Ok, let's put an end to all this -- Pasadena (California) is the place you
want to go!
October 10 - 31:
"SKIN: Art & Ideas 2007," a Pasadena festival of art, science, music,
history, and ideas. artideasfestival.org
October 12: "ArtNight Pasadena," 14 cultural venues open their doors free of
charge, with free shuttle transportation! artnightpasadena.org
Pasadena: where the same spark of creativity ignites both the arts and
sciences. The Norton Simon Museum's incredible painting collection;
Caltech; Carnegie Observatories, headquartered in Pasadena, and their
network of Chilean telescopes; the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena
Conservatory of Music, and Pasadena Museum of California Art; Mount Wilson's
new Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, an interferometer array
that can see a nickel from 10,000 miles; the treasures of art and science at
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens; Art Center
College of Design; The Gamble House; Pasadena Jazz Institute; The Planetary
Society; Pasadena City College, Sidestreet Projects, NewTown, Spitzer
Science Center, the long-standing Pasadena Symphony and Grammy-award winning
Southwest Chamber Music, Pasadena Arts Council; the venerable Pasadena
Playhouse, and newcomers Boston Court Theater and Furious Theater -- to name
a few.
Pasadena has always been a fertile place for left and right brains, art and
science, the two intertwined with the city's history and identity like
strands of DNA. Names and places from the region's history spill into the
present. Google the name Edwin Powell Hubble, and you'll get back over a
hundred-thousand links. Hubble was the astronomer whose observations from
Mount Wilson's (overlooking Pasadena) 100-inch Hooker telescope produced
"Hubble's Law" in 1929, providing a basis for the development of cosmology's
Big Bang theory.
And as Hubble was scanning the sky from his mountain perch, Ernest
Batchelder was busy on the edge of Pasadena's Arroyo Seco below, creating
clay tiles that spoke of our relationship to earth ‹ rich textured ceramics
that helped define the growing "Crown Valley" as a gathering-place for
artists and craftsmen. Albert Einstein stayed here in the early 30's, and
Stephen Hawking visits frequently today. Charles and Henry Greene developed
their incomparable bungalow architecture here, while Throop Polytechnic
Institute where Batchelder taught, later morphed into Caltech. The Pasadena
Art Institute became the Pasadena Art Museum (PAM) in the 1950s, and
introduced artists like Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein to
the West Coast. PAM later became the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, which
spawned the Armory Center for the Arts and the Pasadena Art Alliance, before
finally transforming into the Norton Simon Museum.
Theodore von Karman established the principles of modern aviation and jet
flight while in Pasadena, and now Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the center of
solar system space exploration. And while physicist Richard Feynman explored
cosmic ideas at Caltech, he played bongos with Pasadena artist Jirayr
Zorthian.
Perhaps more than any of its other qualities, Pasadena's longtime devotion
to the arts and sciences is what makes it a quintessential city for the
twenty-first century. Expressive of humans' capacity to intuit broad
concepts or analyze complex minutiae, and to be driven in endeavors by deep
emotion as well as soaring intellect, art and science together reflect an
elemental dualism ‹ a dialogue between creativity and reason, between a
sense of wonder and a knowledge of facts ‹ a way to move forward with both
sides of the human brain in productive correspondence.
From the Pasadena Art Museum's 1953 acquisition of the Galka Scheyer "Blue
Four" (Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Klee) collection, to The
Huntington's recent acquisition of the exhaustive Burndy Library history of
science, Pasadena's ROCKS!!
_____________________________________
S t e p h e n N o w l i n
http://xrl.us/googlewilliamson
Vice President, Director,
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery
Art Center College of Design
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena, CA 91103
626.396.2397
[log in to unmask]
http://www.williamsongallery.net
http://www.artandscience.us
http://www.pasadena-culture.net
_____________________________________
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