The Stephanie Taylor Kong Boos—“song book,” with first and last letters rearranged—is an installation of sculpture, print works, and music throughout the landmark Schindler House on Kings Road that illustrates and expands the narratives from six songs written by artist Stephanie Taylor between 2010 and 2014.

The Stephanie Taylor Kong Boos—“song book,” with first and last letters rearranged—is an installation of sculpture, print works, and music throughout the landmark Schindler House on Kings Road that illustrates and expands the narratives from six songs written by artist Stephanie Taylor between 2010 and 2014.

For this fall’s architecture tour fundraiser, the MAK Center highlights important lineages of modern architecture in Los Angeles. Each of the featured architects started their careers working for Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and/or R.M. Schindler (both of whom also worked for Wright). The tour emphasizes the influences at work that made the city’s pre- and post-war architectural scene so groundbreaking.

Routine Pleasures was an exhibition at the Schindler House this past summer that brought together artists working in a variety of media to explore “the termite tendency,” a concept introduced by artist and film critic Manny Farber (1917–2008) in his 1962 essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art.” Whereas the original essay applied these labels to the work of filmmakers, exhibition organizer Michael Ned Holte found manifold parallels in contemporary art.

The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) and the MAK Center presented internationally renowned cellist Charles Curtis at the Schindler House. Hailed by Artforum as “one of the great cellists … spellbinding and minimal,” Curtis performed the Los Angeles premiere of a new work by Tashi Wada, along with J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 2 in D minor and more.

Steve Roden, Lucky Dragons, and Simon Leung presented new performances as part of the exhibition Routine Pleasures, organized by Michael Ned Holte. Each performance was a response to the site and the context of the exhibition but also a continuation of each artist’s ongoing work. Steve Roden began with a sound performance utilizing a grouping of modular synthesizers from his collection. Lucky Dragons continued their exploration of plural delectation, presenting poems in two voices. Concluding the program, Simon Leung returned to the theme of the train (in a nod to Jean-Pierre Gorin’s film which gave the exhibition its title) with a live/video work that mirrors his ongoing dialogue with Warren Niesłuchowski, the subject of his feature video War After War (2011).

Routine Pleasures brought together artists working in a variety of media to explore “the termite tendency,” a concept introduced by artist and film critic Manny Farber (1917-2008) in his 1962 essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art.” Whereas the original essay applied these labels to the work of filmmakers, exhibition organizer Michael Ned Holte found manifold parallels in contemporary art.

House Housing shows that the inequalities of all types being discussed in the current US presidential campaign have been fundamental to the operation of real estate development for generations. Considering historical and contemporary cases, MAK and the Buell Center invited scholars and practitioners to discuss how we might reframe our understanding of the relationships between architecture, housing, and real estate in light of the inequalities they both produce and reflect.

At once vulnerable and inviolate, a disappearing architectural species and the most protected building type in the city, the single-family house continues to play an outsize role in debates over architecture, planning and growth in Los Angeles. Can the suburban house-and-garden model that has helped define Los Angeles for nearly a century — and given architects a place to try out their most innovative design experiments — be updated and improved to make it relevant to a denser region? Or is the single-family neighborhood destined to be preserved in amber, a once-important product of the L.A. growth machine now no more than a relic?

Opera Povera at the Schindler House was a program highlighting the work of the experimental opera company with open rehearsals, two performances, and an accompanying display of related dramaturgy featuring the artists, designers, composers and performers with whom Opera Povera has created new works.