Hilton Kramer

Museum director and educator Henry Hopkins speaks with art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer. This interview originally aired April 18, 1987 on KUSC. Listen Now

John Cage biographer Franz van Ossum

Dorothy Crawford speaks with John Cage biographer Franz van Ossum about the composer's life in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912. Listen Now

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Rachel Rosenthal and Elyse Grinstein

Rachel Rosenthal (b. 1926) is an interdisciplinary performer who developed a revolutionary performance technique that integrates text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, inventive costuming, dramatic lighting and wildly imaginative sets into an unforgettable "total theater" experience. In the last twenty-five years of her performing career she presented over 40 full-scale pieces ... Listen Now

Mel Powell

Mel Powell (1923 - 1988) began his musical life as a prodigious jazz artist, working as pianist and arranger with the Benny Goodman Orchestra and later, the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band. Soon, however, a strong compositional instinct prompted his matriculation at Yale University, where he studied with Paul ... Listen Now

Bella Lewitzsky

Bella Lewitzsky (1916 - 2004) was a modern dancer, choreographer and noted teacher.The interviewer, Irene Borger, is a writer, teacher, and director of the Alpert Award in the Arts.Lewitzky was born to Russian immigrant parents in Llano del Rio, California. Her family later moved to San Bernardino, where ... Listen Now

Peter Shire

Peter Shire (b. 1947) is an artist. He was born in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles, where he currently lives and works. His sculpture, furniture and ceramics have been exhibited in the United States, Italy, France, Japan and Poland; Shire has been associated with the Memphis Group of ... Listen Now

Terry Wolverton, Betty Ann Brown and Cheri Gaulke

Woman's Building - 15th Anniversary Celebration, hosted by Ruth Weisberg, artist and professor at USC.Terry Wolverton is a literary artist and author.  In 1976, she moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building.  Terry spent the next thirteen years working and creating ... Listen Now

Beatrice Wood

Beatrice Wood (1893-1998) was not only a prominent, studio potter, artist, and writer, but also a key figure in the modernist movement, whose nickname was the “Mama of Dada”. Her rich and colorful life spanned the course of the 20th century, and included many of its most innovative figures: Edgar ... Listen Now

Walter Hopps

A native of Eagle Rock, California, maverick gallery owner, curator, and museum director Walter Hopps (1932-2005) founded the groundbreaking Ferus Gallery in West Hollywood in 1957, creating a vibrant hub for those who made and collected modern art. They included Hopps’s business partner, Ed Kienholz, whose “assemblage art” used pieces ... Listen Now

Ray Eames

Bernice Alexandra "Ray" Eames was born in Sacramento in 1912. In 1933 she graduated from Bennett Women's College in Millbrook, New York, and moved to New York City, where she studied abstract expressionist painting with Hans Hofmann. She was a founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936 and ... Listen Now

Clement Greenberg

Before becoming a prominent art critic, Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) briefly studied art at the Art Students League in New York City. In 1930, at the height of the Depression, he graduated from Syracuse University with a BA in Literature. In the latter half of the 1930’s, Greenberg contributed to the ... Listen Now

Nicolas Slonimsky and William Kraft

Russian-born Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) moved to the United Stated in 1923 to work as accompanist. He continued his composition and conducting studies in the US while also teaching music theory and writing about music for publications like the Boston Evening Transcript and the Christian Science Monitor. Slonimsky championed contemporary classical ... Listen Now

William Winant and Gordon Mumma

Composer and percussionist William Winant (b. 1953) is closely associated with composers Lou Harrison and John Zorn, and was a member of the eclectic bands Mr. Bungle and Oingo Boingo. In 2003, Winant created music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s 50th anniversary at the Tate Modern in London. His ... Listen Now

Betty Asher & Irving Blum

Betty Asher (1914-1994) was a contemporary art collector and dealer in Los Angeles for thirty years. After working as a registered nurse at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, she moved to LA with her former husband, Dr. Leonard Asher, during WWII. She was known for her extensive collection of ... Listen Now

Betty Freeman

Composer John Adams called her a “modern-day Medici” and dedicated “Nixon in China” to her. Born Betty Wishnick in Chicago on June 2, 1921, Freeman moved with her family to Brooklyn and then to New Rochelle, N.Y., where she grew up. She learned the art of philanthropy from her father, ... Listen Now