Community Engagement

In 1995 Mary Ann Villarreal conducted her first oral history interview. With a list of questions, a cassette recorder, and microphone in hand she met Marisela Norte at the Astro Burger on Beverly Blvd. In between the street noise, she collected a set of moving stories about the places that inspired Norte’s writings. A few years later, Villarreal used both a cassette recorder and digital video camera to capture the oral histories of the women who took center stage in her book Listening to Rosita.

CHELSEA MOORE Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington

When she was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared: Gay rights are human rights, and the US joined other liberal democracies in promoting acceptance of sexual and gender diversity. That policy has been effectively reversed under the current Administration. How important is the US role, both as a great power but more significantly, through the enormous influence of American cultural products on the rest of the world.

As climate change intensifies and Los Angeles suffers through more days of extreme heat each year, shade is quickly becoming an equity issue of crucial importance. How can we coordinate efforts to increase the tree canopy and update street-furniture design with other improvements to create a comprehensive strategy for providing shade where we need it most? How can designs to increase shade be incorporated into other large-scale planning efforts across the city and region, including Metro expansion, efforts to reimagine the Los Angeles River and the 2028 Summer Olympics?

The city’s Office of Historic Resources has compiled an extensive database of cultural and architectural resources, known as Survey L.A. This important effort runs through the year 1980, leaving open the question of how to catalogue and protect the rich variety of architecture produced between 1980 and 2000 by such figures as Frank Gehry, Charles Moore, Franklin Israel and the pair of Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg, to name just a few.

The 2019 series kicks off at Barnsdall Gallery Theater, next door to Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1921 Hollyhock House. Architects, planners, critics and historians often praise works of architecture or urban design for suggesting an authentic sense of place — or knock them for lacking it. But what precisely does it mean for a design — of an apartment building, a park, a Metro line, a bus stop or a 2028 Olympic venue, or even a song or work of art — to reflect the spirit of Los Angeles, or of a specific site or neighborhood in the city?

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Monday, February 4, 2019

All day, Academic Quad
Art Exhibition: Gender, Sexuality and Collective Action (runs through the end of the week)

View the full schedule of events for UN Week 2019: Gender, Sexuality and Collective Action.