Laguna Beach residents all believe they are art critics, which is why the real experts on the city's Arts Commission are in a no-win situation. Loved or hated, every piece of public art in Laguna gets judged — every single day.

Yesterday we featured the National Gallery of Art’s site NGA Images, where you can download 25,000 high-quality digital images of that museum’s works of art. Today, why not have a look at Google Art Project? Though we’ve posted about it before, you’ll want to check out its slick new redesign — not to mention its expanded collection, which now includes more than 40,000 works of art from over 250 museums

Wilmore 9 is the vision of John Case, an independent filmmaker and local figure in Long Beach best known for starting the country's first Bikestation in 1996. Case recognized the need for an event like this to showcase the talents and diversity of Long Beach and to draw people into the city in the same way that festivals like South by Southwest do for Austin.

Pop artists absorb and borrow from popular culture. Likewise, pop culture spreads the images of pop art through mass reproduction, but is any of this legal? Recently strict copyright laws and our obsession to protect intellectual property and the money earned by our ideas, have forced artists to incorporate the medium of policy. Will copyright laws eventually smother pop art completely or will they do more good by protecting originality and integrity?

Student musicians and pros team up with Condoleezza Rice to raise more than $100,000 to benefit string instrument programs. Friday night’s event, which raised more than $100,000, was to benefit string instrument programs, especially those targeting at-risk youth studying violin, viola, cello and bass. Most of the money will go to the Classics for Kids Foundation, a national nonprofit based in Boston and co-founded by Rice, a classically trained pianist.

Sound advice from a hardworking, migrant farmworker whose only son heeded his father’s counsel and today is the California Poet Laureate. Juan Felipe Herrera, professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, reminisces about Felipe Emilio Herrera in this Father’s Day video.

When poet James Tyner was a child, he faced an uncertain future, including time spent homeless, and living in tough, gang-ridden neighborhoods in Southern California. He says two things helped "save" him: a love of literature and the city of Fresno. He is now giving back to the community and sharing his love for his adopted hometown through a two-year appointment as the City of Fresno's first poet laureate.

According to a report of the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles leads the nation in the creative sector of the new economy. It is they said, the "Creative Capital of the World " with one of every six people employed in a creative field, and generating over $ 120 billion dollars annually in gross revenue. 

The baby boomers are going to find arts programs more engaging and fulfilling ways to maintain their health, either as an alternative or complement to medications and medical treatments. An increasing body of research shows that participating in creative and performing arts programs has beneficial effects on your health and well-being across the lifespan. The National Center for Creative Aging's website has information on arts programs around the U.S. that are well-established and widely used by middle-age and older adults.

Philanthropist and media mogul Oprah Winfrey is donating $12 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, officials announced Tuesday. Combined with the $1 million she gave in 2007, it is the museum’s largest donation, and Winfrey’s name will go on a 350-seat theater in recognition. The chairwoman and chief executive of the Oprah Winfrey Network has been a member of the museum’s advisory council since 2004.

Artist Jim DeWitt is releasing a new series of oil paintings that depict the 34th America’s Cup on San Francisco Bay. DeWitt was named the America’s Cup artist-in-residence in 2012 by the Golden Gate Yacht Club (host club for the 34th America’s Cup). His new work documents the year-long build-up to competition finals; first he painted AC45s, and now he is capturing AC72s, the largest of the competitive sailing yachts, as they vie for the world’s most prestigious sailing honor, the America’s Cup. 

Bank of America announced that it has provided funding to assist with the restoration of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles through its 2013 Art Conservation Project, a global effort that will conserve 24 projects in 16 countries around the world, including eight in the United States. The funding has been used to help Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) provide staff time and expertise to identify repairs to the Watts Towers, provide day-to-day maintenance and long-term care of the Towers, and increase awareness of the landmark. 

Two 10th century Cambodian stone statues displayed for nearly two decades at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art were returned to their homeland Tuesday in a high-profile case of allegedly looted artifacts. The voluntary return of the pair of "Kneeling Attendants" statues by one of America's foremost cultural institutions is seen as setting a precedent for the restoration of artworks to their places of origin, from which they were often removed in hazy circumstances.

From the printing press, to motion pictures, to recorded sound, to the Internet, for its entire history copyright law has evolved and developed in response to new developments in technology and the marketplace. And today, the U.S. copyright system stands as a cornerstone of a vibrant creative economy that is unparalleled in the world -- adding $631 billion and over 7.5 million direct and indirect jobs to the U.S. economy in 2010, according to the Department of Commerce, making the United States a world leader in creativity, technological innovation and economic growth. 

What do we know about the 2.1 million artists in the United States' labor force? To help answer that question, the NEA today released "Equal Opportunity Data Mining: National Statistics about Working Artists." This new online research tool offers 70 searchable tables with figures on working artists by state and metropolitan area, by demographic information (including race and ethnicity, age, gender, and disability status), and by residence and workplace. The public is welcome to investigate the tables, a map of state-level rankings, and links to original sources.

Munger donated 189 Class A shares to the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino, California, and 11 shares to Los Angeles’s Marlborough School, both on May 29, he said in a regulatory filing today.

Denise Montgomery’s been in San Diego for several years. She previously ran arts programs for the city of Denver and a Colorado business group. Here, she worked marketing for the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and as a consultant for other institutions. She’s wrapping up a national report for the Wallace Foundation about how to improve after-school programs for low-income kids.

There will be more than 500 artists from across Southern California working to create 200 murals on pavement this weekend at the Pasadena Paseo.

The brick façade of L.A.’s Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) has gotten a yarty makeover with the installation of 12,000 tiny, brightly colored crocheted granny squares in a project called “CAFAM Granny Squared.” Organized by Yarn Bombing Los Angeles (YBLA), a group of “guerrilla knitters” that meets regularly at the museum, the installation solicited knitters from all 50 states and 25 countries to contribute small crocheted pieces, known as granny squares. 

Kurt Percy, the assistant manager of the Cincinnati Museum Center, has crossed Ken Ham. Percy dared to speak the truth about the Creation “Museum”.

World-renowned pop artist Peter Max was honored at Westfield UTC Mall in University City. Mayor Bob Filner was on hand to present him with a key to the city.

The $13-million structure is a six-story-high, multimedia-infused glass cube that’s now home to the museum’s famous fin-whale skeleton, which hangs in a diving position from the ceiling. Until now, the building has been under wraps, with mystery mounting as to what shape it was taking under its tightly fitted white tent.

Sixteen college students from around the globe were honored at the Saturday night ceremony, held at the academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills and hosted by onetime Student Academy Award winner Bob Saget. Presenters included writer-director Kimberly Peirce and actors Clark Gregg, Jason Schwartzman and Quvenzhane (kwuh-VEHN’-juh-nay) Wallis.

While the bill cannot be passed for the upcoming fiscal year, it is still available for consideration next spring. With broad public support for the bill—the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution supporting AB 580—it’s possible the bill will be carried through to the Assembly floor for a vote next year.

The International Symposium on Assistive Technology for Music and Art (ISATMA 2013) will cover the current state of arts technology for people with spinal cord injuries and similar serious mobility impairments. Through talks, demonstrations and presentations, the symposium will then address future trends and possibilities for new technologies — such as workstations that allow people with disabilities to interface with computers and create music and art, or ways to allow people with a variety of different mobility impairments to collaborate creatively.

How the trend towards impermanence will affect cultural memory remains to be seen. Part of what we love about looking at and living in cities is the built environment and its layered histories. Temporary works enhance the built environment, but their destination status is limited, whereas permanent public works become the landscape. For better or for worse, Legs stands out among large-scale public works in San Francisco for its unique presence and public accessibility. It is also noteworthy that there are relatively few public works of this scale by women artists.

Jazz icon Miles Davis may be remembered as a trumpet-wielding master by most, but a new exhibition reveals his finesse with an entirely different set of instruments: pen and paper, brush and canvas. Miles Davis: The Art of Cool opens Saturday at the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville, Calif., showcasing 35 of the legend's original sketches and paintings.

The value of the six pieces is at least $97,000, according to the auction booklet. But the bank is optimistic it will raise more than that for the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, Bank of America California President Janet Lamkin said, based on conversations she’s had with collectors and others in the community.

Music is not tangible. You can't eat it, drink it or mate with it. It doesn't protect against the rain, wind or cold. It doesn't vanquish predators or mend broken bones. And yet humans have always prized music - or well beyond prized, loved it.  Researchers used brain imaging to show that music that people described as highly emotional engaged the reward system deep in their brains — activating subcortical nuclei known to be important in reward, motivation and emotion.

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors created the honorary post of Poet Laureate at their April 23rd meeting. The selected Poet Laureate’s role will be to elevate poetry among San Mateo County residents and to celebrate the literary arts. The nomination deadline is July 31, 2013 at 5:00 pm.

Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez, a vital San Diego music institution for nearly 40 years, is one of this year's nine recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowships, the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts. 

In an effort to offer the very best quality of care to women with mental health and substance abuse issues, Brookhaven Retreat has added an art therapist to its clinical staff. Beginning in June, its art therapist will help the women in its residential program get the most from art-centered experiential therapy.

Quincy Jones, musician and Arts Driver, writes in business magazine Forbes: "Often times, artists don’t think they have a role to play in solving Grand Challenges such as learning. But I think that they do. I believe that when creative minds from various disciplines get together, the sum is greater than its parts because each comes at the problem from their own unique point of view. That’s when magic happens."

For Ohio schools, turning STEM into STEAM poses significant challenges, starting with the breakdown of traditional barriers that delineate educational disciplines. Advocates say that integrating the arts into science education can deepen students' understanding of the material.

Congratulations to Kalyn Peterson, a Sir Francis Drake High School junior who was announced as the winner of the 2013 Congressional Art Competition. Her artwork, titled “Sad Clown on Cardboard,” was selected as the top entry in the high school-level contest for California’ Second Congressional District, which spans from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. 

If William T. Cartwright hadn't gotten lost on his way to visit an aunt in 1959, the Watts Towers might not have been saved. Cartwright was trying to find Lynwood, but soon realized he was near the famed folk art towers and took a detour to see them. Shocked by what he found, he quickly set about trying to rescue them.

Michelle Bitting, a published author and versatile teacher of poetry, was recognized as the Poet Laureate of Pacific Palisades at the Community Council meeting on March 8.

Theodore Kim, Academy Award-winning assistant professor in the Department of Media Arts and Technology at UC Santa Barbara, has received the 2013-14 Harold J. Plous Award. Kim's research investigates the multi-sensory phenomena that arise from the numerical simulation of physical system. Nearly a dozen recent feature films have made use of Kim's research.

Arts contribute 4,400 full time jobs and an economic impact of $112 million to the Sacramento region, according to a study released Monday by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.

Artist Donald Lipski started erecting “Hiding My Candy” Monday in the library’s new auditorium. The installation, which will cover one of the auditorium’s walls, consists of hundreds, if not thousands, of books attached to the wall and then covered with a wire mesh.

A museum in Minneapolis gets one of its biggest gifts ever, thanks to a California couple who bonded with the MIA’s director over farming. “I’m a fifth-generation central Californian and I wanted it to be on the West Coast if possible,” Clark said Monday by telephone. “But when I considered the options, to be honest, they weren’t there.” The collection would have “overwhelmed” the University of California at Berkeley and would “just sit in storage” at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, he said.

New this year is the launch of O+SF, another O+ Festival where artists and musicians perform in exchange for free healthcare services from art-loving professionals, is scheduled for Nov. 15-17 in the San  Francisco Mission Creek District.

With China committing to the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), now three out of the world's five big patent offices use the same classification system, said Oswald SchrAPder, spokesman of the EPO. Korea and Japan have not yet signed on, he said

Poetry is often thought of as silent text confined to the page, but the words of some of the most famous poets in the English language were given new life at Stanford's second annual Poetry Out Loud  competition. (The event is similar, but unrelated, to the Poetry Out Loud competition for high school students initiated by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, and headed by the California Arts Council in the Golden State.)

Kickstarter has been described as the Home Shopping Network for geeks—picture an online version of the Sharper Image catalog and an investment platform for tech startups having a baby. But this is the wrong way to think about Kickstarter, because the site’s founders have actually shied away from tech to take Kickstarter back to its roots: a fundraising platform for all forms of creativity, but mostly in the arts.

California Shakespeare Theater today announced it has received a world-class sound system courtesy of Meyer Sound of Berkeley and Sound Associates of New York. The  new audio upgrade includes loudspeakers, digital audio distribution,  and control interface manufactured by Meyer Sound at its Berkeley  headquarters. The state-of-the-art system will debut with Cal  Shakes' opening production of the 2013 season, American Night: The  Ballad of Juan José.

A Federal Interagency Task Force on the Arts and Human Development was created to encourage more and better research on the role that the arts might play in helping people reach their full potential at all stages of life. In November 2012, the NEA, NIA, NCCAM, and OBSSR hosted a workshop at the National Academy of Sciences to review the current state of research on the arts, health, and well-being in older Americans.

You are invited to submit photos for a public art tribute honoring those who are battling cancer, cancer survivors, and remembering those we have lost to cancer. The tribute project, a visual snapshot of the Truckee-Tahoe cancer community, consists of a sturdy base with a 7 x 5-foot flat panel viewable from either side. Each photo will be backed with a colorful piece of collage paper and then decoupaged on to the flat panel surface by local artists. 

Artwork made with 3-D printers catch the eye of the visual art-loving public.

San Mateo County officials are recommended to spend $2 million to build or modernize four library branches but not set aside any of the Measure A sales tax revenue for a nonprofit arts council looking to expand.

Friday the YBCA board of directors announced that Deborah Cullinan, Intersection's executive director since 1996, will take on the same role at the larger institution. She succeeds Kenneth Foster, who announced his resignation in August, effective Friday. Foster, who is credited with doubling YBCA's budget and creating its Big Ideas programming concept, is leaving to direct a new graduate program in arts leadership at the University of Southern California.

If it does end up at the ballot box, the Millennium project will likely receive support from a diverse collection of groups. Affordable housing advocates will get behind the project because Millennium has agreed to pay $22 million for affordable housing to the Mayor’s Office of Housing. Supporters of the Mexican Museum will fight for a long-anticipated, 52,000 square foot permanent home. And historic preservationists could back the development because it includes the restoration of the 1903 Aronson Building, which will be connected to the new tower.

Recipients of nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts to be honored at awards ceremony and free concert in Washington, DC, on September 25 & 27, 2013. Honorees include Ramón "Chunky" Sánchez, Chicano musician and culture bearer of San Diego, California.

The overhaul, funded with private donations, revenue from membership and admissions as well as annual funding from L.A. County totaling aproximately $15 million (44% of the museum's budget), is as much a philosophical renovation as it is a physical one, says Pisano, who joined the staff in 2001 when the board of directors was just beginning to rewrite the museum's mission.

The 40th Telluride Film Festival (August 29 – September 2, 2013), presented by National Film Preserve LTD., proudly announces Oscar-winning production designer Dean Tavoularis as its 2013 poster artist. Tavoularis will attend the 40th Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend to present his poster design to the public and hold a poster signing for festival guests.

Philanthropic dollars directed to the arts can leverage economic and neighborhood development. Some in the private sector have already come to this conclusion and reaped great return on that investment. Arts revitalize communities and strengthens the economy, improves safety, and creates vibrant neighborhoods. 

In The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited (2012) Florida returns to his theories of a decade earlier and cites statistical survey after survey in defense of his provocative theories.

The United States Poet Laureate Philip Levine and California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera are both from Fresno. Gary Soto and Iraq veteran Brian Turner have also had much success. Now, the city has its own poet laureate in James Tyner.

Gathering knitting-enthusiasts from all over the world, the team began to create the squares that now cover most of CAFAM’s facade. Granny Squared took participants from all walks of life. Knitters included actors, lawyers, students, and yes, even grandmothers. The final project took over 500 people to complete. A nifty map on the Granny Squared project website highlights the long journey some of these squares took to be on Wilshire Blvd.

Artist Hank Holland has sold thousands of dollars worth of paintings since FOX 8 profiled him earlier this month. Now, motivated by his own disability, he's using his new-found fame to help others. 

Construction has started on a major extension to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), designed by Snøhetta to double the gallery's exhibition and education space.

The California State Summer School for the Arts and the CSSSA Foundation recently announced the CSSSA California Arts Scholars for the 2013 summer session. Approximately 500 high-school age students were selected from a pool of more than 1,500 applicants from all 57 counties. These students have demonstrated artistic excellence in one of the seven disciplines: animation, creative writing, film, dance, music, theater and the visual arts.

Producer/director Brett Ratner donated $1 million for a planned movie museum on the Miracle Mile, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today. The Academy is in the midst of a $300 million fundraising effort for the museum, which is expected to be located next to LACMA in the Wilshire May Co. building, with a planned opening in early 2017.

This Saturday the Golden Gate Opera hosts an intimate benefit performance at the former home of American opera legend Jess Thomas. Golden Gate Opera is a tiny local non-profit with a huge outreach mission – to bring the joy and music of opera to Marin’s schoolchildren.

The makeover represents one of the final pieces in the overhaul of Hollywood Boulevard, a loud, colorful commercial district that has gone from downtrodden and scary in the 1970s and 1980s to glitzy and crowded today.

When Heide Pfützner was paralysed by a form of motor neuron disease it seemed that she would never paint again. But now, new technology has allowed the former teacher to produce a series of artworks using only her thoughts. The mother-of-four has mastered technology that allows her to paint pictured using the signals that come from her brain.

The city is accepting proposals from artists who want to create “colorful, whimsical and imaginative” bicycle racks that are functional and also appealing to the eye.

ArtPlace America announced the award last week for the museum's Building a Better Modesto program, which, according to a museum news release, uses public art, architecture, landscape and urban design to acknowledge Modesto's unique assets, change the perception of downtown and generate action to make it a more livable city.

The "Creative Economy" is a new emerging concept that collectively refers to various creative industries that have always been there, but never been classified under a unified category. These industries include advertising, music and performing arts, arts and antiques, design, fashion design, media, publishing, handicrafts, writing, literature, film-making, video games, photography, magazines, radio and TV, software and architecture.

How does one person decide if they like a work of art? Is it your own innate taste or what you have been taught that decides? New research suggests both perspectives are important and that each should be combined to appropriately value the work.

New research suggests that, contrary to common belief, ticket buyers are not particularly hostile toward contemporary compositions.

Museum officials oppose the idea of a fire sale and say they have hired a bankruptcy attorney to suggest ways to protect the collection from possible losses. In a statement, the DIA said it and the city “hold the museum's art collection in trust for the public" and that "the city cannot sell art to generate funds for any purpose other than to enhance the collection."

As Gina Rossi tells it, the idea of bike racks as public art came to her in 2009 as she watched bicyclists pedal around downtown and midtown Sacramento looking for places to lock up their cycles.

Art classes attended by children of the employees of The Filipino Channel are producing works that will help raise funds for the rehabilitation of neglected or abused children in the Philippines.

Drawn from a pool of more than 1,500 well-qualified applicants, the approximately 500 high-school-age students selected are considered to be some of the most outstanding students in the arts from all over the state of California. Students hail from all 58 counties and have demonstrated outstanding artistic excellence in one of the seven CSSSA disciplines: Animation, Creative Writing, Film, Dance, Music, Theater and the Visual Arts.

Coming three years after the heralded reopening of the art and history galleries in 2010, the natural science wing marks the final element of the museum's six-year, $63 million overhaul -- $11.4 million of that for the science section -- bringing the city-owned museum up to its full multidisciplinary capacity and firmly grounding it as a world-class institution, museum officials say.

Renaissance Arts is an unusual charter school that incorporates string instruments and dance into its everyday curriculum. It is one of a handful of charter schools in L.A. Unified that are using arts not to create the next generation of artists, but to inspire regular students to stay in school.

A landmark study by The Arts Endowment reveals how ongoing, community-based arts programs improve the quality of life for older Americans. While actively or even passively involved in music, creative writing and poetry, dance and movement, or the visual arts, seniors benefit from increased socialization, non-verbal forms of communication and expression, activation of the senses, increased self-expression, and discovery. 

World trade in creative goods and services totalled a record $624 billion in 2011, up from $559.5 billion in 2010, a UN report said May 15, 2013. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) global database, the world's creative economy has now exceeded its pre-crisis peak of $620.4 billion in exports in 2008.

The artists’ colonies that had developed in the early 1800s moved into the Arroyo Seco near Pasadena, where the great powers of Christianity had helped pave the way to the missions, from Riverside to Indio. These early artists made pilgrimages to experience the majestic mountains with hues of lavender and splendid sunsets beckoning to be painted on canvas, thus forming the plein-air movement of American impressionists.

Los Angeles Modern Auctions set multiple world records for works of art and design in its May 19, 2013 auction, selling major works by California artists to American, European, and Asian buyers.

As a self-professed history junkie, Eleanor O'Donnell would love to see others take the time to enjoy the vast history that surrounds her community. That is why she and others on the Antioch Historical Society Museum's Open House Committee started new extended hours at the museum's one Wednesday a month for the summer.

Local representatives from arts groups told the California Arts Council how arts can be better integrated in the region. Redding was one of nine cities the council visited to seek input to develop a strategic plan for arts programs in the state. 

Last Tuesday, the teenagers, members of Boston Asian Youth Essential Service on Harrison Avenue, became some of the first people to work on a new project called “Mending Boston” by Cambridge artist Clara Wainwright that aims to bring people together to mend their souls, talk, and honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.

El Verano Elementary School recently received an Artist in the Schools grant from the California Arts Council (CAC), written by the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. El Verano principal Maite Iturri helped coordinate the execution of the grant award, which is a collaboration between the museum and local and Bay Area artists, and represents an effort to expand the museum's popular ARTS program.

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera watched the news broadcast in dismay. Another child lost, this time in an after-school fight that turned deadly. As the story unfolded, memories of the bullying he experienced as the Spanish-speaking child of immigrants washed over him. Herrera, a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, vowed to act.

A team of Harvard University students and a Loeb fellow are developing an online platform to help people find art in their area and donate to projects in real time, swapping the conventional busker’s hat with a free app. When Musey goes live this summer, artists will be able to go the website, create a profile and upload a photo of their work.

As assistant professor at the division of medical ethics and humanities, the department of internal medicine, and the department of pediatrics at the University of Utah, it's Case's job to teach medical students and residents how to use art in their studies and careers.

The California Arts Council is holding a public meeting Tuesday at Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding to gather input as it prepares a strategic plan. The council is looking to answer how it can best serve the state through the arts, provide leadership, use its existing resources in the most effective manner possible and expand resources for the arts statewide.

ArtPlace America is a collaboration of national and regional foundations, banks and federal agencies committed to accelerating creative placemaking – putting art at the heart of a portfolio of strategies designed to revitalize communities. This is the third cycle of grants awards by the collaboration.  With this round, ArtPlace America has awarded a total of $42.1 million in 134 grants to 124 organizations in 79 communities across the country.

"Like art, science and engineering are deeply creative activities," Pablo Debenedetti, Dean for Research at Princeton, said in a statement. "Also like art, science and engineering at their very best are highly unpredictable in their outcomes. The Art of Science exhibit celebrates the beauty of unpredictability and the unpredictability of beauty."

The 31-year-old Wildomar artist was voted Best of Show in last year's Temecula Street Painting Festival with his image of a firefighter saving a young girl. He is this year's featured artist for the 13th annual event, running June 21-23 on Main Street at Town Square Park. On Sunday, Rupp presented a free workshop for those looking to possibly participate in the upcoming festival. Each participant was provided with a free box of 48 soft pastel chalks.

Paint tests, monitoring devices and a new floor at Charles and Ray Eames' landmark home are all part of a pilot project of the Getty Conservation Institute's Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative. Today, the unconventional Eames residence - constructed of prefabricated materials and off-the-shelf products but highly customized - is in the forefront of a struggle to prolong the lives of notable modern buildings.