A Purrfect Show – Natural History Museum’s Cats Pounces Into LA

Posted on by Diversions LA

Fierce! The Story of Cats, now at the Natural History Museum through February 18, 2026, brings an immersive, intelligent, and fun view of the fabulous feline to Los Angeles.

Saber-toothed cats had pretty impressive bicuspids!

Along with learning that the La Brea Tar Pits were once home to lions, and that cat friendships and mousing expertise long pre-dated the Egyptian culture’s deification of cats, the exhibit revealed not only cat history, but cat breeds, cat physicality, and cats as art and vestiges of good fortune.

There are clips from cat media (of course including last year’s Academy Award-winning Flow), video of Chinese New Year lion dancers, and even a gigantic sculpture of a Japanese “lucky kitty.”

Flow, above.

What and how cats see, below.

Add your kitty to the carousel of pretties…

In its West Coast debut, the show also features clever cat facts and silhouettes of kitties on the exhibition gallery walls; the ability to enter photos of your own cats as part of a slide show of domestic kitties; and a variety of cultural cat objects.

Seeing the size of various cat claws up close, and cat teeth, and cat fossils, the viewer gets a look at the evolution of cats, the array of feline family cousins and descendents. There are hands-on facts and fun, audio exhibits, and perhaps best of all, a wide ranging display of both taxidermied cats, art depictions of cats, and yes, stuffies of cats, all revealing the beautiful and diverse creatures that make up the feline family tree.

Learn how cats leap, all about their vision, their supple skeletal structure, the differences in fur, the commonalities among feline types.  Hear them roar, hear them purr, consider the reason cat claws contract, and the joy of a playful kitten.

From protecting crops to balancing the eco system in the wild, from predatory hunting skills to the healing sound of a purr, this lovely, multi-room exhibition (plus a gift shop with a lot of fun kitty-lover treats) is informative, fun, and packs a potent message about how important it is to protect cats great and small, their habitats and their homes.

The Natural History Museum is located at 900 Exhibition Blvd. in Los Angeles; open hours are 9-5 Monday-Sunday; Fierce tickets are $12 above the regular museum entrance pricing of $18 per adult admission. Go ahead, take a leap.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Sur: Biennial at Torrance Art Museum Revs Up

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Sur: Biennial is an exhibition series that made it’s first apeparance in 2011, and is still going strong today. Highlighting the impact of Latin American culture in art, this year’s compelling works are bold and in some instances, wonderfully surreal.

Works on exhibit include those by Carlos Beltran Arechiga, Carlos Rittner, chris velez, Elena Manero, Jesus Max, The Lowrider Alliance, Migues Rodriguez Sepulveda, and Priscilla Mondo.

The Lowrider Alliance also presented four absolutely gorgeous cars outside the museum on opening night, each their own work of art from metal work details to vibrant paint.

The entire exhibition shines with a glorious light,  from those exhibited cars outside to culturally resonant photos taken by The Lowrider Alliance inside, to Carlos Rittner’s large and exciting neon, and chris velez ‘ glowing anime-style figure offering blessing from inside a tech version of a confessional booth.

velez also exhibits a wild update on the Sword and the Stone, with “The sword was never removed by a King it was thrust by a Saint” a sculpture that embeds a sword in a microfilm reader’s screen.

There are twisted, sinuous sculptures from Priscilla Mondo that despite their monumental size, seem to float on the gallery floor.

A massive oil and acryllic on sewn canvas painting by Carlos Beltran Arechiga, “Conjura,” (above) reveals fantastical pink and white figures that are both abstract and figurative at the same time; a smaller work by the artist was created in part by using different blends of coffees from Mexican Nescafe to Starbucks, each creating a different texture.  The latter work, “Balance: Fragil” speaks beyond texture to the treatment of workers at coffee plantations.

Jesus Max displayed a compelling series of hyper-realistic paintings that flirt with surreal elements; Elena Manero’s paintings are graceful stories come alive with nuanced color, and Migues Rodriguez Sepulveda also contributes outstanding work.

Last, but certainly not least, Lowrider Alliance contributions to SUR Biennial were curated by Art Limon (President, Lowrider Alliance) featuring artists Alfonso “Fox” Orozco, Estevan Oriol, G. Alfaro, Gil Ortega, Horacio Romero, Ignacio Gomez, Teresa Rodriguez, Vidal Herrera.

In the museum’s dark room, executive producer Dolores Huerta, presents Backstreet to the American Dream (2021), an insightful and intimate film about race, labor, and class in modern-day America, focusing on blue-collar entrepreneurs and Latino immigrants in a 90-minute presentation.

Gallery Two also offers a fascinating and immersive exhibition…

In Affective Territories, Alternate Belongings, video and multimedia works focus on technology, its growing importance and our reliance on it, as well as its outgrowth of and from our human world. The exhibit is exciting, provocative, and leads the viewer into a world we know about but often prefer to remain unseen.

Exhibiting artists include:  Allyson Packer and Jesse Fisher / United States, Camille Dumond/ Switzerland, Chrystele Nicot & Antoine Alesandrini / France, Holly Veselka / United States, Joe Harjo / United States, Laine Rettmer / United States, Margaret Noble / United States, Paul Moore / Northern Ireland (UK), Scott Massey / Canada, Sophie Dia Pegrum / British/American, Spencer Chang / United States, Woohee Cho / South Korea/ United States.

In short,  TAM has once again curated a terrific group of exhibitions that speak to the immediate world, the future world, and our ongoing history.

Vibrant with color, alive, and thoughtful, these shows are worthy of a very long cruise down Whittier Boulevard and into East LA — and an extended visit to the Torrance Art Museum.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis 

Innovative and Exciting Exhibitions at the Bendix

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While each of these splendid shows now at the Bendix in DTLA’s fashion district are worthy of their own review, time, and an imminent last weekend September 6th, waits for no one. So let’s take a look at the exuberant exhibitions currently at the Bendix, and mark your calendars for a viewing this coming weekend.

On view 12-5 p.m. at Durden and Ray is the winner of the gallery’s SPOTLIGHT24, the Durden and Ray member committee reviewed  solo exhibition proposals for the gallery. Winning artist Shannon Freshwater was born into a Las Vegas environment few visitors have seen, a mix of Mormon and Souther Baptist religion and hippie artists. Viewers will experience a witty yet ominous living room scene in the front gallery, while mirrored images dance with the viewers own in the second. It’s a garden of strange, surreal, slightly spooky delights using textiles, paintings, and unusual surfaces to render a world gone deliciously mad.

Persons Unknown is presenting another solo show that’s dusted with the whimsical and determinedly wild, in both texture and territory. The Museum of Human Touch imagines a future — that frankly doesn’t seem too distant — where our intimacy with screens has replaced physical experience. Only in this world, sculptures shaped from digital waste ranging from packing materials to discarded gadgets and ephemera are the unique visualization of reshaped human identity. , reshaping our bodies and identities. Featuring sculptures crafted from recycled digital waste such as obsolete gadgets, medical tubing, and packaging materials, the exhibition explores the seductive pleasure and hidden violence of our device-driven lives, challenging us to reconsider the fluidity, fragility, and possibility of the human body in a tech-saturated world. The boldly textural and delightfully weird are conjoined in a series of devastatingly and wonderfully weird works from Agustin Rosa.

At Tiger Strikes Astroid, and also closing this weekend is El Portal, a rich and wonderfully mind-opening exhibit organized by Ricardo Harris-Fuentes and Lauren Armstrong. Comprised of the workd of six visual and five performance artists, the theme is transformation and transcendent reality as assisted by the visionary experience of ayahuasca ceremony as its inspiration point. We had the pleasure of viewing a roof-top live performance by artist Sean Noyce involving a gorgeous metallic shield on exhibit in the gallery along with a consciousness pyramid sculpture, which Armstrong used in another galvanizing rooftop performance.  The group show is inspirational and aspirational.

Down the hall at 515, books are the mind blowers… in this large group exhibition, you can indeed judge a book by its artisically created cover, as artists shape visionary book favorites with covers that more than live up to the words on the pages between.  Artists were asked to pick their favorite books and create a cover to fit their vision, and wow, were these visions extraordinary. Just a fun and brilliant show, it will make you want to pick up a book and read it — and imagine your own cover to hold it. Fabulous use of sculptural materials and engaging visions of the meaning writ within the books. Special Collections II will be holding a closing reception from 7 to 9 p.m on the 6th. Take a look at the online library linked above and view its wide ranging artists, and go visit. These books will never be banned.

And last but not least, in Monte Vista Projects, a debut solo of bronze and porcelain sculptures, Invitation, by Renée Pepion is a feast of things floral, feminine, and unconventionally lovely, or as the artist describes the work “my way of processing what it means to be alive in a body.” Inspired by images of the Last Supper, this is a splendid exhibition of twists and turns both terrifying and terrific.

Get thee to the Bendix this weekend for these grand finales.

  • Genie Davis, images by Genie Davis

 

 

 

Linda Smith Shapes Cat (and Human) Creations

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Now at bG Gallery, The Cat’s Meow isn’t just an exhibition title – it’s a celebration of a show, a sweet, fun, impressive solo from artist Linda Smith. There are paintings, ceramic sculptures, and most impressively lush ceramic totems, slim towers that offer viewers multiple kitties or in some cases, humans, and pups, towering up to 6 feet in height.

Above, inside Smith’s studio

Each living creature offers a face full of wisdom and a presence that exudes that species’ essence. The cats look curious, intelligent, willful; the humans thoughtful, observant, or contemplative; while the puppies look ready to leap, play, or curl up on your feet. In short, each creature has a presence that draws the eye and the heart. There’s a magical quality to her works.; whether paintings or ceramics, Smith covers every surface with color and pattern, willing the viewer to experience the fun on offer, and enter into her world.

A joyous use of vibrant color is Smith’s style, along with a textural use of pattern that hums with energy and enthusiasm for her subjects. It’s that vibrance that makes her images come alive. Smith is as prolific as she is joyous, with a wide variety of whimsical, lustrous works that are expressive, charming, and utterly unique.

Smith describes her exhibition as consisting of “my new large ceramic totems, smaller ceramic sculptures and paintings I have created over the years. This show has recurring themes of mine, [such as] faces, figures, cats, birds, and dogs…my daily life expressed in an adventure of bold color and pattern.”

It’s a delightful crazy quilt of her life, saturated with a sense of excitement and jubilance. You could just call it fun. Stacked orange and blue heads are topped with a brilliantly plumed bird in one totem; in another, striped, dotted, and flowered humans rise watchfully.

Each work has the elements of a fantastical fairy tale brought to life, in which cats and humans coexist in an endlessly bountiful world punctuared by dots, dashes, lines, and patterns. Her bold use of yellows, oranges, reds, and blues brings a joyous buoncy to her images.

Whether small ceramic busts of felines,  or wild rainbow rays vibrating from and around a woman’s face with a playful outline of a cat above it, Smith speaks to happiness and hope.

Both are welcome subjects. In fraught times, happiness can be in short supply, but it’s doled out delightfully here. Smith captures the playful, inquisitive, and mysteriousness of the feline, along with the cavorting of canines, and a contemplative view of human nature, all in a cavalcade of color.

The exhibition held a press preview last weekend, but opens to the public this coming Saturday, September 6th, from 4 to 7 p.m. The artist talk and walk through will take place September 13th from 3 to 5 p.m.

If you’re looking for some unadulterated joy in your life, come take a romp around the art world.

  • Genie Davis; images provided by Linda Smith and bG Gallery