An African-American cultural center is coming to Long Beach — but it’s unclear when.

An advisory committee, which kicked off in January, was set to have its final meeting on Tuesday, July 30. But in one of its first actions at the meeting, the panel voted to extend its meetings through the end of the year.

Kathleen Brown, chief operating officer of Lord Cultural Resources, who has served as a consultant on the project, provided an overview on what the cultural center could include, based on months of community input. Among other details, Brown said the center likely would comprise 40,000 gross square feet and cater to at least 60,000 visitors annually. It would operate with a $2.2 million yearly budget with 17 full-time staff members. General admission would likely cost $10, with the option of $6 discounted tickets and $40 annual memberships.

In addition to historical and cultural exhibits, the committee showed an interest in programming such as dance classes, health and wellness classes, professional training and more.

The ability to touch allows visitors who usually spend limited time with each piece of art to actually stop, slow down, and soak up the texture, the line and often the essence of the piece through touch.

Although many local lovers of art may realize that the famous galleries of the world — such as the Louvre in Paris, the Met in New York, and the Victoria and Albert in London — offer guided tours for the visually impaired, many may not know that the Art Gallery of Hamilton also offers a monthly Touch Tour.

Lord Cultural Resources is currently working with the Art Gallery of Hamilton in developing a Strategy for Future Success.

EllisDon Construction Ltd. has won the contract to design, build and operate the Canada Pavilion and Public Presentation at Expo 2020 Dubai. Jim Carr, Minister of International Trade Diversification, presented the award to the construction service company. EllisDon will work with consortium members Moriyama & Teshima Architects, Lord Cultural Resources, Hatch, Kubik, Thornton Tomasetti, NGX and Cisco, to deliver the pavilion and public presentation space. According to Global Affairs Canada, the World Expo will bring people together from around the globe in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to encourage international collaboration.

Anne of Green Gables is an example of one of Canada’s best cultural exports. More than 100 years after it was published, the book by Lucy Maud Montgomery continues to have a substantial economic impact on Prince Edward Island, the setting of the classic children’s tale. It’s created a brand for PEI as a picturesque province with friendly people—a little piece of paradise by the ocean in Canada. It’s also arguably helped “Brand Canada” give foreigners positive feelings about the whole country.

Gail Lord says there’s no reason that same cultural success can’t be replicated across the country. As a culture exporter, she runs a global cultural consulting firm based in Toronto with offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Mumbai and Beijing.

“The more culture is exchanged, the more there’s human understanding,” Lord says, owner of Lord Cultural Resources. “Culture helps attract investment, industry, human understanding and tourism.”

Brilliant installation at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Human mark making over 4000 years from Saudi rock art to Cy Twombly.

Cartoonists and comic artists can be a self-referential bunch – all those deeply personal graphic novels or strips that show the illustrator at the drawing board awaiting inspiration.

There’s a particularly fanciful example in This is Serious: Canadian Indie Comics, an ambitious survey now showing at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. In a page from 2015 entitled Comics and Commerce in Canada, artist Jesse Jacobs jokes that comics are this country’s primary export and fastest growing economic sector, thanks to plentiful colour pigments sourced from the Assiniboine Volcano Range and the underwater cultivation of presoftened maple trees that can be readily sliced into paper. With a classic look of black-and-pale-green panels enlivened with spots of psychedelic colour, the comic’s witty combination of science fiction, wishful thinking and business-speak satire is irresistible.

Lord Cultural Resources is currently working with the Art Gallery of Hamilton in developing a Strategy for Future Success.

Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has just become the 14th head of the Smithsonian Institution -- and its first black leader. He sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss the challenges facing the world’s largest museum and research complex and why the Smithsonian is as much about today and tomorrow as it is about the past.

Lord Cultural Resources mourns the passing of architectural giant, Phil Freelon. Lord began working with Phil and the Freelon Group more than 20 years ago, with the creation of the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Together Lord and Freelon, developed an institution that asked the world, “When did you first learn you were African?”

The Rolling Stones haven't performed in New Orleans in 25 years, and ahead of their show Monday in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome — and with an extra day in town due to the delay caused by Hurricane Barry — the internationally famous rock stars found time to make the rounds.

Charlie Watts, Rolling Stones drummer visited the New Orleans Jazz Museum with Greg Lambousy, Museum Director. Watts has an important drum collection and is working with the Jazz Museum on a traveling exhibit.

U.S. Bank on Tuesday announced a five-year $1 million investment with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

El 2029 apunta a fecha importante para Montjuïc. Entonces se cumplirá un siglo de la urbanización de la montaña y de la Exposición Internacional que impulsó su transformación. Con la efeméride en el horizonte la Fira presentó, a principios de año, su plan de remodelación del espacio que ocupa en la montaña y, también con el centenario como meta, este lunes el Museu Nacional (MNAC) ha desgranado su plan estratégico 2019-2022. En el objetivo de la pinacoteca, responder a los tiempos actuales y seguir transformándose para ser más social (llegar a todo el mundo) y relevante. Pero para ello hay que crecer. Los metros se ganarán a través del pabellón Victòria Eugènia. ¿La previsión? Tenerlo todo ocupado en el 2029.

OTTAWA — Some victims of the federal government’s gay purge were so devastated by the experience that even decades later they needed the help of a therapist to fill out forms to receive financial compensation, says the lawyer who led a successful class action.

The Denver Art Museum feels a lot like my living room these days. Well, not my personal living room, which is smaller and has fewer paintings, but rather some grand, mutual parlor of culture we all share as a local community.

During a recent meeting with the Louisiana Museum Foundation Board of Trustees in New Orleans, Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser made two announcements regarding the future of the Louisiana State Museum system. First, Nungesser announced the Museum Governance Study being conducted by Lord Cultural Resources. Secondly, he will support legislation that would ultimately return the hiring of the Museum Director back to the Museum Board of Directors.

The Chase Center in San Francisco, a top-of-the-line stadium that will become home to the Golden State Warriors basketball team when it opens in September, has all the customary amenities one associates with a contemporary sports arena: jumbotrons, 18,000-plus seats for fans, numerous dining options, 40-plus luxury boxes and suites… and scores of works of art. Art!

EDWARDS, Miss. — Another Civil War site is being added to the Vicksburg National Military Park, one of Mississippi’s top tourist attractions.The 800-acre (324-hectare) Champion Hill battlefield is the largest single expansion in the park’s history. The state donated the land during a ceremony Tuesday.

Robert Vogel, southeastern regional director for the National Park Service, said the acquisition of the Champion Hill property is the next step in realizing the 1899 legislative mandate for the military park to “commemorate the entire Vicksburg Campaign on the ground where the battles were fought.”

Lord Cultural Resources is working with the Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park and Campaign to develop an interpretive master plan to bring the Campaign’s various battle sites together.

Everyone knows about the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC’s crown jewel of museums and research centers established in 1846 “for the increased and diffusion of knowledge.” They’re among the world’s most visited museums and a major reason why millions of tourists traipse around the nation’s capital every year. But the best museums in DC extend above and beyond the Smithsonian, including entire entities devoted to the news (the Newseum), spies (International Spy Museum), and solely women artists (National Museum of Women in the Arts). Large and small, eclectic and unique, they span a world of natural and cultural curiosities. Here are the best museums in DC, Smithsonian and not.

See our work with some of the incredible institutions mentioned in the article:

National Museum of African American History and Culture
Newseum
Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens

Turkish non-profit contemporary art space Arter is relocating to a state-of-the-art exhibition space in Dolapdere district. Arter, one of Turkey’s leading contemporary art non-profits, is graduating to a museum that will be a “game changer” for Istanbul. So promises its director, Melih Fereli, who is overseeing the move from the “small white cube” on Istiklal Street to a new 18,000 sq. m building in the central Dolapdere district designed by Grimshaw Architects. It is due to open on 13 September, during the preview of the 16th Istanbul Biennial.

Lord Cultural Resources provided a detailed Functional Program and Architect’s Brief for the new building, while simultaneously planning the program and developing a business plan in collaboration with the Foundation’s senior staff.

Plans to develop a national media archive in the former military complex known as The Hole are beginning to take shape with the help of newly announced funding from the provincial government. The Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation will be leaning on the expertise of firms Stantec and Lord Cultural Resources to review the status of the Norad facility, with the help of matching funds from Canadian Heritage, foundation executive director Kealy Wilkinson said.

Eleven years after a state law gave his office the power to appoint the leader of the Louisiana State Museum, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser wants that law changed and his authority curbed. If state lawmakers agree, the task of finding a new museum director will again fall to the museum's board of directors, rather than to the lieutenant governor, as has been the case since then-Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu pushed through the 2008 law.

After a decade of planning and research by Harlemites, an unused bus depot on East 126th Street is being prepared to honor its past state: a burial ground for enslaved and free African people. The city’s Economic Development Corporation says it will begin looking this fall for a nonprofit operator for the Harlem African Burial Ground, a cultural center and outdoor memorial set to take shape on a trapezoidal piece of land between Second and First Avenues. The project, officials say, comes with a promise of a built-in funding stream.

Joy Bailey-Bryant, a cultural development expert who wrote a feasibility study for the EDC, anticipated the investment in the center will bring lots of visitors. “We know from what’s happening with a lot of our cultural facilities,” she said. “We have to create a program that really both tells the story and draws in all different types of people.”

Abu Dhabi: An 18th century masterpiece painting, titled ‘Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy’, was gifted to the UAE by the United Kingdom as a token of goodwill and a symbol of enduring friendship between both countries here on Thursday.

Patrick Moody, the British Ambassador to the UAE, presented the masterpiece to Dr Hamed Bin Mohamed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Arts Society at his residence in Abu Dhabi.

WASHINGTON, DC, 19th July, 2019 (WAM) -- Zaki Nusseibeh, Minister of State, has said that the UAE places cultural and civilisational exchanges with the United States and other countries at the top of its priorities.This came during Nusseibeh's visit to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, accompanied by Dr. Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large.

The Nightingale care home in Clapham is displaying a major work from the Ben Uri collection in the gallery’s first long-term loan to a non-museum location.

It began with a flurry of landmark appointments. Last year, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum welcomed Ellen Stofan as its first female director, and then Anthea Hartig was named the first woman to helm the popular National Museum of American History. By the time Kaywin Feldman arrived in March as the first female director of the National Gallery of Art — one of the country’s most prestigious museums — the unusual had become almost commonplace. Washington’s wave of female museum leaders marks a sea change for a field that has traditionally been led by white men. But it also promises progress in another thorny area: the long-standing and systemic gender pay gap.

After a long hiatus from expos, Canada is returning to the global stage in Dubai in 2020. What story will we tell about our future? Maybe a look at our past can help

Across the world ICOM provides a common framework for museums, a forum for professional discussions, and a platform for questioning and celebrating heritage and collections in museums and cultural institutions. A shared definition of the museum serves as the backbone for ICOM as a global organisation.

Starting this fall, the Chazen Museum of Art will be open for 84 hours a week — an increase of 36 hours from its current schedule — which UW-Madison says will make it the “most open” in the United States, Canada and Mexico. On Sept. 3, the art museum, located in the heart of UW-Madison’s campus, will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.

Alfredo Jaar's new immersive installation inside a tunnel at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania simulates heaven, hell and purgatory.

A great way to explore a destination is to give your mind (instead of your feet) a workout by tapping into a location’s culture, art and history via its museums. Whether you’re looking to learn more about Montreal’s fascinating (and surprisingly lengthy) history, enjoy art exhibitions or are curious about Canada’s First Nations people, these museums are among the best in the country.

Whether you live in the west coast, the east coast, or somewhere in between, there are plenty of opportunities to experience and appreciate Native American history and culture, both past and present, through Native American museums, sprinkled throughout the U.S. Sadly, many of these cultural centers and museums are not usually thought of as famous local or national sites to visit. However, with this list, we hope to bring some much-deserved awareness to these ten Native American museums.

The hope for every architect is that their work is appreciated and preserved. Now, thanks to several generous grants totaling $1.6 million from the Getty Foundation, 10 buildings will be conserved for, at the least, another generation to enjoy and be inspired by. As part of Keeping It Modern, an international grant initiative that helps to maintain major architectural achievements, the Getty Foundation worked with a panel of international experts to evaluate and provide funding for these 10 buildings. "The Getty strongly believes in research and planning as a bedrock for making informed short-term and long-term conservation decisions and policies," says Antoine Wilmering, senior program officer for the Getty Foundation. The list of buildings that will receive funding—reaching into several new countries for the first time: Argentina, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Mozambique, Spain, and Uganda.

'If I had to, I would define myself as a Paris-based wandering Jew,' says historian and architect Jean-Louis Cohen in a visit to Tel Aviv. He has been described as the world’s leading scholar of modern architecture, published over 30 books and taught generations of architectural research students worldwide. Architect and historian Jean-Louis Cohen, born in Paris 70 years ago this month, is an international authority on and sophisticated investigator of the built and written history of the world in the past 100-plus years. He curated innumerable exhibitions, advised major cultural institutions and universities, and led battles for preservation.

The ‘James Simon Galerie’ — the first new building on berlin’s museum island in almost a century — has officially opened at the heart of the German capital. Designed by David Chipperfield architects, the structure provides service facilities for museum visitors as well as temporary exhibition space and an auditorium with around 300 seats. The building is named after one of the city’s most important patrons, who bequeathed his art collections and excavation findings to the berlin state museums at the beginning of the twentieth century.

CINCINNATI, July 29, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- “Modernization” is not a new concept for 1933-Cincinnati-icon, Union Terminal. From the Art Deco architecture characteristic of the 1920s and -30s to the gravity-defying half-dome at the epicenter of the complex, staying relevant to the times while pushing the limit is in the building’s history.

Per its pattern of keeping up with the modern age, Union Terminal partnered with Connectivity Wireless and Neutral Connect Networks to install a state-of-the-art in-building wireless system throughout the multi-museum complex as part of the $228 million restoration project.

Russian artist and motion designer Maxim Zhestkov centers his practice around the impact digital media has on shifting boundaries of visual language. For his latest piece ‘computations’, he presents an experimental film that speculates a distant future when computation moves from the opaque ‘black boxes’ of our electronic devices into the real world. Comprised of billions of particles, these dynamic systems can be seen swaying and undulating in perfect synchronization. They appear in various settings, illuminated by a flash of color that turns them from densely ominous creatures into electrically charged dancers. Zhestkov describes them as ‘floating networks of small transistors—some kind of strange computing organism.’

The City of Festivals may be one of Canada’s oldest cities, but its most interesting sights go beyond the old world charm associated with the cobblestone streets, galleries and horse-drawn carriages of Old Montreal. In fact, within the confines of some of the oldest buildings of the city, a few interesting high-tech adventures await. With a thriving gaming, visual effects and artificial intelligence community, it’s no surprise that Montreal’s cultural institutions are paving the way when it comes to creating interactive and immersive experiences using VR and multimedia projections that are visually stunning and mentally stimulating.

Poets, performers, visual art displays included at international conference. The rich history, arts and culture of the Columbia River in Canada and the United States will be on display at the Columbia Basin Transboundary Conference: One River, One Future in Kimberley this upcoming September. The conference aims to address key issues related to the future of the Columbia River, its ecosystem, management and international implications, while also showcasing arts and culture from both sides of the border. This will include a number of performances and art displays by poets, musicians, artists, youth, Canadian First Nations, and acclaimed authors.

Watch a new Absolutely Canadian documentary that explores Pratt's life and work. When painter Mary Pratt died in St. John's last August at 83, she was lauded as one of the most talented painters in Canada. Before her death, Pratt spoke extensively with filmmaker Kenneth J. Harvey, who took those interviews to craft an award-winning documentary. It Was All So Wonderful: The Everyday Magic of Mary Pratt airs Saturday night on CBC Television and is available now on Gem, CBC's streaming series.

Three artists and a pair of curators came together at The New York Times to attempt to make a list of the era’s essential artworks. Here’s their conversation.

A Canadian blockchain registry is being developed to protect artists, who have long struggled to keep their work from being used and circulated online without their permission.

The blockchain database, being created by the artists’ advocacy organization Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC) and Access Copyright, will offer Canadian visual artists a place to register their work. The registry will link content to its creators – a key safeguard to ensure artists don’t lose out on valuable publicity and financial compensation.

NEW YORK — The Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial is about the “now” of art and reflects the new in architecture through its Renzo Piano structure and the ever-changing nature of New York City. But it’s also a reminder of the “then,” the many artists and biennials that came before, the museum’s previous home in the Marcel Breuer building on the Upper East Side, and the move to Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district of lower Manhattan.

The show is intended as a snapshot of contemporary art in the United States. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who was a sculptor and a supporter of current American art, founded the Whitney in 1930. The museum opened in 1931 in Greenwich Village, and the show began in 1932 as an annual event.  It became a biennial in 1973. After relocating several times, the museum moved to the Marcel Breuer building in 1966 and to the new building designed by Renzo Piano in 2015.

Creative programming and extensive community engagement have helped The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) become a key cultural hub and tourist attraction. AGO is one of the largest art museums in North America, located in Toronto, Canada’s largest city with about six million people.

Louis Barnard, who is originally from South Africa and has lived in Seoul, Hanoi and now Saigon, uses art as a way to connect with the cities he calls home. "I started doing urban sketching in Seoul, it was a project I did with students," he says. "It was a unit on observing our environment, and eventually I just got obsessed with it. I would force myself not to take photographs to send to my family; I said I'd do a drawing of a place instead, and it kind of took off."

When the black-clad young protesters in helmets and masks broke the glass doors of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council Complex on the night of July 1 and stormed the building, an artwork by Lam Tung Pang accidentally became a part of one of the most defining moments in the city’s history to date. Hanging in a conference room in the headquarters, the large-scale, multi-panel painting Centuries of Hong Kong presented Lam’s artistic interpretation of the city’s transformation from a serene fishing village to a cosmopolitan, skyscraper-crowded metropolis over 150 years.

Los Angeles has long been a testing ground for new ideas on architecture and design. Tapping into the city’s creative energy, the cofounders of Second Home, Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton, are working with Spanish architects Selgascano to finish a new 90,000-square-foot Hollywood outpost. Second Home launched its first office space in east London in 2014 and made its name with smart co-working design featuring bright colors, glass walls and abundant greenery.