September 27: A presentation by ALISSA WALKER. She writes about LA transportation,
housing, urban design, public space, and environmental policy. She launched the website,
Torched, which “trains a critical eye on the civic investments and policy decisions that Los
Angeles is making in preparation for its megaevent-hosting era, including the 2026 World
Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl, and most notably, the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic
Games.”
Luncheon to be held at Stoneview Nature Center, 5950 Stoneview Drive, Culver City CA
90232.
October 11: What is historic in Los Angeles? How does a landmark get made? Who gets
to decide? These are especially complex questions when it comes to LA’s LGBTQ heritage
since much of it had to be hidden. KATE WOLF, editor at large at Los Angeles Review of
Books, and RAFAEL FONTES, an urban planning professional working for Los Angeles City
Planning, will discuss the intricacies of historic preservation in Los Angeles, in a
conversation moderated by LIZ BROWN.
Rafael Fontes is an urban planning professional currently working for the city of Los
Angeles. In addition to work experience in architectural design, drafting, and project
management, time spent volunteering abroad proved formative. Above all, he seeks to
combine a professional commitment to the built environment with a love of history. He has
both a Master of Heritage Conservation from the USC School of Architecture and a Master
of Planning from the Price School of Public Policy at USC. Rafael recently completed his
graduate thesis, Gaining a Foothold: Conserving Los Angeles’ Queer Eden(dale).
Kate Wolf is one of the founding editors of The Los Angeles Review of Books, where she’s
currently Editor At Large and co-host and producer of its weekly podcast, The LARB Radio
Hour. She’s written for Bookforum, Art in America, n+1, East of Borneo, Frieze, X-TRA, Night
Papers—an artists’ newspaper she created and edited with the Night Gallery in Los Angeles
from 2011 to 2016—and The Nation. She’s also the co-founder of Veggie Cloud, an art
house film program in Highland Park.
Luncheon to be held at Velaslavasay Panorama, 1122 W. 24th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
This luncheon is generously sponsored by Jonathan Aronson and Joan Abrahamson.
October 25: A pre-election Town Hall discussion on the most consequential presidential
race to decide the fate of America’s democracy, moderated by LAIH Fellow MARTY
KAPLAN.
Luncheon to be held at USC’s Wallis Annenberg Hall (ANN) | The Sheindlin Forum, Room
106 | 3503 Watt Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089.
This luncheon is generously sponsored by The Norman Lear Center.
November 8: A presentation featuring ALLISON AGSTEN. She is the inaugural director
of USC Annenberg’s Center for Climate Journalism and Communication. In her role,
she develops strategic priorities and conceptualizes initiatives to bolster public
understanding of climate change. Current projects include the energy transition
podcast series, Electric Futures, of which she serves as executive producer, and a
report on the state of climate communications in the U.S., of which she is the primary
author. She was recently named one of COP28 UAE’s 50 inaugural global Actionists in
recognition of her contributions to the field of climate communication.
November 22: Writer GUSTAVO ARELLANO discusses his beat as a columnist for
the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the
West and beyond.
Arellano is the author of Orange County: A Personal History. He was formerly editor of OC
Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and penned the award-
winning “¡Ask a Mexican!,” a nationally syndicated column in which he answered any and
all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. Gustavo is the recipient of
awards ranging from the Los Angeles Press Club President’s Award to an Impacto Award
from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and was recognized by the California Latino
Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work
ethic.” Gustavo is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican
immigrants, one whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
December 13: Field Trip (TBD)
January 10: LAIH Fellow CECIL CASTELLUCCI discusses her work-in-progress project,
William’s War, a non-linear, hybrid graphic novel combining World War One history with
speculative fiction in a meditation on memory and grief for which she received a Canada
Council grant in literature in 2022.
Private William Matthews, one of the 72,337 missing in the war, and about whom little is
known. He hails from the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, 9th Battalion, a group that was
utterly decimated during the war and was disbanded before the war’s end. It is an
unremembered regiment and Private Matthews has no known person who has sought to
remember his story. Cecil’s search for Private William Matthews became the springboard
for this book. Using time loops and elements of speculative fiction, the soldier and the
Canadian woman cross paths through a crack in history. The novel will have interstitial
one-page illustrations and two-page silent comics by different artists using completely
different styles to depict the possible people Private Matthews could have been. In this
book, Cecil is interested in exploring the way we remember and memorialize historical
events that we feel the ripple of today.
January 22: LOURDES BAEZCONDE-GARBANANATI discusses her work as an expert in
cancer disparities research with diverse populations, developing culturally specific
effective cancer prevention interventions, and in engaging at risk populations in
community-based participatory research.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati is Associate Dean for Community Initiatives at the Keck School of
Medicine (KSOM) and Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at the
Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California. She is a
professor in Population and Public Health Sciences and the Director for the Center for
Health Equity in the Americas. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati serves as faculty Advisor to Keck
Medicine on community benefits. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and is a Co-
Principal Investigator of the Community Scholars Collaborative on Health Equity (CHES), a 10 schools collaborative that spans multiple disciplines from Cinema, to Social Work,
Population and Public Health Sciences, Engineering, Religious Life, Journalism and
Communication.
February 28: A field trip and exploration of THE BOWTIE PROJECT with JULIA MELTZER.
The Bowtie is an 18-acre strip of land located on the east bank of the Los Angeles River in
northeast Los Angeles and is a part of Rio de Los Angeles State Park. The parcel was
initially named G-1, and is now referred to as “the Bowtie” because the shape of the parcel
resembles a bowtie. Historically, this property was part of Taylor Yard, the former
headquarters of Southern Pacific Railroad. Once a bustling railyard and major local
employer, Southern Pacific closed the facilities in the late 1980’s and began parceling the
land for future sale. After rail operations shut down, advocates, including nonprofit
organizations, community groups, and government agencies, all worked to ensure the land found its way into public hands with a vision to revitalize 100 acres of the area into publicly
owned park space. This collective vision is managed by the 100 Acre Partnership.
In 2003, California State Parks bought the Bowtie parcel, with the intent of transforming the
currently undeveloped industrial land into a safe and clean, vibrant public green space
focused on nature conservation and restoration, education, and providing opportunities
for passive recreation.
Julia Meltzer is Founding Director of Clockshop. She has worked for over two decades
creating opportunities for artists and audiences to come together on public land.
Thousands of Angelos have had access to arts and culture through Clockshop’s programs,
along the LA River and beyond. Meltzer’s work as an artist and filmmaker has been
exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Toronto
International Film Festival, among many other venues; her two feature documentaries,
‘The Light In Her Eyes and Dalya’s Other Country,’ were broadcast nationally on PBS’s POV
series. She was a John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and a Senior
Fulbright Fellow in Damascus, Syria.
Luncheon to be held at The Bowtie-Rio de Los Angeles Park, 2780 W Casitas Ave, Los
Angeles, CA 90039.
This luncheon is generously sponsored by Leo and Dorothy Braudy.
March 14: LAIH Fellow and Los Angeles Poet Laurate Emerita LYNNE THOMPSON
presents: The Artist at the Crossroads of Craft & Culture, History & Myth. She’ll discuss her approaches to craft; the demands of the writer’s craft versus the responsibility for critically-
engaged writing; as well as combining forms and the elements that center her new book, Blue on a Blue Palette, which uses allusions to nursery rhymes and Bible verses, as well as to musicians,
writers, and visual artists exploring the tension between creation and the political while
addressing the status of woman and the marginalized—racially, culturally, and historically.
This luncheon is generously sponsored by Albert Litewka.
March 28: MEITAL YANIV, an Israeli-American queer feminist. explores grief and themes
from her book, bloodlines, demonstrating how liminality can provide space to withdraw
from patriotism to more accurately understand the world.
bloodlines is an epic and intimate dive into the Israeli apartheid regime from the
perspective of an ex-Israeli/ex-Zionist soldier. Born into a Sephardic and Ashkenazi lineage
of in/famous war heroes and pillars for the state of Israel, Yaniv traces their paternal family
narrative from surviving the Holocaust of the second world war to migrating to Palestine and their subsequent indoctrination as Zionist colonizers and defenders of the state of
Israel.
April 11: A field trip to The CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL GRAPHICS with
founder/executive director and LAIH Fellow CAROL WELLS and archives director, EMILY
SULZER, through the archives of CSPG, an educational and research archive that collects,
preserves, documents, and exhibits posters relating to historical and contemporary
movements for social change. Using its more than 90,000 human rights and protest
posters and prints, CSPG creates traveling and online thematic exhibitions, and
publications. CSPG is advancing the power of art to educate and inspire people to action.
For three decades CSPG has been creating a special community of international artists,
activists, donors, curators, students, and teachers who share a passion for the power of
political art to educate and inspire people to action.
CSPG’s posters are unique, primary, historical documents which reveal histories of
struggles that are often hidden, and more often forgotten. CSPG’s growing collection is one
of the most diverse visual resources in the world representing posters from the 19th
Century to the present—including the largest collection of post-World War II posters in the
United States.
Luncheon to be held at The Center for the Study of Political Graphics, 3916 Sepulveda Blvd,
Suite 103, Culver City, CA 90230.
April 25: A presentation by MICAH GOTTLIEB, a film archivist and programmer, who, in a
very short time, has built a thriving art cinema series with the non-profit Mezzanine and
launched an independent film festival here in LA. He’s created innovative partnerships with
streaming platforms such as Mubi and other film venues, like Vidiots. In the midst of online
media overwhelm, he’s building a community of IRL cinephiles.