UCLA Broad Art Center opens! "LA is one of the great art capitals of the world"

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Activision Blizzard Inc. announced a small acquisition Monday that kickstarts big plans to develop a broadcast empire around electronic sports (aka video games) that rivals what ESPN has done for contact sports.

The Santa Monica video game maker purchased Major League Gaming, an online broadcaster and events producer founded in 2002. MLG was among the first to recognize that watching others play video games was something that people would spend hours doing. Key to Activision Blizzard are MLG’s video streaming technology, relationships with rival video game companies and a workforce that’s spent more than a decade organizing shows it wants to put on as well.

http://www.latimes.com/business/tech...104-story.html

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UC Irvine receives a record $40-million gift for nursing school
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...113-story.html

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Getty purchases Gentileschi's radiant 'Danaë,' now owns 2 of 3 paintings in a set

Two down, one to go.

That's a bit of wishful thinking, but the J. Paul Getty Museum's acquisition Thursday of Orazio Gentileschi's magnificent Baroque masterpiece "Danaë" excites the imagination.

The painting is the first in a set of three commissioned from the Rome-based, Pisa-born artist in 1621 by Giovanni Antonio Sauli for his lavish palazzo in Genoa, the booming seaport on Italy's northwest coast. The second, "Lot and His Daughters," has been in the Getty's collection since 1998, where it will now be happily reunited with "Danaë."

Tantalizingly, the third picture in the celebrated set — which together sealed Gentileschi's reputation as a major Baroque artist — remains in an unidentified New York private collection. There's no telling what might happen down the road (my crystal ball is broken), but one can dream.

The purchase required an outlay of $30.5 million during a brief but nerve-racking bidding session at Sotheby's auction house in New York, but rivals did drop out rather quickly. Much of the big-ticket auction action these days goes to Modern and contemporary art, so those deep pockets were sidelined. And, institutionally, few museums have the Getty's resources, while voluptuous female nudes don't go over well in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, where big art museums are being built from scratch with vast oil wealth.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...30-column.html

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LACMA gets gravity-defying John Lautner-designed home featured in 'The Big Lebowski

The architect John Lautner — Frank Lloyd Wright disciple, iconoclast and reluctant Angeleno — produced a number of strikingly unorthodox, gravity-defying houses in the decades after World War II. For pure drama, few can match the 1963 Sheats-Goldstein house just above Beverly Hills.

The living room, familiar to fans of the 1998 Coen brothers film "The Big Lebowski," where it belonged to a pornographer and loan shark played by Ben Gazzara, begins dark and cave-like, tucked under a coffered concrete roof. Then, as you move out toward the pool, the roof shoots skyward like an ascending airplane wing, bringing you face to face with a view that puts much of Los Angeles at your feet.

Now the house is poised to meet a much wider audience. James F. Goldstein, who bought the property in 1972 and has made improving and expanding it an expensive personal crusade, has agreed to donate it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...17-column.html

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Space shuttle's external fuel tank will take a long, complex journey to L.A.

But the tank was in New Orleans and was about as tall as a 15-story building. Getting it to L.A. wouldn't be easy.

Next month, though, the tank — an orange behemoth dubbed ET-94 — will begin its journey to the Science Center in Exposition Park, where it will be permanently displayed with Endeavour.

Museum officials on Thursday will formally announce the details of ET-94's trip from NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans — a complex logistical mission involving dozens of scientists, engineers, utility workers and police officers. In the coming weeks, it will travel by sea, cross the Panama Canal and traverse L.A. streets to its final destination.

http://www.latimes.com/local/califor...303-story.html

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RIVERSIDE: RCC unwraps 'gift' of downtown complex

Three years after breaking ground on their $80 million Centennial Plaza project at Market Street and University Avenue, trustees of the Riverside Community College District gathered on Sunday with some 400 guests to dedicate and open the complex.

The dedication came on the 100th anniversary of the founding of Riverside City College on March 13, 1913, and the 25th anniversary of groundbreaking for the district’s Moreno Valley and Norco campuses.

http://www.pe.com/articles/coil-7969...rict-hall.html

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The Petersen is receiving the original DeLorean from the Back to the Future movies, on permanent loan from Universal Studios, says a release from the museum. The car first appeared in the first installment of the film franchise, which opened in 1985.

http://la.curbed.com/2016/3/16/11246...uture-delorean

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Kaiser Permanente's new medical school will be in Pasadena

Kaiser Permanente is moving forward with its ambitious plan to open a medical school that's more in tune with new technologies and local communities.

The Oakland-based healthcare provider said Thursday its institution will be located in Pasadena. And it talked about how it will try to attract a more diverse student body.

Kaiser said it chose central Pasadena because the site is close to major freeways, public transportation options and affordable housing. Kaiser is also well-established in the surrounding area, with 14 hospitals in Southern California and medical office complexes in Pasadena and Glendale. The school will also be within several miles of facilities where students will be trained.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...310-story.html

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USC Village Aerial March 2016

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Log in! UCI launching e-sports initiative for video gamers, building e-arena

IRVINE – UC Irvine is moving to create a sports arena, hire a coach and offer scholarships to entice 10 top students to join a collegiate team.

A team of video gamers.

The university is launching what it says is the first of its kind in a public university: an e-sports initiative for gamers.

By next fall, UCI will offer a center with high-end gaming PCs, a stage for competitions and a live webcasting studio.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/u...orts-wang.html

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Indio approves capacity increase for bigger crowds at Coachella, Stagecoach

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Stagecoach Country Music Festival are about to get more crowded.

Indio’s city council unanimously approved the expansion of the capacity of Coachella from 99,000 people to 125,000 per weekend and Stagecoach from 75,000 to 85,000 per weekend, The Desert Sun reports. However, the capacity increase would be gradual and concert promoter Goldenvoice would expand the festival site by 50 acres.

Coachella, which will have its twin editions April 15-17 and April 22-24 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, followed by Stagecoach April 29-May 1, has routinely sold out.

The festivals will generate upwards of $700 million globally this year, according to an economic forecast released last month, and more than $400 million will impact the Coachella Valley, based on sellouts of all three festivals.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/c...dio-music.html

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SpaceX rocket achieves sea landing, setting up Elon Musk's firm to dominate

Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed a booster rocket on a drone ship for the first time Friday, a milestone that could lessen the cost of delivering cargo to space and place the Hawthorne company in position to dominate the commercial launch services market.

The Falcon 9 stage touched down on the drone ship, called Of Course I Still Love You, moored in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral, Fla., shortly after hurling a payload destined for the International Space Station. It was the company's fifth attempt at a sea landing — the most recent failure came last month after a commercial payload launch from the same site.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...409-story.html

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Soaring Through Little Toyko's Upcoming Budokan Center
http://la.curbed.com/2016/4/8/113940...budokan-center

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Last flight-qualified space shuttle fuel tank in existence begins its journey to L.A.

The journey began early Sunday when crews delicately pushed the 15-story space shuttle fuel tank from its outdoor perch outside NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility onto an ocean barge bound for Los Angeles.

These were the first tiny steps in what will ultimately be a giant leap for the rust-colored behemoth dubbed ET-94.

The tank — the last flight-qualified external tank in existence — will travel by barge, traverse the Panama Canal, dock in Marina del Rey and drive along Los Angeles streets before arriving next month at the California Science Center, where it will be permanently displayed with the shuttle Endeavour.

http://www.trbimg.com/img-570b1128/t...10/600/600x338

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It could rank as the classic rock concert of the century — six bands and performers who revolutionized popular music in the 1960s gathering in the Southern California desert over a single weekend in October.

The company that stages the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is planning a three-night event featuring Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Neil Young and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters — all Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees — Oct. 7-9 at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, The Times has learned.

The company's flagship event, the Coachella festival that began Friday, has become the best-attended and highest-grossing music festival in the world — with attendance at 99,000 a day over six days.

Coachella's six-day gross of more than $84.3 million last year dwarfed the competition, according to Pollstar, the concert industry-tracking publication.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...415-story.html

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What a new Pasadena office means for the group building world’s largest land-based telescope

When you’re in the business of building the world’s largest land-based telescope you need room to grow.

That’s what prompted the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization’s recent move to a larger 46,000-square-foot location at 465 N. Halstead St. in Pasadena. It’s a significant step up from the organization’s former 12,500-square-foot space on South Lake Avenue.

“We had a core group of about 45 to 50 people at the old location and now we have about 100, but that will top out at 140 to 150 people over the next 12 to 18 months,” said Patrick McCarthy, project director and interim president of the GMTO, an international consortium of leading universities and science institutions behind the initiative to build the telescope. “We’re working as fast as we can to find the engineering talent we need. Engineers are in very high demand right now.”

http://www.sgvtribune.com/science/20...ased-telescope

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LACMA receives a historic $75-million windfall, creating an energetic and hope-filled momentum

It once seemed like a herculean, if not insurmountable, challenge – raising $600 million or more for an ambitious modernist building to serve as the new home for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Elaine Wynn, who is one of the world's top art collectors and became a museum co-chair last year, has pledged $50 million to the project. At the same time, former Univision chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio has promised $25 million. Combined, it amounts to the largest monetary donation in the museum's history.

The new pledges are contingent on the successful launch of the new Peter Zumthor-designed building project, which begins the environmental review process this summer. If all goes as planned, construction would begin in 2018 and be completed in 2023. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors previously approved $125 million for the project.

If completed, the new building would rank as one of the most important works of architecture to be built in Los Angeles since Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in 2003. Local leaders see Zumthor's sleek design as crucial to lifting LACMA to the top ranks of the world's art museums.

With an emphasis on glass and transparency, and a layout that would spread the museum's footprint over Wilshire Boulevard, the new building is intended to energize the campus and provide a visitor experience that is both inviting and architecturally innovative.

Wynn said her $50-million gift was inspired by Perenchio's decision in 2014 to pledge the bulk of his private art collection to LACMA. His collection has an estimated value of $500 million.

While Wynn has long been associated with Las Vegas, she is now a part-time Angeleno, with a residence in Beverly Hills.

"My children and grandchildren live there. … I've always loved L.A. I consider it to be a suburb of Las Vegas, but Las Vegas is really a suburb of L.A."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...428-story.html