The Watts Towers Tour Guide Program offers visitors a unique and in-depth look at one of Los Angeles’ most iconic landmarks. Participants will be guided by knowledgeable tour guides through the towers, learning about the history, cultural significance, and artistic processes involved in their creation. The tour, which is the only way to gain access to the towers, will last approximately 30 minutes and highlight the life of Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant who built the towers over a
33-year period, and the cultural and social context of the Watts neighborhood in which they stand. The tour also includes a visit to the Watts Towers Arts Center, where visitors can see rotating exhibitions of contemporary art and learn about the ongoing preservation efforts for the Towers. With this program, visitors will gain a greater appreciation for the Watts Towers as a masterpiece of folk art and a symbol of resilience and community spirit.
Upcoming Events
Free
SoCal Museums is dedicated to showcasing the diverse and vibrant cultural landscape of Southern California. SoCal Museums presents a diverse assortment of museums, reflecting the unique character of Southern California itself. Whether it’s art, natural history, science, or culture, there’s something for everyone, and you can find out which museums are free today.
Free
The LGBTQ+ Pride at Los Angeles County Library has a selection of resources and materials that inform about and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community in Los Angeles County and beyond. The scope encompasses academic materials, poetry, film, music, novels, magazines, and newspapers.
Free
The archive is now available to researchers. It spans the artist’s career from his student days at Pratt Institute in the 1960s through his more well-known photographs from the 1980s. The archive includes sculpture and assemblages, collages, cut-outs, early drawings and paintings, Polaroids, and examples of large-format photographic prints of flowers, portraits, nudes, and sadomasochistic subjects.
Free
The OutMuseum is the first LGBTQ+ arts and media virtual museum available free to the public. Home to a combination of rotating and permanent exhibits centering themes, identities, and experiences which celebrate and commemorate the queer and trans communities. Through short film collections, panels and roundtables, oral histories, and other multimedia within our exhibits, this space can foster discussions, increase access to art and information, and, most importantly, speak to histories regularly omitted from the record. Because what is history…
Days of Rage is a web exhibition that enlivens historical activist posters through analysis and storytelling. Grounded in the experiences of activists and graphic designers, the exhibition positions LGBTQ+ graphic design as embodied in community realities and histories, producing subjective reflections on the interdependence of design and activism.
