Arts

Resilience, joy, sadness, gratitude, hope, compassion, anger and love are emotions we have all experienced at one time or another. But here’s something I have never experienced: a series of immersive art installations exploring the full spectrum of human emotion. Welcome to the Hospital Of Emotions where four floors of a historic Los Angeles medical campus have been transformed into a walkable landscape of human emotion featuring more than 80 immersive rooms created by 70 artists and designers from around the world.

At times delightful, whimsical, poignant and heartbreaking, this is one of the most original and thoughtful artistic endeavors I’ve ever encountered. Sharing the experience with other visitors – each reacting in some way to the work – made it even more meaningful. The artist statements and intentions for their designs, like Room 18 in the Resilience Department, Melan Allen’s The Eggsibition, brought deeper context to the sunny tone of the visual. Room 07 in the Joy Department by Javiera Estrada invited a step into a colorful game of Twister, but reminded us that “joy often lives in the messy choreography of being human together.” Room 50 in the Compassion Department, The Listening by Natalia Pavlova, offered a monumental ear to receive visitors’ words of worries, burdens or hopes and then a giant mouth to exhale the reflections in a “shared landscape of emotion.”

This temporary installation was conceived by House of Art and Dreams, ROYVA Group and is housed in one of LA’s most historically significant medical institutions, the St. Vincent Medical Center (2131 W 3rd St). Founded some 160 years ago, generations of Angelenos passed through its halls during moments of birth, illness, recovery, grief and survival. Much of the original hospital infrastructure – patient rooms, nurses’ stations, white boards with medical notations – remain intact within the artist installations.

Visitors receive a patient wristband and “emotional chart” at the nurse station check in to carry through until they are “discharged.” The experience is well designed, balancing spectacle with sincerity. This is just the place to heal your heART.  

This Immersive Art Exhibition Now through August 31, 2026. For more, click here.

Set against the lush, garden backdrop of the Los Angeles County Arboretum, Pasadena Summer POPS offers one of Southern California’s loveliest outdoor concert settings.

The POPS settle into full summer swing in July with a season built for picnics, big melodies, and familiar stars. Concerts begin at 7:30 p.m., with gates opening at 5:30 p.m., giving audiences time to settle in under the San Gabriel Mountains.

The July schedule opens July 11 with Dancing in the Street: Music of Motown, a crowd-pleasing night of songs made famous by the Temptations, Supremes, Stevie Wonder and other soul legends. On July 25, the mood shifts to cocktail-hour glamour with A Toast to the Rat Pack, starring Carmen Bradford, Steve Lippia and Todd Murray in music associated with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald.

August brings a pair of strong closers. On August 15, Remember When Rock Was Young: The Elton John Experience features Craig A. Meyer channeling the Rocketman’s costumes, charisma and hits, from Tiny Dancer to Crocodile Rock. The season finale arrives August 29 with Music of the Night: Andrew Lloyd Webber & Friends, featuring Scarlett Strallen and Hugh Panaro in a Broadway-forward program.

From Motown and swing to Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Pasadena POPS has shaped a summer schedule around proven crowd-pleasers and polished talent, making the Arboretum one of Southern California’s most elegant outdoor concert destinations.

For more, click here.

The largest traveling collection of real mummies and artifacts ever assembled is concluding its final tour stop at the California Science Center on September 7th. The exhibition first debuted in Los Angeles in 2010 and returns for one final opportunity to see this show before it closes forever.

This comprehensive show features more than 30 naturally and intentionally preserved human and animal mummies from ancient Egypt, South America, and Europe, some dating back 4,500 years. Visitors learn how CT scans, X-rays, and DNA analysis uncover secrets about ancient lives and cultures without unwrapping the bodies. The exhibit includes full-body mummies, burial objects, mummification tools, and interactive audio-visual programs on these discoveries. Visitors also explore the science of natural mummification in varied environments, from glaciers and deserts to underground European crypts.

Select specimens have never been seen in Los Angeles or toured. These include 18th-century medical mummies, two mummified ancient Egyptian priests, a shrunken sloth head, two ancient Peruvian bundle mummies, and MUMAB, the Mummy of the University of Maryland at Baltimore, the first ancient Egyptian-style mummification performed in 2,800 years to study, through replication, this famous but poorly understood procedure.

Don’t miss the last chance to experience Mummies of the World at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. General admission to the museum is free but timed-entry tickets are required for this exhibit.

For more, click here.

As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Autry Museum of the American West invites visitors to explore the American experiment through a distinctly Los Angeles lens. “Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles,” now on view in the Marilyn and Calvin Gross Gallery, examines how generations of Angelenos have interpreted and pursued the ideals of life, liberty, and happiness in one of the country’s most dynamic and complex cities. Drawing from historical artifacts, contemporary art, multimedia installations, and community collaborations, the exhibition traces the stories of diverse communities whose experiences have shaped Los Angeles from its earliest days to the present. The exhibition highlights both the opportunities and contradictions embedded within the nation’s founding principles, revealing how those ideals continue to influence civic life, identity, and belonging. Visitors will encounter personal narratives that span generations, including stories of migration, activism, cultural expression, and community-building. By placing Los Angeles at the center of a larger national conversation, the exhibition encourages reflection on how the pursuit of freedom and opportunity continues to evolve across the region. Presented through the Autry’s signature “The View From Here” perspective, “Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles” offers a timely exploration of the people, histories, and ideas that have shaped the city for more than two centuries. Whether longtime Angelenos or first-time visitors, audiences are invited to consider Los Angeles not only as a place but also as a living reflection of America’s past, present, and future.

For more, click here.