Looking to the Future: Leimert Park | KCET

Looking to the Future: Leimert Park
The Leimert Plaza Park is at the heart of a neighborhood facing rapid change. It was laid out in the 1920s, by Frederick Law Olmsted’s sons, as a picturesque commuter suburb, an easy streetcar ride from downtown, with a small Beaux Arts plaza at its center. In that sense, it was a classic First L.A., pre-freeway district. It was also organized around restrictive racial covenants, which made its after WWII blossoming into a center of African-American political and cultural power all the more dramatic. Now, as a new light rail line is built along Crenshaw Boulevard, Leimert Park is poised for another dramatic transition. Much of this change can be understood by looking at just one slice of the neighborhood: the area around Leimert Plaza Park, which includes a restored Art Deco theater and a new set of black-owned galleries and businesses.
But that positive change is shadowed by a deep anxiety about the future. Those worries are in turn connected to a larger sense that the pace of change has become so quick in Los Angeles that it is beginning to make crucial cultural, ethnic and neighborhood distinctions less relevant — flattening and maybe even homogenizing a famously eclectic and diverse city.
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Upcoming Airdates
Masters of Modern Design: The Art of the Japanese American Experience
Season 10, Episode 1
From the iconic typeface of “The Godfather” book cover to Herman Miller’s Noguchi table, the influence of Japanese American artists and designers in postwar American art and design is unparalleled. While this second generation of Japanese American artists have been celebrated in various publications and exhibitions with their iconic work, less-discussed is how the World War II incarceration — a period of intense discrimination and hardship — has also had a powerful effect on the lives of artists such as Ruth Asawa, George Nakashima, Isamu Noguchi, S. Neil Fujita and Gyo Obata.
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2019-12-11T17:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
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2019-12-11T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
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2019-12-15T09:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
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2019-12-19T05:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
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2020-01-02T05:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
Heath Ceramics: The Making of a California Classic
Season 10, Episode 2
"Artbound" looks at the dinnerware of Heath Ceramics and a design that has stood the test of time since the company began in the late 1940’s. Through the writings of Edith Heath, the founder and designer of Heath Ceramics and voiced by renowned chef Nancy Silverton, this episode explores the groundbreaking work of a woman who created a classic of American design.
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2019-12-18T13:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
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2019-12-18T17:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
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2019-12-18T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
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2019-12-22T09:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
Día de Los Muertos / Day of the Dead
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Día de los Muertos has been adapted for centuries from its pre-colonial roots to the popular depictions in mass media today. Inspired by rich Oaxacan traditions, it was brought to East Los Angeles in the 1970s as a way to enrich and reclaim Chicano identity through a small celebration at Self Help Graphics and Art. Since then, the celebration has grown in proportions with renditions enacted in communities all around the world.
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2019-12-25T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
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2019-12-29T09:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
How Sweet The Sound: Gospel In Los Angeles
Season 10, Episode 4
Gospel music would not be what it is today if not for the impact left by Los Angeles in the late '60s and early '70s, a time defined by political movements across the country. Artists like James Cleveland and Aretha Franklin captured live recordings of the church experience of South Central and the voices and sentiment of the people coming together to give birth to a new gospel sound and the election of L.A.’ s first black mayor, Tom Bradley.
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2020-01-01T17:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
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