Museums Los Angeles County

The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History has lost its eligibility to apply for new federal support from the National Science Foundation in a dispute over more than $250,000 in grant money the government contends may have been misspent. The science foundation has relaxed the ban on new grant funding in one instance in the last few weeks, but the situation is somewhat ironic since Craig C.

When the new dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opens in July, the most striking and transformative change will reflect a famous command from the Book of Genesis: "Let there be light. " No, Luis Chiappe, the museum's top dinosaur scientist, and his colleagues at the Exposition Park museum's Dinosaur Institute have not adopted biblical creationists' belief that the creatures they study lived and died out no more than 6,000 years ago. Chiappe is quite certain that Dinosaur Hall's denizens range in age from 65 million to 220 million years old. But museum leaders have decided that, after decades of showing eons-old bones in halls that were dim and dimmer, illuminating the story of the dinosaurs would be better accomplished by shedding a lot more light on the subject.

For 10 years now, the Greystone Mansion has sat empty, a Beverly Hills colossus of 55 rooms and 46,054 square feet, perched on 18 acres of hillside near Trousdale Estates. And no one seems to know what to do with it. The majestic Tudor-style mansion--considered the crown jewel in a landscape of fabled homes--is owned by the city, which so far has found no public use for it. Time after time, grand schemes have fizzled.

Waging the biggest fundraising campaign in its history in the face of stiff economic headwinds hasn't been easy for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, but director Jane Pisano was optimistic Thursday while announcing that the goal has been raised from $115 million to $135 million to allow for new nature-oriented attractions, a parking structure and additional seismic improvements. Projected as a five-year fundraising and renovation project when it began in 2007, the campaign, now dubbed "NHM Next," has been extended to 2013, when the Exposition Park museum will celebrate its centennial.

Attendance at the lowrider exhibition at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles has been stunning organizers since the show opened in February. But Ricardo Gonzalez doesn't think anyone should have been taken by surprise. The publisher of Lowrider magazine knows how interest in the lowered, highly customized cars--and the lowriding lifestyle--has spread in recent years. Lowrider, after all, holds the distinction of being the best-selling newsstand automotive periodical in the country.

The fate of Norton Simon's art collection is the most brightly burning issue in Southern California's art scene. Will his $750-million collection of European and Asian art stay in Pasadena in the building that bears his name? Will the museum merge with the J. Paul Getty Museum? Will Simon donate the collection to other museums? Or will he sell the whole thing in the art auction of the century?

"We are the Picassos of the boulevard. We are the working man's work of art." --Kita Lealao, lowrider. * If the car is the signature of America, then the lowrider could be considered a defining mark of the Mexican American. The car that has swelled the hearts of tough pachucos, prompted serenades by Chicano bands and created an allure for a forbidden ethnic Los Angeles has hit the mainstream.

The reactions of hordes of children to the new satellite branch of the county's Natural History Museum were concise, though not particularly eloquent: Gross! Eeeeeuuuuu! Ick! In short, it was a hit. The children--and some slightly squeamish parents--were reacting to "Backyard Monsters: The World of Insects," the opening exhibit of the $2-million facility in Burbank.

The good news about the surprising appointment of Michael E. Shapiro to the directorship of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is that the 42-year-old Midwesterner has strong curatorial priorities. After a dozen years in which physical growth and program expansion were the principal goals for the Wilshire Boulevard museum, it's important that someone whose first love is the presentation and interpretation of art has now assumed the helm. LACMA's new breadth could use some depth.

The Getty Center may look like an ultramodern castle on a hill, and for the most part it is. But in the case of the new J. Paul Getty Museum, the center's main public attraction, what you see from the freeway is not necessarily what you will find inside.

Sixty-five million years of history meets cutting-edge interactive technology in the exhibit "Age of Mammals," opening Sunday at the Natural History Museum. The new permanent exhibit, housed in the museum's renovated northern wing, chronicles the evolution of mammals via skeletons, taxidermy, hands-on kiosks and multimedia displays. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Blvd., L.A. 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. $9 for adults; $6.50 for students, seniors and children 13-17; $2 for children 5-12; free for children under 5. (213)

I wish I could play with that cartoonish phrase and say, "Jane Pisano slept with the fishes," but "slept with" here means "camped out under" and "fishes" is really a whale: the great Humboldt fin whale that hangs in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. It was under that skeleton that she and some donors unfurled their sleeping bags not long ago. Pisano has been the museum's president and director for nearly nine years. That's not exactly an eon, but it's a good piece of time in the history of a museum that turns 100 years old in 2013.

Take a trip to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and you're bound to encounter some impressive bone structures. Popular tenants include the Tyrannosaurus rex and a complete cast of the long-necked Mamenchisaurus. But the biggest dinosaur is perhaps the building itself -- a hulking, fossilized fortress from a bygone era.

Choosing between a tear-down and a fixer-upper, leaders of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art took the leap Wednesday. They unanimously approved a proposal by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to demolish most of the buildings at the Mid-Wilshire site and replace them with a vast structure that sits on columns and is topped by a tent-like roof.

From its psychedelic flier to its lineup of deep thinkers on the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, "Media Pop" appeared to be a peculiar project for the Getty Research Institute. Sure enough, those who trekked up to the Getty Center to attend the conference Friday and Saturday found themselves staring at projected images of Marilyn Monroe, Campbell's soup cans, comic-strip romances and beefcake photos while art historians dissected and analyzed every last squiggle and dot.

"Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe," on view through May 6 at the Getty Center, is a rarity among current architecture exhibitions: It combines first-rate scholarship with the kind of historical insight that debunks old stereotypes.

Some folks collect stamps, others prefer matchbooks, but the only hobby that ever interested former Gardena City Councilman Chuck Nader was buying a barn and filling it with vintage Americana. He waited 30 years for that red-and-white barn in the middle of Gardena to go on sale, and when it did, 15 years ago, he grabbed it and filled it with country and western and other American nostalgia and created his own museum.

From its psychedelic flier to its lineup of deep thinkers on the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, "Media Pop" appeared to be a peculiar project for the Getty Research Institute. Sure enough, those who trekked up to the Getty Center to attend the conference Friday and Saturday found themselves staring at projected images of Marilyn Monroe, Campbell's soup cans, comic-strip romances and beefcake photos while art historians dissected and analyzed every last squiggle and dot.

Modernism in architecture--also referred to as International Style or functionalism--emerged after World War I, utilizing--and drawing inspiration from--modern technology and new materials. As architects tried to bring a building's purpose into harmony with its materials, structures stopped being just walls and started defining light and space.