Santa Clara County Art, Culture & Media Digest

At the Avenidas Chinese Community Center, the Lunar New Year is more than a yearly tradition, it's become a celebration of freedom and community among elderly Chinese community members.

Pasadena is the only California city named a travel destination for 2024 by The New York Times. This comes despite the Los Angeles-area city being just the 45th-largest city in the state.

Philadelphia-based Audacy, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $1.9 billion in debts, owns six radio stations in the Bay Area. These include 95.7 The Game, KCBS and 102.1 Jams.

Under new state laws, five cities will test cameras to catch speeding drivers and cruising bans will be lifted statewide. The first is supposed to improve road safety, but critics of the second say it will endanger the public.

State audits of the University of California and the California State University found both systems have failed to comply with decades-old state and federal laws mandating the return of Native ancestral remains and cultural artifacts. Only UCLA and Cal State Long Beach have returned a majority of their collections.

Frank Ford, the co-founder of Gryphon Stringed Instruments and a beloved member of the Palo Alto musicians’ community, died after a brief illness at age 79.

It was a couple of years ago that Marvin Serber and his family had moved from New York to Milpitas. In September, after a New York trip, Serber showed up at a Milpitas City Council meeting to speak in favor of a menorah lighting celebration for the community.

In 2022, Santa Clara Vanguard’s Cadets won the Drum Corps International Championship. However, simmering below the surface was a series of missteps that have forced Vanguard to cancel its 2023 season and have left the 2024 season up in the air.

With its hilly terrain, parts of Los Angeles aren’t always the easiest to build in. But that didn’t stop an architect from building a unique structure in Silver Lake.

Tech might be king in Silicon Valley, but the economic effect of arts and culture on the region should not be brushed aside—it brings millions of dollars into Santa Clara County.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which has operated for 154 years, sold to controversial Alden Global Capital last year. It’s not looking great for the paper’s future.

Robert Irwin, an artist and MacArthur genius grant recipient, died in San Diego at 95 on Oct. 25. Michael Govan, who heads the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, offers a colorful retrospective on Irwin's work.

San Jose Arts Advocates, a coalition of art and culture leaders, is asking city officials to move forward on applying a “percent for art policy” on new development to fund art and culture projects.

Author Victoria Sanford will discuss her book about an investigation of the unsolved murder of a female law student and the pervasive violence against Guatemalan women that drives migration.

Through this new program, artists, culture bearers, and California Native American tribes will be eligible to receive funding to create artwork throughout state and local parks.

Written by Center for Biological Diversity scientist Tiffany Yap and illustrated by artist Meital Smith, “Tales of the Urban Wild: A Puma’s Journey” takes the reader through diverse habitats, across busy freeways and inside science labs to learn about one mountain lion’s survival story.

Juliette Gomez is on a mission. With her children’s book “Can I Push You?,” she aims to spread a message of friendship, kindness, and standing up to bullies.

The Palo Alto professor who testified that then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had assaulted her while they were in high school has written a memoir.

San Jose City Hall was inundated with music and fanfare as residents and visitors celebrated lowriding, a subculture centered around the customization of cars.

Downtown San Jose’s resurgence has been building throughout the summer with block parties, art festivals and concerts. Most have been in the district’s core. That’s about to change.

With Retro Milpitas right around the corner, the Milpitas Beat got on the phone with Chris St. Germain—the longtime co-owner of Cal Skate and the daughter of original founders Ernie and Evelyn St. Germain—for an interview.

Seeking to revive Palo Alto's plans to redevelop Cubberley Community Center, architect David Hirsch is pitching a new idea: moving parking underground and constructing a cluster of tiered classroom buildings along Middlefield Road.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley announced that it’s postponing the world premiere of the new musical “Alice Bliss,” which had been set to run this summer at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto.

Friends of Levitt Pavilion San Jose hosted its first springtime concert in St. James Park, the latest step in establishing a permanent outdoor performance venue. The shows will take place despite an appeal in a lawsuit to stop the revamp of the park.

Four out of five Los Altos City Council members voted in favor of the creation of a downtown theater. Headed up by Los Altos Stage Company, the theater plan has been met with positive feedback from the community.

A new idea in an underutilized part of San Jose could turn into a win for a variety of businesses and the residents living in the area. Midtown Immersive Night Party, created by event planners Jonathan and Linnea Gomez, is a night-time venue waiting to be discovered.

There’s something magical about walking through a city center while being serenaded to the riffs of a live guitar. Spontaneous street performances have the ability to breathe life into a city.

A Lifestyles Home Tour in Willow Glen will once again be offered, this time on May 6-7. All proceeds will benefit the San Jose Day Nursery. This is the 39th year of the tour, with five grand homes on display.

“Prayukti Arts is an organization that aims to create a space for South Asian arts, particularly the Bharatanatyam dance form, in the Bay Area,” said Nitya Narasimhan, the Sunnyvale-based organization’s artistic director.

After more than two years as executive director of New Museum Los Gatos, Ami Davis announced she is stepping down at the end of March. Davis stated it was “a difficult decision to leave the incredible staff and board at NUMU.”

Judging by her impressive theater background, Los Altos Stage Company picked the right person in Kristin Walter to become its new education director and help develop its youth program.

An exorbitant rent increase threatens to break apart a community of six dozen artists at Citadel Art Studios, on the corner of Martha and Fifth streets.