Tom Teicholz

As I stood before the magnificent tapestries and tapestry cartoons (full sized drawings made in preparation for weaving) on display in “Once Upon a Tapestry: Woven Tales of Helen and Dido” at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (on view until May 27, 2019) I wondered if during the Middle Ages persons of means looked at the woven narratives unfolding serially across larger wall hangings as we do movies, TV and our smartphones – as entertainments, as chronicles of human foibles and for the mora...

A year from now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, known more popularly as the people who brings us The Oscars, hope to open their long-gestating Academy Museum of Motion Picture.
At a luncheon given by the Academy recently, Academy and Museum board members. executives and officials Ron Meyer, Dawn Hudson and Kerry Brougher offered a preview of their plans for the contents of the 300,000 square foot Renzo Piano designed Museum at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire which will in...

Andy Warhol is currently the subject of a much-praised career survey at the Whitney Museum in New York – which I look forward to seeing before the show closes next March. In the interim, for those of us on the West Coast with an interest in Warhol, there is a compelling show, “Contact Warhol: Photography Without End” at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University on view until January 6, 2019.
In the more than 30 years since his untimely death in 1987 at age 58, the Warhol Foundation has di...

On her new recording, “The Book of Longing,” Luciana Souza marries poetry and Jazz in an idiom all her own with spare accompaniment and her uniquely atmospheric vocals to haunting effect. Souza will be performing her lyrical new songs along with some of her more Brazilian-inflected tunes at UCLA’s Royce Hall on December 1 and at New York City’s Jazz Standard, December 14-16.
Recently I sat down with Souza to talk about the new recording and the path she has carved as a vocalist and an interpr...

One of the things I most enjoy about benefit concerts (beyond the whole save-the-world ethos), and music award shows (beyond the awards themselves) is seeing a wide spectrum of artists, each doing 3-5 songs. It’s sort the musical equivalent of a smorgasbord – enough to hear a favorite artist or song and discover someone worth exploring more and short enough to move from those who hold no appeal .
Which is why I so enjoyed ‘Across the Great Divide,” a recent benefit concert for both the Americ...

In London last month, my first stop was to visit the British Museum. Going there seemed an urgent priority. My thinking was that in such turbulent contemporary times, it is reassuring to see the classics of antiquity, those fundaments of Western Civilization that remain. At the same time, given our shifting ethical rationales concerning antiquities, I wanted to see again those British Museum treasures which may, sooner or later, be returned to their countries of origin and explore my feelings...

“Freakin’ Amazing!”
Those are words I never expected to hear from Rabbi Steven Leder, the senior Rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles (the congregation to which I belong).
Rabbi Leder was marveling at the Getty Museum’s latest acquisition, The 13th Century Rothschild Pentateuch (which is also the first Hebrew manuscript in the Getty’s collection).

Wilshire Boulevard Temple will host a special screening of the Los Angeles premiere of “The City Without Jews,” a long-lost, recently restored 1924 Austrian silent film, featuring live accompaniment on the temple’s magnificent, 4,102-pipe Korn Kimball organ.
This film could not be more timely (alas). The increase of anti-Semitic incidents in England, France, Hungary and Poland has prompted many Jews to consider emigrating from those countries. And this November will mark the 80th anniversary ...

The Skirball Museum in Los Angeles' exhibition 'Selections from Kehinde Wiley’s The World Stage: Israel' called to mind a novel I'd just finished reading, Seth Greenland's The Hazards of Good Fortune.

The world premiere of a ballet, Isadora, inspired by the life of Isadora Duncan, choreographed by Vladmir Varnava with Royal Ballet Principal dancer Natalia Osipova in the lead role, as performed at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa....

This Sunday September 9, 2018, The National Park Service will mark the dedication of “The Tower of Voices,” a 93-foot high tower of wind chimes that stands in Pennsylvania, at the entrance to the 2,200 square National Memorial Park dedicated to the 40 heroes of Flight 93 who perished on 9/11.

During the first week of July, Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, celebrated its 20th Anniversary and officially launched the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC), a bold plan to make this city of 1 Million people in a landlocked country of some 18 million citizens, the financial hub of Central Asia and a destination for European, Arab, and Asian investment. And here’s the thing... they just might succeed

Alison Saar’s new paintings and sculptures at LA Louver in Venice, CA, (on view through May 12, 2018) speak of a strength derived from a bitter harvest.
The exhibition is called “Topsy Turvy,” and the figures reference Topsy, a character in Harriett Beecher Stowe’s great abolitionist novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Topsy, as described by Stowe, had wooly hair that was braided into little tails that went every which way. Topsy is labelled a bundle of energy, and a mischievous, bad child, who has n...

This week’s Art Los Angeles Contemporary Art fair in Santa Monica, (Jan..25-28 at Barker Hanger) is no joke. And neither is Cheech Marin’s collection of Chicano Art.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) launches this Thursday, January 25 and runs through Sunday January 28 at Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. This is the ninth year of ALAC which has only grown in buzz, excitement, attendees and dealers. ALAC has a number of unique features: Of the more than 50 galleries exhibiting, half are from L...