"Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials," installation view, on display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through Aug. 23.
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Sarah M Golonka
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smg-photography
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Topline:
From a daylong festival at the Natural History Museum to an exhibition of art made from living materials at the Hammer Museum, there’s lots to learn about sustainability at L.A. museums this Earth Month.
The context: The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and landmark legislation like the Clean Air Act. In the years since, it's expanded to Earth Month, with schools, governments and organizations — including museums — using it as a way to spark conversations about protecting the environment.
Read on … for our picks of Earth Day-related events and museum exhibitions to check out.
The first Earth Day, in April 1970, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and landmark legislation like the Clean Air Act.
In the years since, it's expanded to Earth Month, with schools, governments and organizations — including museums — using it as a way to spark conversations about protecting the environment.
Here are some sustainability-focused museums, art exhibitions and events to check out in Los Angeles this Earth Month.
It invites visitors to rethink ideas of permanence and humanity's place in nature, through sculptures, paintings and collages made by 22 artists from across the Americas, including some based here in Los Angeles.
A view of Carmen Argote's "an archetype of stillness" and "an archetype of touch" paintings in the Hammer Museum's "Several Eternities in a Day" exhibition.
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Monica Bushman
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LAist
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L.A.-based Mexican American artist Carmen Argote's paintings — titled "an archetype of stillness" and "an archetype of touch" — are among the works that first catch your attention upon entering the exhibition.
The pair of 16-foot-tall human-like figures that Argote painted — without brushes — by dipping her hands and feet in a mixture of avocado, cochineal dye and lemon juice, will change color throughout the length of the exhibition as the avocado continues to dry, release oil and eventually disintegrates the paper they were painted on.
" This piece has taught me so much about letting go," Argote told LAist. "And really accepting the life of a material and life of an artwork."
"Cuerpos terrestres en fluidez" by Jackie Amézquita in "Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials" at the Hammer Museum.
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Sarah M Golonka
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smg photography
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Another work, titled "Cuerpos terrestres en fluidez" (or "Terrestrial Bodies in Fluidity") by L.A.-based artist Jackie Amézquita consists of a set of sculptures that Amézquita built using the rammed earth technique (which dates back to the Neolithic period) and then split into fragments.
The materials she used included decomposed granite from the Mojave Desert, lava rocks, obsidian, rain and ocean water.
“There's this idea that we have of nature to not be permanent when it's actually older than us,” Amézquita noted.
The questions that her and other artists’ use of organic materials raise about permanence or impermanence, Amézquita told LAist, “is just an echo to what life is.”
“That is part of our human condition,” she explained. “We’re always confronted with the idea of life and death.”
Her artistic practice, Amézquita added, is also about “ reminding us that we are part of the land, that we are soil, that our bodies are made of earth and also earth is made out of us. And so our footprint, or the decisions we make, has a ripple effect.”
What an exhibition on rice cultivation can teach us about sustainable practices
”We focus on rice because rice became this foundation for the Ifugao resistance against Spanish conquest, and they used rice to be able to consolidate their political and economic resources,” says Stephen Acabado, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA.
The exhibition is split into three galleries. In one gallery, visitors can see a time-lapsed video of the landscape that places into context the Ifugao mountain spirits and the indigenous belief system. Paired with the videos are wooden carvings of the bulul, or rice guardians, and fabrics that represent Ifugao deities.
Wooden carvings of the bulul, or rice guardians, in the Fowler Museum's new "Mountain Spirits" exhibition.
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Fowler Museum
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A second gallery pairs rituals and tools that the Ifugao use for rice cultivation with videos showing them in practice. And the third gallery examines how the higher ranking Ifugao members keep the community alive through sustaining rituals.
”What we're seeing now, especially with climate change, looking at how they cared for the land for at least 400 years, [their] sustainable form of agricultural production … will give us at least an idea on how we can adapt their practices for food security and care for the environment,” Acabado says.
Beyond sustainable practices, Acabado hopes the exhibition can dispel the idea the Philippines is a monolith and also strengthen a sense of identity for Filipinos.
“Although we’re focusing on the Ifugao,” Acabado says, “the exhibit wants to highlight the diversity of the Philippines.”
A museum with sustainability at its core
LACMA’s newly opening Geffen Galleries are getting a lot of attention at the moment, but don’t overlook the nearby Craft Contemporary museum, which is also worth checking out (and a fun fact for The Pitt watchers: It was founded by Noah Wyle’s grandmother).
The Craft Contemporary on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
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Craft Contemporary
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Sustainability is a core tenet for the Craft Contemporary, according to its senior curator Frida Cano. The museum was a case study in the Getty’s 2025 Climate Action Report for sustainable exhibition design.
Its practices include recycling materials from past exhibitions for public workshopping events, having artists sign printed exhibition materials so they become collectibles for guests and utilizing natural dyes in art installations.
Its upcoming May exhibition, tierra, recycles pulp from a past paper-making workshop for artwork labels and creates paint utilizing cacti from Descanso Gardens.
A person participates in Craft Contemporary's paper making workshop.
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Courtesy of Craft Contemporary
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For Cano, it’s especially important to focus on the power of craft and sustainability in an increasingly tech-based era.
“The world is larger than our little micro-universe of craft,” Cano said. “So we're taking the power of craft to make sure that we contribute to the wellness of humanity, you know, mother Earth at large.”
More exhibitions and Earth Day events to check out
Earth Day Festival at the Natural History Museum: Events include exhibitions, art and science activities and free screenings of the museum’s film series “Green Screen: Our Planet on Film.” The event takes place Sunday. (And a tip: go full Earth Day and take the Metro there. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC will mean more traffic in the area.)
Clay LA at the Craft Contemporary: A weeklong event that features air-clay activities and a market where artisans will sell their ceramic creations. This event runs from April 24-26.
Workers in hazmat gear remove neutralized methyl methacrylate, also known as MMA, from two storage tanks at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove on June 30, 2026.
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Allen J. Schaben
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Topline:
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Sunday that tightens building rules for sites that store explosive chemicals, responding to an Orange County chemical incident that forced thousands of residents to evacuate Memorial Day weekend. The law also adds the chemical methyl methacrylate to a state program that aims to prevent chemical disasters.
The backstory: In May, CalMatters reported that California’s toughest accidental-release prevention rules do not cover the chemical in the tank at GKN Aerospace, a company that makes cockpits and windshields in Garden Grove. Weeks later Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana amended an existing bill with language that addressed that gap. Assembly committee and floor analyses noted CalMatters’ reporting. Had the chemical exploded, it “would have been perhaps the greatest catastrophe, certainly in the last several decades in California,” Umberg said, at a June Assembly hearing.
What it will do: The final law bars building new facilities near homes and schools and requires backup cooling systems. It also strips an exemption from environmental review that facilities storing methyl methacrylate previously qualified for.
What's next: Garden Grove advocates call the bill a good step, but say it offers the community little immediate recourse, especially with GKN Aerospace planning to reopen by the end of September.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Sunday that tightens building rules for sites that store explosive chemicals, responding to an Orange County chemical incident that forced thousands of residents to evacuate Memorial Day weekend.
The law also adds the chemical methyl methacrylate to a state program that aims to prevent chemical disasters.
In May, CalMatters reported that California’s toughest accidental-release prevention rules do not cover the chemical in the tank at GKN Aerospace, a company that makes cockpits and windshields in Garden Grove. Weeks later Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana amended an existing bill with language that addressed that gap. Assembly committee and floor analyses noted CalMatters’ reporting.
Had the chemical exploded, it “would have been perhaps the greatest catastrophe, certainly in the last several decades in California,” Umberg said at a June Assembly hearing.
Umberg’s original proposal would have set stronger standards for more types of explosive chemicals, but legislators narrowed it significantly in last-minute negotiations.
The final law bars building new facilities near homes and schools and requires backup cooling systems. It also strips an exemption from environmental review that facilities storing methyl methacrylate previously qualified for.
Garden Grove advocates call the bill a good step, but say it offers the community little immediate recourse, especially with GKN Aerospace planning to reopen by the end of September.
The law’s siting requirements apply to new facilities, not to existing ones like GKN’s Garden Grove plant.
Mai Do, research and policy manager for the Orange County advocacy group Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, said she hopes the state will do more to address the threat of toxic chemicals at existing facilities.
“This is a much larger fight than just what's happened in Garden Grove,” Do said. “What we see in terms of the Lineage fire and other industrial crises is that this is a problem that is affecting a lot of different communities”
In an interview with CalMatters, Umberg said the bill reflected a balancing act. “This is a net benefit for the state, a net benefit for the community,” he said.
Stronger rules for new facilities, not existing ones
Over Memorial Day weekend, residents learned of a problem with a tank storing methyl methacrylate at the GKN Aerospace facility. A crack in the tank released pressure and, along with efforts by emergency responders, averted disaster, but questions remained about what went wrong.
CalMatters reported in May that methyl methacrylate and other chemicals that could explode under certain conditions falls outside the California Accidental Release Program, which requires facilities to maintain detailed plans for preventing or responding to chemical leaks or explosions.
Rachel Tochterman, a spokesperson for Sen. Umberg, said the senator took note and initially proposed incorporating a broader category of reactive chemicals into the program.
But industry groups opposed the plan, arguing it was too broad without clearer evidence.
Dawn Koepke, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association and the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, said she does not believe a regulatory gap exists that would justify incorporating more chemicals into the state’s accidental release regimen.
Facilities storing toxic chemicals are already heavily regulated under other federal and state laws, she said, including a requirement for plans to protect people from chemical releases.
Koepke said she worried that "jumping to conclusions and over-regulating" could affect "a wider array of facilities."
Tim Shestek, a lobbyist representing the American Chemistry Council and other groups, said in an email that Umberg’s original proposal would have affected “far more facilities, substances and sectors than were in the original scope.”
After amendments on the next-to-last day of the legislative session, nine industry groups stopped lobbying against the bill.
Most provisions of the law only apply to methyl methacrylate — the chemical involved in the Garden Grove incident. The bill adds it to the state’s accidental release program, requires facilities to maintain prevention and emergency-response plans, and closes the environmental-review exemption for new sites where the chemical is present.
Scrapped from the bill: a requirement to map reactive-chemical sites in CalEnviroScreen, a state program that identifies polluted communities.
GKN Aerospace plans to reopen
Steve Carlin, senior vice president for GKN Aerospace programs, said the company has been working with regulators and independent experts “to safely reset the remainder of the facility with the appropriate oversight” work that has included inspections, upgrades to safety equipment, and additional monitoring. The company plans to reopen in the next few days.
The company also announced an additional $100 million program to pay residents and businesses that lost money during evacuations.
Lisa Fu, director of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, a worker-safety group, wants California to regulate hazardous chemicals more broadly.
“It's just unfortunate that it's a piecemeal thing,” said Lisa Fu, director of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. “Is it worth it to go piece by piece in terms of trying to ban certain chemicals? It makes the work harder for us, and you can see who's benefiting and who's not.”
Newsom also signed a pair of bills in response to the Lineage fire, a June cold storage fire in Los Angeles. The fire briefly prompted a shelter-in-place order over fears that toxic anhydrous ammonia had been released into the air.
The new laws raise the fines agencies can levy on companies that endanger health and safety. They also bar building permits for cold storage facilities that lack contingency funds or insurance to help communities in emergencies.
Yusra Farzan
wants to help Southern Californians connect with faith communities around the region.
Published September 28, 2026 5:58 PM
Eid celebrations at the Islamic Society of Orange County.
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Courtesy ISOC
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Topline:
California is now the second state to recognize the two main Muslim holidays as state holidays.
About the holidays: Eid ul Fitr is the festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and Eid ul Adha is the festival honoring Abraham or Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son as a mark of his devotion to God. They join a state holiday list that also includes Lunar New Year and Diwali.
Why it matters: Oussama Mokeddem, legislative and government affairs director at the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told LAist the signing day is “an exciting day for the California Muslim community and a big day for the American Muslim community at large.”
The holiday recognition comes at a time when the community is facing “unwarranted and unjustified criticism,” he said, which also led to the attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego. A recent Pew study also found that 42% of Americans believe Muslim Americans have a negative impact on the country.
What does the recognition mean: Mokeddem said the law does not mandate statewide time off, but local school districts can declare a district wide day off if enough community members bring it up as a need.
He added that students can also cite state law when they are absent from school to celebrate the holiday.
California is now the second state to recognize the two main Muslim holidays as state holidays.
Eid ul Fitr is the festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and Eid ul Adha is the festival honoring Abraham or Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son as a mark of his devotion to God. They join a state holiday list that also includes Lunar New Year and Diwali.
Oussama Mokeddem, legislative and government affairs director at the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told LAist the signing day is “an exciting day for the California Muslim community and a big day for the American Muslim community at large.”
Muslims follow the lunar calendar, so the dates of the two festivals vary each year. Next year, Eid ul Fitr will likely fall on March 10 and Eid ul Adha on May 17.
Why it's important to Californians
The holiday recognition comes at a time when the community is facing “unwarranted and unjustified criticism,” Mokeddem said, which he cited as a reason for a May 2026 attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego. A recent Pew study also found that 42% of Americans believe Muslim Americans have a negative impact on the country.
Adam Khaja, an 11th grader at Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, said the holiday recognition signals that "you don't have to give up an important part of your identity to fully participate in Californian society."
" For a long time, immigrant and minority communities have sometimes felt pressure to leave parts of their identity at home in order to fit into American educational or industrial institutions," he said.
What does the holiday recognition mean?
California is home to more than 1 million Muslims, and with this law, state employees can use existing paid time off to celebrate the two holidays.
And for students in K-12 public schools, Mokeddem said the law does not mandate statewide time off, but local school districts can declare a district-wide day off if enough community members bring it up as a need.
He added that students can also cite state law when they are absent from school to celebrate the holiday.
Khaja said he will be advocating for his school district to give a district-wide day off.
"Eid has always been a huge part of our lives, but I think that the school calendar and district policies haven't always reflected that," he said.
He hopes his students will not be put in a situation now "to choose between going to school or fully participating in one of the most important days of their faith."
Muslim Women Professionals, a nonprofit, has templates on how to advocate for time off to celebrate Eid ul Fitr and Eid ul Adha.
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Kevin Tidmarsh
covers the most exciting concerts and musical happenings around SoCal for LAist.
Published September 28, 2026 5:24 PM
A rendering of the setup that'll be on display at Lauren Halsey's emajendat.
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Courtesy Lauren Halsey
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Topline:
Lauren Halsey is promising a night chock-full of performances, art and activities galore for her takeover of the Hollywood Bowl, titled "emajendat."
Who’s performing: Erykah Badu, the Alchemist, Flea, Anderson .Paak and Black Nile are among the performers, and "Insecure" actor Yvonne Orji will host the evening’s events, which Halsey described as a “funk opera.” The show is Tuesday, Sept. 29 at the Hollywood Bowl.
What to see: Beyond the stage setups, there’ll be ping pong, basketball, mini golf — complete with prizes — not to mention face paint and custom airbrush art near the Bowl’s entrance. Halsey also plans to bring a “Technicolor pyramid” that guests will see as they move toward their seats, and said much of the art and ephemera are handmade.
Halsey’s work: Locally, Halsey’s work is featured in LACMA’s new wing, and she opened a sculpture park called Sister Dreamer in South L.A. Her work has been displayed in galleries and museums nationally and internationally.
Usually when you go to a show at the Hollywood Bowl, you know what to expect: crisp air, views of the hills, plus maybe a picnic you brought.
Tuesday’s concert will have all of that. But visual artist Lauren Halsey is promising something much more out of the ordinary for her one-night takeover, called emajendat (pronounced “imagine that”).
Erykah Badu and the Alchemist are headlining, but Halsey’s visual art will take center stage — figuratively and literally — for a one-night “funk opera” that she hopes will be proof of concept for more events like it.
Who’s performing?
Beyond Badu and the Alchemist, who are touring for their new album "Before the World Blows," the night will also feature a performance from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a DJ set from Anderson .Paak under his alias DJ Pee .Wee. Actor and comedian Yvonne Orji will host the evening.
Jazz duo Black Nile will appear on stage with saxophonist Devin Daniels and Halsey’s former teacher, Charles Gaines. Black Nile’s members, Aaron and Lawrence Shaw, have known Halsey for years and said playing to their biggest crowd yet in their hometown of L.A. is a matter of affirmation.
“You just don't see a lot of Black people in that way, you know?” said Aaron Shaw. “Unfortunately, popular society, they benefit off of not putting us in a positive light. Jazz, this Black American art form, has become the underground thing, when it shouldn't be.”
The promo poster for Lauren Halsey's emajendat.
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Courtesy L.A. Philharmonic
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What to expect
The evening will also feature all kinds of art and family-friendly activities scattered across the Hollywood Bowl’s grounds, like a Technicolor pyramid, ping-pong, mini golf and a basketball game that Halsey said is inspired by one that she played at the Santa Monica Pier as a kid.
Halsey wanted to keep previews of emajendat “cryptic,” so if you’re curious, you’ll have to see it for yourself. But she was quick to mention her references, including George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic. Though Clinton won’t perform, Halsey said “his musicality and the mythos around that” is a major inspiration for emajendat, and there’ll be plenty of Easter eggs for her fellow “hardcore Funkateers.”
“Before I even knew there was a fine art world, before I knew I would have a practice and be a sculptor and all these things, I was already deeply embedded in the world of P-Funk,” she said. “ Literally any and everything is an ode to just what that band has done for me.”
Halsey is promising her stage concepts will feel tactile and energetic, and says much of the work on and off stage is handmade.
“You're gonna see Lauren, who doesn't touch music at all, put her craft and her mark on the stage, and it's gonna be revolutionary,” Black Nile’s Lawrence Shaw said. “Nobody's ever seen anything like this before.”
Halsey recommended showing up early since a funk opera is still an opera — not to mention the effort that went into the visuals and ephemera for the show.
“I know it's Tuesday, I know it's gonna be traffic on Cahuenga, on Highland, on Hollywood, I know,” Halsey said. “So I would say plan accordingly.”
Doors open at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, and the show starts at 8 p.m. sharp.
“Everyone's gonna get a program when you walk in that describes the run of show and my Funkafesto,” Halsey said. “We're gonna get to it, so please don't miss it.”
The show starts at 8 p.m. on Sept. 29, but for the full experience, you'll want to get there closer to 6 p.m., when doors open.
To cut down on the stress of on-site parking, you can take Metro, a Park & Ride bus, or one of the Hollywood Bowl's shuttles. You can purchase parking, bus and shuttle passes in advance here.
How the night came together
Like a lot of big concepts, emajendat started with a cold pitch — though Halsey had been envisioning and working on it for years before putting it in front of the right people.
Halsey, who grew up taking school trips to the Bowl to watch the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s open rehearsals and estimates she’s been there 50 or 60 times, calls it “the people’s venue.” One of her favorite memories was as a guest in one of the venue's box seats at a 2002 Ms. Lauryn Hill show, as she and her neighbors got to know each other in the venue’s “beautiful scoop.”
The last few years have been very prolific for Halsey: She’s displayed sculptures at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries and the roof of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and opened a sculpture park on 76th and Western in L.A. called Sister Dreamer.
Halsey, who already had hundreds of renderings of what the night would look like, put the ideas in front of the Hollywood Bowl’s Johanna Rees, who runs its non-classical programming.
“ I said, ‘Hey Johanna, could you ever imagine an artistic takeover of the campus, from entrance to exit? And could you ever imagine me proposing a stage concept?’" Halsey said. “She's like, ‘Yeah, I can imagine that.’ That's not even a pun.”
Lauren Halsey poses at her sculpture park located on 76th Street and Western Avenue in Los Angeles, sister dreamer.
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Courtesy Lauren Halsey
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But to get a yes, Halsey needed headliners. She’d booked artists like Doechii, Ms. Lauryn Hill and Parliament-Funkadelic for past art events, so she drew on connections she said she’d built “strategically.”
Halsey, who estimated she’s been to the Bowl 50 or 60 times, said one of her favorite memories is when she got to sit in the box during a 2002 Ms. Lauryn Hill unplugged show and experience the social connections being made in the venue’s “beautiful scoop.”
“You get to know your neighbors. It's a whole thing,” Halsey said. “It's always been on my list, and it'll always be on my list. It's just, like, it's the Bowl.”
Lauren Halsey's plans for the future
Beyond deepening Halsey’s artistic connections with musicians, taking her work to a broader audience is another goal of emajendat, since not everyone is tapped into the world of fine art where Halsey often works.
Halsey said she’s energized by people entering her world for the first time. To make ticket prices for the show as accessible as possible, she said she intentionally booked the show with the L.A. Phil as the promoter.
“It's cool that so many Angelenos are gonna come through and just get to experience it all on the same playing field,” Halsey said.
Halsey said that if you can’t make it to Tuesday’s show, emajendat is “a proof of concept for the type of — perhaps it's a park, perhaps it's a festival, perhaps it's both — that I want to bring to the city one day soon,” she said.
Disposable vapes at an El Segundo convenience store.
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Patrick T. Fallon
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
California will ban the sale of single-use, battery-powered vapes to fight plastic pollution under a law signed today by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Why it matters: The ban targets single-use e-cigarettes, making it illegal to manufacture or import new or refurbished battery-embedded vapor devices starting Jan. 1, 2027. It also bans retail sales starting Jan. 1, 2028.
The backstory: Experts say part of the appeal of disposable vapes is that they are often more easily accessible and cheaper than refillable devices. The devices are so prevalent they often end up in landfills where their batteries can create a fire hazard or on the ground where they can leak toxic chemicals, including lead and lithium.
California will ban the sale of single-use, battery-powered vapes to fight plastic pollution under a law signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Vapes, sometimes called electronic cigarettes, are battery-operated devices that contain aerosolized nicotine or cannabis, often with flavorings and other chemicals. Refillable and disposable options are sold.
The ban targets single-use e-cigarettes, making it illegal to manufacture or import new or refurbished battery-embedded vapor devices starting Jan. 1, 2027. It also bans retail sales starting Jan. 1, 2028.
The measure allows local governments or the state to fine people $500 for their first violation of the ban, $1,000 for their second infringement and $2,000 for subsequent offenses.
It specifically tackles disposable e-cigarettes that contain tobacco. It won’t include vaping devices containing cannabis.
Experts say part of the appeal of disposable vapes is that they are often more easily accessible and cheaper than refillable devices. The devices are so prevalent they often end up in landfills where their batteries can create a fire hazard or on the ground where they can leak toxic chemicals, including lead and lithium.
Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, who authored the bill, said it will help prevent battery acid from single-use vapes from leaching into lands and waterways.
Nearly 500,000 disposable vapes are discarded each day in the United States, according to the California Public Interest Research Group, or CalPIRG, a consumer advocacy group that supported the bill.
The California Grocers Association argued against a similar 2022 proposal, saying that it could lead to increased tobacco smuggling.
