The Festival: Exhibitions

 

Saturday, September 25
10:00 am - 6:00 pm
29th Annual Watts Towers Day of the Drum Festival: www.myspace.com/drumnjazz
Charles Mingus Youth Art Center (Watts Towers Arts Center campus)
1727 East 107th St., Los Angeles, 90002
Exhibition Opening & Music

MIGRATING TOWERS: THE GIGLI OF NOLA AND BEYOND.
September 25 to January 2, 2011
Curated by Felice Ceparano, Dir., Museo Etnomusicale, I Gigli di Nola;
Katia Ballacchino, Ph.D. Università di Roma, Sapienza.

Nola	Watts	New York

The Watts Towers strikingly recall the festival spires or “gigli” of Nola, a town situated approximately 35 miles from Rodia’s birthplace near Naples. Here, every June 22nd, for the feast of St. Paulinus, the city commemorates the bishop’s safe return from slavery. Eight 80-foot tall obelisks, or gigli, and a ceremonial "boat" are carried on the shoulders of hundreds of crew members from the community. Supporting a musical band, the massive structures are then danced through the narrow streets of the town’s historic center. Emigrants from Nola have remained loyal to this tradition and re-enact it, with towering gigli not only throughout Campania, Italy, but in Brooklyn, in Harlem, N.Y., and Cliffside, N.J. This exhibition features images from the Ethnomusicological Museum of the Gigli of Nola as well as images of the Nolan diaspora from the Nola County Archive (Archivio della Contea Nolana).  
Download exhibition narrative

The exhibit will continue from June 22 (feast day of St. Paulinus) to August 30, 2011, at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY, New York

Sunday, September 26
10:00 am to 6:00 pm
34th Annual Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival: www.myspace.com/drumnjazz
Charles Mingus Youth Art Center (Watts Towers Arts Center campus)
Exhibition, Music, and Formal Inauguration

12:00 pm: FORMAL INAUGURATION OF THE WATTS TOWERS COMMON GROUND INITIATIVE
with Consul General of Italy in Los Angeles, Nicola Faganello, 12:00 pm

1:30 – 2:30 pm: MUSICÀNTICA:
Music of Mediterranean Italy (Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center),

 

Monday, October 18
6:00 pm
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
1023 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, 90024

SABATO RODIA'S TOWERS IN WATTS
Exhibition opening.
Curated by Rosie Lee Hooks, Dir., Watts Towers Arts Center, Jo Farb Hernandez, Dir., S.P.A.C.E.S.

Illustrating the history of the Watts Towers, built by Rodia from 1921-54, from construction, through abandonment, “discovery,” and conservation, up to the present.Soon after purchasing the Towers, William Cartwright and Nicholas King organized the Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts as official guardians of the Towers and mobilized an international campaign to save them from a demolition order.. On October 10, 1959, a “load test,” devised by Aerospace engineer, Bud Goldstone, proved to municipal administrators, incontrovertibly, that they would stand. As it tells this story, the exhibition also shows how the Watts Towers continue to inspire as well as to present challenges of guardianship and conservation, while the Watts Towers Arts Center (the “heart of Watts”) perseveres as the focus of community arts and development efforts.

 

October 18 – December 10, 2010
Powell Library Building Rotunda, 2nd Floor, UCLA

"COMMITTEE FOR SIMON RODIA’S TOWERS IN WATTS" – UCLA SPECIAL COLLECTION No. 1388
Exhibition curated by Luisa Del Giudice and Susan Anderson, UCLA Special Collections, Young Research Library.

Highlights from UCLA Special Collection No.1388 traces the history of the legal guardians of the Towers from 1956-1965, including the purchase of the Towers, the formation of the CSRTW, the battle to save the Towers from city-ordered demolition, through an international letter-writing campaign, the dramatic “load test” of Oct. 10, 1959, which proved that the Towers were structurally-sound, the genesis and evolution of the Watts Towers Arts Center.