It’s All in the Details
Dance: Los Angeles International Dance Festival • Screens: Newly Restored Foolish Wives • Art: Frida Kahlo • Architecture: L.A.’s 2028 Olympics • Picks: Fire Lookout Camping and Tulips • Tools: In-Home Battery Power
Dust kicks up on a bumpy road that visitors to the stately Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens never see, as a golf cart motors away from all the carefully kept foliage and into a hard-hat area. There’s a stand of blue port-a-potties to the right and a grove of tan construction trailers beyond that. Instead of bird calls and floral blooms, the air is filled with the indelicate sounds and smells of big machines doing heavy work. But come the end of May, this place will be a haven from disharmony: 12 acres of supreme peace and subtle excitement, where every corner turned reveals a fresh vista—a jade-green lake, an ornately appointed pavilion, a huge rock balanced on its end—and each feature offers an opportunity to dig into history and philosophy.
This is Liu Fang Yuan and , a Gutenberg Bible and the archives, over 40 corpse flowers that release a rare stench, and, now, one of the world’s largest classical-style Chinese gardens. In, of all places, San Marino, an old-moneyed hamlet 12 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
