Start your weekend this Friday at 6 pm with a free, live performance at Jazz at LACMA, featuring the group House of Games. Known for their distinctive mix of jazz and fusion, the members of this group have individually worked with artists such as Ray Charles, Herbie Hancock, and Michael Bublé. The quartet, complete with guitar, piano, bass, and drums, has been thrilling audiences for decades.
Caryatid Stool, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Luba Peoples, 19th Century, Wood, glass beads, Royals Museum for Central Africa, RG 22725, Photo R. Asselberghs, RMCA, Tervuren ©
Make your way to the Ahmanson Building on Saturday for a Gallery Tour: Luba Art, Culture, and Cosmology Saturday at 11 am. Led by curator Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts and California State University, Northridge's associate professor of religious studies Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha, the discussion covers the importance of history, the role of women , the nuances of Luba philosophy. Visit a handful of LACMA’s galleries and exhibitions on view after the tour.
Three new exhibitions debuted this month, including David Hockney: Seven Yorkshire Landscape Videos, 2011, Agnès Varda in Californialand, and See the Light—Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection. Beyond those, check out Murmurs: Recent Contemporary Acquisitions and Princely Traditions and Colonial Pursuits in India.
Viva!—Rado—Ragni—Varda in Hommage to Magritte, Agnès Varda's film LIONS LOVE (. . . AND LIES), 1968, © Max Rabb / Agnès Varda
On Sunday at the Bing Theater, see Nicole Miller's Believing Is Seeing, a film work showcasing personal stories from San Bernardino residents that participated at the LACMA9 Art+Film Lab a few months ago and Redbelt, a film by David Mamet about a martial-arts instructor who blindly follows the code of morality. The day also includes Andell Family Sundays beginning at 12:30 pm, in which families and children are invited to craft animals found in Japanese art. See a live performance by violinist Martin Chalifour and pianist Nadia Shpachenko at Sundays Live.
Roberto Ayala