Morris Newman

Broad Art Center lifts concrete divide from UCLA

Published on November 9, 2006

In remodeling UCLA's old art school building, architects Richard Meier and Michael Palladino have taken a building that was essentially a wall and made it into a window. And the view through the window is good.

Designing woman preserves observatory’s past for future

Published on November 2, 2006

Brenda Levin, associate architect for the renovation and restoration of the original Griffith Observatory building and grounds.

Surprise lesson lurks in show of painters’ works

Published on October 5, 2006

The paintings of Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico.

Which came first: the building or the dress?

Published on September 14, 2006

"Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture," opening Nov. 19 at the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown, proposes that building design and haute couture have increasingly begun to overlap and borrow ideas from one another.

Dalai Lama Concepts Inspire Works of 3 Jewish Artists

Published on August 10, 2006

To paraphrase an old rye bread ad, you don't have to be Buddhist to admire his holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, or at least that's so in the case of at least three Jewish artists, who lend their artistic voices to "The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama," an exhibition currently at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

‘World Trade Center’ Writer Views Film as Catharsis

Published on August 4, 2006

"I wanted the movie to be a catharsis," says Andrea Berloff, the screenwriter of "World Trade Center," the Oliver Stone-directed docudrama that opens Aug. 9. "I've felt that way from the beginning." The film is a surprising coup for the young writer, a soft-spoken graduate of Cornell's Drama School, who has never before had a script produced.
If having her script produced is a coup for Berloff, the completed film is likely to be greeted with hailstorms of discourse, not least because it seems the current spate of 9/11 movies is a reminder that films have become a primary way for Americans to digest difficult and painful events.

Brain-Busting Doc, Eight Letters

Published on June 22, 2006

The cult status of The New York Times Crossword puzzle is the subject of "Wordplay," an uneven but entertaining documentary by director Patrick Creadon about the people who design the fiendishly difficult crossword puzzles for The Times and the gifted eccentrics who devote their lives to puzzle solving and who compete against each other with all the fury and devotion of Olympic athletes.

Shlub to Hero: Film Sketches Gehry Life

Published on May 18, 2006

Gehry's creative solution -- his psychoanalytic victory -- was to embrace the delight of free-form design, while making sure that his buildings met the needs of his clients. His freedom in designing what appear to be purely sculptural objects that subsequently win rapturous praise must make him the envy of all architects who secretly wish they could find such willing clients.