leisure have blurred beyond recognition. Worlds do not collide so much as they overlap, intermingle, cross-pollinate. At Various Small Fires, Anna Sew Hoy lets contemporary art and boutique couture segue into each other, often creating intriguing hybrids that are both approachable and alien, their nothing-specialness abuzz with a subtle charge of strangeness.

Gifford Phillips, a gentlemanly patron of cultural institutions and passionate advocate of contemporary art who played a leading role at museums on both coasts of the United States, has died. He was 94. Phillips died Wednesday of natural causes at a hospice in Palm Desert, said his daughter Marjorie Elliott. A member of a wealthy family - including his uncle, art collector Duncan Phillips, who founded the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. - Gifford Phillips was a partner in Pardee Phillips, a real estate developer of residential and commercial property in California and Nevada.

Former Royal/T and Test Kitchen chef Sandra Cordero's catering company Cordero Negro is teaming up with ART from the ashes , a nonprofit using art to support communities affected by natural disasters, for a benefit culinary pop-up and art exhibition featuring works of art from over fifty L.A.-based artists. The Wine Vault in Glendale will be hosting "Comida y Arte," scheduled to kick off on April 25 with an opening reception featuring cocktails and bar bites. On April 26 and 27, Cordero Negro will be serving up a paella party-themed threecourse menu, starting at 6 p.m. The opening reception costs $20 per person and the dinner by Cordero Negro, available on April 26 and 27, is $40 per person.

It is a highly choreographed, unabashed spectacle, a contribution to the world of contemporary performance art from a most unexpected place: ikebana , the Japanese tradition of flower arranging. Backed with Broadway lighting and a large supporting cast, ikebana master Akane Teshigahara is promising to turn a once-intimate art into an onstage extravaganza titled “Iemoto Ikebana Live” on April 27, transforming the stage of the Aratani/Japan America Theatre in Los Angeles into the world's largest and most spectacular vase.

Shepard Fairey's first acts of street art have spawned a fictional film, “Obey the Giant.” (The film contains strong language and can be viewed  here .) The 20-minute short is based on Fairey's subversive Andre the Giant "Obey" sticker campaign of the early 1990s designed to challenge the Rhode Island mayor and art school powers-that-be. Director Julian Marshall, a recent grad from the Rhode Island School of Design (also Fairey's alma mater), recently raised $65,000 via Kickstarter to fund the project, which seems to have Fairey's blessing.

“The revolution will be televised.” That's what Sean “Diddy” Combs promises for his lifestyle cable network, Revolt, set to launch in July. Ahead of the launch, the hip-hop mogul has rolled out a social media campaign to tease the network, including video vignettes that feature Mac Miller and the Game and a handful of cryptic trailers promising Revolt's aim to be a game changer. The channel will focus on art, music, fashion, culture and film -- all things Combs knows quite well.

The L.A. County Museum of Art has signaled its commitment to African art by paying $1 million for a 3-foot-high "Gwan" sculpture of a mother and infant, believed to help ensure healthy childbirth by the Bamana peoples of Mali. "It's one of the oldest surviving wood sculptures of Africa and probably the oldest Gwan figure in existence," said Polly Nooter Roberts, a curator of African art at LACMA and professor at UCLA. According to carbon dating, the piece was made between 1432 and 1644, earlier than Gwan figures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.