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One of Los Angeles’ most significant cultural landmarks, Simon Rodia’s monumental Watts Towers sculpture, finally re-opened last month after a five-year multimillion-dollar restoration effort spearheaded by LACMA. The project was overseen by the museum’s Senior Conservation Scientist... View full entry
“The mural had fallen into disrepair, its imagery so faded from the sun that some shapes were barely recognizable. On a trip to L.A. in 2017 to restore one of his murals, Davis visited Watts Towers and noted what terrible shape the work was in. It gnawed at him, how fragile the mural was, slowly and quietly deteriorating in plain sight.” — The Los Angeles Times
The mural-lined Watts Towers campus is currently at the end of a three-year conservation effort being overseen by LACMA. The largest is artist Alonzo Davis’ tribute to acclaimed visual artist and former Watts Towers Arts Center director John Outterbridge, who died last year. Davis, who... View full entry
Three sites in California — the Watts Towers, Noah Purifoy's Outdoor Desert Museum in Joshua Tree and the "Bay Lights" installation on the Oakland-Bay Bridge — have been named to a list of 11 "at-risk" sites by The Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington, D.C. [...]
"Landscapes often die quiet deaths when you're dealing with the elements," says foundation President Charles Birnbaum.
— latimes.com
Related: UCLA engineers will study the stability of Watts Towers View full entry
Gehry Partners has signed on to design a campus for the Children's Institute, Inc. (CII), a social services not-for-profit that provides youth development and education programs, as well as other family support and clinical services. For the project, the firm is collaborating with (fer) studio of Inglewood.
The new campus will occupy a 2-acre lot on East 102nd Street near its intersection with Compton Avenue. It is just a half-dozen block walk to the northwest of the Watts Towers.
— latimes.com
For the latest entry in the ShowCase series Archinect published the Shrine of the Virgin of "La Antigua" by Otxotorena Arquitectos. The project is located in Alberite, La Rioja, Spain and the architects main constraint was the need to "incorporate a preexisting stone archway in the design. This... View full entry
The Watts Towers in South Los Angeles will be the subject of a new study conducted by experts from UCLA to determine the stability of the historic sculptures, which were completed by Simon Rodia in 1954. The study, now underway, is expected to be completed by early next year. — latimes.com
Bud Goldstone (1926-2012), a former aerospace engineer who worked for over 50 years to save Watts Towers, has died at the age of 86.
In 1959 he devised the test to prove the Towers were structurally sound and stopped the City of Los Angeles from demolishing them. He was a founding member of the Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts, Inc., which successfully sued the city in 1985 to save the Towers from the city's neglect.
— kcet.org
"These people have been the stewards of Watts Towers all these years and have a tremendous sense of ownership to them. So while superstars like Walt Disney may be thought of as the consummate 20th-century Los Angeles hero, for those living on 107th Street and nearby, it's Simon Rodia." — WSJ
One of my favorite cultural landmarks of Los Angeles, Watts Towers, goes on yet another restoration. Still, we need more Angelinos to visit the Towers. "Now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs are working on a plan to restore Rodia's sculpture and... View full entry
