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    From a Burger King to a Concert Hall, With Help From Frank Gehry

    The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ambitious new home for its youth orchestra is the latest sign of the changing fortunes of Inglewood.INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Noemi Guzman, a 17-year-old high school senior, usually has to find a corner someplace to practice violin — the instrument she calls “quite literally, the love of my life.” But the other Saturday morning, Guzman joined a string ensemble practicing on a stage here that is nearly as grand and acoustically tuned as the place she dreams of performing one day: Walt Disney Concert Hall, the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.“This is beautiful,” Guzman said during a break from a practice session at the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center, her voice muffled by a mask. “To have a space you can call your own. It is our space. It is created for us.”Inglewood, a working-class city three miles from Los Angeles Airport that was once plagued by crime and poverty, is in the midst of a high-profile, largely sports-driven economic transformation: The 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium, which opened here last year, now the home of the Rams and the Chargers, will be the site of the Super Bowl in February and will be used in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Construction is underway on an 18,000-seat arena for the Los Angeles Clippers, the basketball team.But the transformation of Inglewood, historically one of this region’s largest Black communities, is also showcased by the 25,000-square foot building where Guzman was practicing the other morning. The building, which opened in October, is the first permanent home for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, and is the product of a collaboration involving two of the most prominent cultural figures in Los Angeles: Gustavo Dudamel, the artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which oversees YOLA, and Frank Gehry, the architect who designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.Mario Raven, right, led students in a singing and music reading class: “Here we go — one, two, three!”Rozette Rago for The New York Times“This was an old bank,” said Dudamel, who has long been friends with Gehry, a classical music lover who can often be spotted in the seats of the hall he designed. “Then it was a Burger King — yes, a Burger King! Frank saw the potential. What we have there is a stage of the same dimensions as Disney Hall.”The $23.5 million project is a high-water mark for YOLA, the youth music education program that was founded here 15 years ago under Dudamel and that he calls the signature achievement of his tenure. It serves 1,500 students, from ages 5 to 18, who come to study, practice and perform music on instruments provided by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was patterned after El Sistema, the youth music education program in Venezuela where Dudamel studied violin as a boy.And it is one of the most vivid examples of efforts by major arts organizations across the country to bring youth education programs out into communities, rather than concentrating them in city centers or urban arts districts. “You can’t just do it downtown,” said Karen Mack, the executive director of LA Commons, a community arts organization. “If you really want it to have the impact that’s possible with that program you have to bring it out to the community. It has to be accessible.”Gehry called that idea the “whole game.”“It becomes not the community having to go to Disney Hall,” he said, “but the Disney Hall coming to the community.”For Inglewood, the new YOLA Center is a notable addition to what has been a transformative wave of stadium and arena construction, which has spurred a wave of commercial and housing development (and with that, concerns about the gentrification that often follows this kind of development). Until 2016, Inglewood was known mainly as the home of the Forum, the 45-year-old arena where the Lakers and Kings once played before moving to what was known as the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, and Hollywood Park Racetrack, which closed to make way for SoFi stadium.Some instruments cannot be played through masks; those lessons are often held outdoors these days.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“We’ve never been known for cultural enrichment,” said James T. Butts Jr., the mayor of Inglewood. “That is why this is so important to us. What’s happening now is a rounding out of society and culture: we will no longer be known for just sports and entertainment.”Even before Beckmen Center opened, YOLA could be a heady experience for a school-age student contemplating a career in music. Guzman, who joined the youth orchestra seven years ago, has played bow to bow with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the baton of Dudamel. YOLA musicians have joined the Philharmonic at Disney Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and on tours to places including Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City.Christine Kiva, 15, who started playing cello when she was 7, is now studying with cellists from the Philharmonic. “It’s helped me develop my sound as a cellist, and work on a repertoire for cello,” she said.Inglewood is the fifth economically stressed neighborhood where the youth organization has set up an outpost. But in the first four locations, it shares space with other organizations, forced to fit in without a full-fledged performing space or practice rooms. “We were making the project work in spaces that weren’t specifically designed for music,” said Chad Smith, the chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.Now, the words “Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center,” named after the philanthropists and vineyard owners who made the largest donation to the project, stretch out across the front of the renovated building overlooking South La Brea Avenue and the old downtown. Dudamel has an office there. Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic regularly show up to observe practice and work with students.This building has plenty of rooms for students to practice. There are 272 seats on benches in the main hall, which can be retracted into a wall, allowing the room to be divided in half so two orchestras can practice at once. The acoustics were designed by Nagata Acoustics, which also designed the acoustics at Disney Hall.YOLA, the youth music education program founded 15 years ago, now serves 1,500 students from ages 5 to 18.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThe building had been owned by Inglewood, which sold it to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “When we first walked into it, it still had the greasy smell of a Burger King,” said Elsje Kibler-Vermaas, the vice president for learning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gehry, who had worked with Dudamel on projects before — including designs for the opera “Don Giovanni” in 2012­ — agreed to take a look at the building, a former bank that opened in 1965.He said that when they brought him there, he was struck by the low ceilings from its days as a bank.“I said, ‘is it possible to make an intervention?’” recalled Gehry who, even at 92, is involved in a series of design projects across Los Angeles.By cutting a hole in its ceiling and putting in a skylight, and cutting a hole in the floor to make the hall deeper, he was able to create a performance space with a 45-foot-high ceiling, close to what Disney Hall has. “The kids will have a real experience of playing in that kind of hall,” he said.That turned out to be a $2 million conversation; the total price, including buying the building and renovating it, jumped from $21 million to $23.5 million to cover the additional cost of raising the roof, installing a skylight and lowering the floor.The building was bustling the other day. Students had come for afternoon music instruction from elementary schools, most in Inglewood, and after snacks — bananas, apples, granola bars — they raced to their lessons in reading music, percussion and how to follow a conductor.“Pay attention!” said Mario Raven, leading his students in a singing and music reading class. “Here we go — one, two, three!”The brass players were outdoors because of Covid-19 concerns (it’s hard to play a French horn while wearing a mask). As planes flew overhead, they performed High Hopes by Panic! at the Disco, suggesting that a youth orchestra need not live by Brahms and Beethoven alone.Students typically sit through 12 to 18 hours a week of instruction for 44 weeks a year. About a quarter of them end up majoring in music. Smith said that was reflected in the broader aspirations for the program. “Our goal wasn’t we were going to train the greatest musicians in the world,” he said. “Our goal was we were going to provide music education to develop students’ self-esteem through music.”Dudamel said his experience as a boy in Venezuela had been formative in bringing the program to Los Angeles. “I grew up in an orchestra where they called us, in the press, the ‘orchestra without a ceiling,’” he said in a Zoom interview from France, where he is now also the music director of the Paris Opera. “Because we didn’t have a place where to rehearse. We have materialized a dream where young people have the best things they can have. A good hall. Great teachers.”“Look, this is not a regular music school,” he added. “We don’t pretend be a conservatory. Maybe they will not be musicians in the future. But our goal is that they have music as part of their life, because it brings beauty, it brings discipline through art.” More

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    Wallice, an Indie Pop Sensation from Los Angeles

    Her 2020 song “Punching Bag” was anointed by an influential Spotify playlist.Name: WalliceAge: 23Hometown: Los AngelesCurrently Lives: In a three-bedroom bungalow house in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles with her longtime boyfriend, Callaghan Kevany, and a friend.Claim to Fame: Wallice (whose full name is Wallice Hana Watanabe) is a singer-songwriter best known for “Punching Bag,” a song about self-deception in toxic relationships; her follow-up hit, “23,” about the perils of living with her mother during the pandemic, has had three million streams on Spotify. Sample lyric: “I’m terrified of the future/ Scared that I’ll still be a loser.” “I credit the pandemic to be able to find an audience, because I think a lot of people had time to listen to music and find new artists,” Wallice said.Big Break: In 2020, shortly after Wallice released “Punching Bag,” Spotify decided to feature the song on its Lorem playlist — an influential list that showcases new artists and now has more than 900,000 followers. “A lot of my friends are indie artists that are coming up in the scene,” she said. “They kept reposting the song, and that’s how I got Spotify’s attention.” The song took off from there and has been streamed more than four million times.Latest Project: In October, Wallice signed with Dirty Hit, an independent record label in London that’s also home to the 1975, an English boy band. In November she released the single “Wisdom Tooth,” a bubbly pop tune that was written the night before she went to the dentist. “I was so nervous,” she said. “I had a recording session that day and was like, ‘There’s no way I can write about anything else.’”Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesNext Thing: In the new year, she’ll join the band Still Woozy on tour. “I’m really excited about going on tour, especially since my bandmates are my best friends,” she said. “My boyfriend is our guitar player, and my bass player I’ve known forever.”What’s in a Name?: Wallice went without a name at birth because her parents thought they were having a boy. A few days later, her father named her after Wallis Simpson, the American socialite who later became the wife of Prince Edward, after he abdicated the British throne to marry her. “I really like my name, and I love how it is unique,” Wallice said. More

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    Drakeo the Ruler Fatally Stabbed at Once Upon a Time in L.A. Festival

    The rapper, whose real name was Darrell Caldwell, was to perform at a festival on Saturday night when he was fatally stabbed during an altercation, officials said.Drakeo the Ruler, a West Coast rapper known for his offbeat cadence and jerky rhythm, was fatally stabbed on Saturday night during an altercation at a Los Angeles festival where several artists were scheduled to perform. He was 28.A publicist for the rapper, Scott Jawson, confirmed his death on Sunday.Drakeo the Ruler, whose real name was Darrell Caldwell, was to perform at the festival, Once Upon a Time in L.A., at 8:30 p.m. local time.At about 8:40 p.m., paramedics responded to a call about a stabbing near the Banc of California Stadium in Exposition Park, where the festival was being held, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.The altercation happened in the “roadway backstage,” according to a statement from Once Upon a Time in L.A. Festival organizers ended the show early on Saturday night. Other artists scheduled to perform included 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg.The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the stabbing. It was unclear on Sunday whether any arrests had been made.In February, Mr. Caldwell, who has garnered more than 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, released his biggest album to date, “The Truth Hurts,” in which he raps in a nervous-sounding delivery about “everything that I have gone through,” including incarceration, he said in a statement promoting the album earlier this year.Born in Los Angeles and raised by a single mother, Mr. Caldwell has said in interviews that he spent much of his youth in correctional facilities. He thought of rap as a way to earn money and help his family.He told The Ringer in 2020 that his long-term aspirations were to be wealthy and “get my mom and everybody that I can take care of out of poverty.”“I’ve got to make sure that they’ll never have to want for nothing again,” he said. “I want to show people that no matter how hard the situation is, my story proves that anything is possible.”Mr. Caldwell pioneered “nervous music,” a subgenre of rap that sounds sinister and contains cryptic lyrics.In 2020, Mr. Caldwell released “Thank You for Using GTL,” an album that refers to GTL, a communications company used in some correctional facilities.The album had verses that Mr. Caldwell recorded over a phone while he was still in jail, awaiting trial in connection with the 2016 killing of a 24-year-old man, Mr. Jawson said. Mr. Caldwell was acquitted of felony murder and attempted murder charges in 2019.Los Angeles County prosecutors tried to retry Mr. Caldwell on conspiracy charges related to the killing, Mr. Jawson said. Mr. Caldwell agreed to a plea deal and was released in November 2020. Mr. Caldwell later insisted that he did not commit a crime related to the case.A month after being released, Mr. Jawson and Mr. Caldwell met for the first time.“He was very proud of doing everything on his own, on his own terms,” Mr. Jawson said. “He was an independent artist and took a lot of pride in his ability.”In the beginning of his career, he financed some of his music videos, uploaded his songs to streaming platforms and organized shows.It culminated in February when he released, “Talk to Me,” featuring a chorus from Drake, the chart-topping rapper and singer. The song has more than 30 million streams on Spotify.Mr. Caldwell told Rolling Stone in March that he wanted people to “take my music seriously and feel everything.”“I might talk a certain way or say certain things, but I’ve been through a lot in my life,” he said. “I want them to feel what I went through.” More

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    Dominique Morisseau Pulls Play From L.A. Theater, Citing ‘Harm’

    The playwright ended a run of “Paradise Blue” a week after it opened at the Geffen Playhouse. The theater acknowledged “missteps.”The playwright Dominique Morisseau has ended the run of her play “Paradise Blue” just a week after it opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, saying that Black women who worked on the show had been “verbally abused and diminished.”Morisseau did not specifically describe what happened. But in a 1,100-word Facebook post on Wednesday, she said that members of the creative team had been “allowed to behave disrespectfully,” that she had demanded an apology from one member of the team and that “instead of staunchly backing this, the Geffen continued to enable more abuse.”“Harm was allowed to fester,” Morisseau said in the Facebook post.“I gave the theater an ultimatum,” she added. “Respect the Black womxn artists working on my show, or I will pull my play.”In a statement about the cancellation, the Geffen Playhouse said that officials had “apologized to everyone involved” and acknowledged having “fallen short” in its commitment to artists.“An incident between members of the production was brought to our attention and we did not respond decisively in addressing it,” the theater’s statement, released on Wednesday, said. “As a result of these missteps, some members of the production felt unsafe and not fully supported.”“Paradise Blue,” which is set in 1949, is part of Morisseau’s trilogy of Detroit plays, which have been widely produced at theaters around the country. It played Off Broadway in 2018; the Geffen production had opened to strong reviews on Nov. 18, and had been set to run through Dec. 12.“Skeleton Crew,” another play in the trilogy, is scheduled to begin Broadway performances on Dec. 21.The theater declined to comment beyond its written statements. Morisseau did not respond to a request for additional comment.Morisseau’s decision to pull the play over what she described as the mistreatment of Black artists and the dismissal of their complaints comes as theater continues to grapple with how to reform itself and improve its culture.The protests over the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 ignited a nationwide reckoning over racism and inequality in America that resonated in the theater world. As artists prepared to return from the long pandemic shutdown, some have grown more outspoken about what they say are pervasive problems in the industry.This summer Broadway power brokers signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices as theaters were preparing to reopen.In her Facebook post, Morisseau — who earned a Tony Award nomination as the book writer for “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations”— said she had been “gutted” by what had transpired with “Paradise Blue.”She urged the theater industry to “look inward and acknowledge a pervasive culture of anti-blackness, anti-womxness, and anti-black-womxnness.” More

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    'General Hospital' Loses Actors Who Opposed Vaccination Mandate

    Two actors have left one of America’s most popular soap operas after declining to comply with an on-set vaccination mandate.The actors, Steve Burton and Ingo Rademacher, were fixtures of ABC’s “General Hospital,” a long-running daytime drama set in the fictional town of Port Charles, N.Y.About one in five American adults has not received a single dose of a coronavirus vaccine. Mr. Burton and Mr. Rademacher were outspoken opponents of a coronavirus vaccine mandate that applied to a part of the set where actors work unmasked, known in the industry as Zone A. The mandate took effect on Nov. 1.“Unfortunately, ‘General Hospital’ has let me go because of the vaccine mandate,” Mr. Burton, who tested positive for the virus in August and filmed his last episode on Oct. 27, said in an Instagram video on Tuesday.“I did apply for my medical and religious exemptions and both of those were denied — which, you know, hurts,” he added. “But this is also about personal freedom to me. I don’t think anyone should lose their livelihood over this.”Mr. Rademacher’s departure from the show was made public earlier this month. He had also refused to comply with the show’s vaccine mandate. “I will stand with you to fight for medical freedom,” he wrote in an Instagram post.Mr. Rademacher has also been criticized on social media in recent weeks for making comments that his critics perceived to be transphobic, a suggestion he has forcefully denied.Representatives for ABC declined to comment on the record. Publicists for the actors could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.Other Hollywood productions have imposed similar on-set mandates, but there is no universal vaccination requirement for people who work in film and television.“General Hospital” has been on the air since 1963. Its episodes are filmed weeks before they air.Mr. Rademacher played the character Jasper “Jax” Jacks on the show for 25 years. In his last episode, which aired on Monday, the character said — spoiler alert — that he would be returning to Australia.“I’m kind of on the outs with everyone in Port Charles right now,” the character said. Some fans interpreted that as a reference to the actor’s real-life tension with his castmates.In the same episode, Mr. Burton’s character, Jason Morgan, was caught up in a tunnel collapse.Mr. Burton said in his Instagram video on Tuesday that he hoped the show’s vaccine mandate would be lifted so that he could finish his career playing Jason Morgan.“And if not,” he added, “I’m going to take this experience, move forward and be forever grateful.” More

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    Hollywood Crew Union Narrowly Ratifies Its Contracts With Studios

    Camera operators, prop makers, lighting technicians and other members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees ratified new contracts with Hollywood studios on Monday. But the margin was perilously narrow, with many members viewing the pact as toothless in terms of preventing long working hours — the kind of conditions recently endured on the set of “Rust,” the Alec Baldwin movie where the cinematographer was killed and the director wounded.IATSE, as the union is known, uses an Electoral College-type system for contract ratification, in which local shops are assigned different numbers of delegates based on their size and all delegate votes are cast based on the majority vote at each local. IATSE said the combined delegate vote for the two contracts was 56 percent in favor, with 641 total votes from 36 locals.The popular vote, however, revealed deep division: 50.3 percent of members voted yes on both contracts. About 72 percent of 63,209 eligible members cast ballots, according to the union.Only 49.6 percent of members in Los Angeles voted yes. In other areas of the country — except the Northeast, which largely operates under a different set of unexpired contracts — the popular vote stood at 52 percent.“The vigorous debate, high turnout and close election indicates we have an unprecedented movement-building opportunity to educate members on our collective bargaining process and drive more participation in our union,” Matthew Loeb, IATSE’s president, said in a statement.In posts on Twitter, some outraged members demanded recounts and flung insults at Mr. Loeb and other IATSE officials.Under the new, three-year contracts, the studios for the first time agreed to give crews a minimum of 54 hours of rest on weekends when working five-day weeks, on par with actors. The contract includes pay increases of up to 60 percent for some workers who were previously paid near minimum wage in California. Studios also agreed to fund a roughly $400 million deficit in the union’s pension and health plan without imposing premiums or increasing the cost of health coverage.The studios include stalwarts like Disney, NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia and insurgents like Amazon, Apple and Netflix.Last week, a smattering of IATSE members held a news conference in Hollywood to criticize the proposed contract — in particular a provision allowing crews to continue to work 14-hour days. The contracts provide for 10-hour “turnarounds,” or the time between leaving a set at the end of a work period and being required to return.The shooting death last month of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer for “Rust,” and the wounding of Joel Souza, the film’s director, thrust concerns about crew rest into the spotlight. Hours before Mr. Baldwin fired a gun being used as a prop — he had been told the firearm was “cold,” meaning that it contained no live ammunition, according to an affidavit — a half dozen camera technicians walked off the set to protest working conditions. Their complaints included marathon work days, long commutes to the set (cutting into turnaround rest time) and delayed paychecks.IATSE and the studios reached a tentative agreement for a new pact on Oct. 16, averting a threatened strike, which would have come at a particularly bad time for Hollywood. Studios have been scrambling to make up for lost production time during the coronavirus pandemic. Another shutdown would have left content cupboards dangerously bare — particularly at streaming services, which have become crucial to the standing of some of the companies on Wall Street. More

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    Experts Say It's Unusual to End a Conservatorship Without an Evaluation

    Several experts said Friday that while they personally supported ending Britney Spears’s conservatorship, they thought it unusual that the Los Angeles probate court did so without requiring the pop star to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.“I’m surprised,” said Robert Dinerstein, a disability rights law professor at American University. He said that persuading judges to overturn a conservatorship in the first place is unusual.But when they do, he said, they typically require a psychological evaluation.“Within the relatively rare number of cases where a conservatorship is terminated, it’s even more unusual to do that without proof they had capacity,” Professor Dinerstein said.Judge Brenda Penny, who terminated the conservatorship, said that further psychological assessments of Ms. Spears were unnecessary, because the conservatorship was technically voluntary.Victoria Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University, said California probate code does not require a mental health evaluation for the conservatorship to be terminated. She said the underlying diagnosis explaining why Ms. Spears was put in conservatorship is unavailable because the record is sealed, making it tough to determine what sort of evaluation might have been required to show that the guardianship was no longer needed.Nevertheless, mental issues seemed to be a part of the reason, and so she had expected that an assessment would have been required to answer whether those problems were now in the past, she said.“I am extremely surprised that this conservatorship is ended without an evaluation,” she said.The experts stressed that they were not commenting on Ms. Spears’s mental health status, of which they are not informed — only on the process as they have experienced it.Typically in deciding whether to end a conservatorship, the experts said, a judge will consider whether the conservatee has regained “capacity,” using a psychological assessment and other factors to determine cognitive ability and decision making.This includes whether they can weigh risks and benefits regarding things like medical care, marriage and contracts. The person’s ability to feed, clothe and shelter themselves may also be examined.The purpose of an assessment is to determine whether the conditions that led to the imposition of the conservatorship in the first place have now stabilized or are in the past.Ms. Spears’s case has been considered extremely unusual because while viewed as unable to care for herself by the court, she continued to work extensively as a performing musician and global celebrity, bringing in millions of dollars.The singer herself had insisted that the arrangement end without her having to undergo an additional mental evaluation, and her lawyer had noted that lawyers for her father had agreed that no mental or psychological evaluation was required under California probate court.Zoe Brennan-Kohn, a disabilities rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said though typically some kind of psychological evaluation is part of the process of ending a conservatorship, it “makes sense that there would be no evaluation because everyone agreed.”“If everyone in the picture thinks this person does not need to be in this invasive situation,” she said, “we don’t want courts to be second-guessing that. Everyone said you should end this. I think it’s appropriate that the judge said, ‘Let’s end this.’” More

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    Tupac Shakur Touring Exhibition Opens in January

    The show, spearheaded by Shakur’s estate, will start out in Los Angeles. It’s “a story about race in America using Tupac as a proxy,” one of its producers said.A major touring exhibition centered on Tupac Shakur and spearheaded by his estate will arrive in Los Angeles in January.The exhibition, “Tupac Shakur. Wake Me When I’m Free,” opens on Jan. 21, in a newly built, temporary 20,000-square-foot space in the entertainment complex L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles.Shakur, a hip-hop artist, poet, actor and activist who released his first album in 1991 and went on to become one of the top-selling rappers in the 1990s, was killed in Las Vegas in 1996, at age 25. The case was never solved. He also acted in films including John Singleton’s “Poetic Justice,” in which he starred opposite Janet Jackson. In the decades since his death, he has inspired dozens of albums, books, movies, theater productions and even a hologram. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.The exhibition, named after a Shakur poem included on the album “The Rose That Grew From Concrete, Volume 1” in 2000, features artifacts, contemporary art, music and multisensory elements in telling the story of Shakur’s life.“It became evident very quickly that this was way bigger than his music,” Arron Saxe, one of the exhibition’s co-producers, said in a phone interview on Monday. “You can’t talk about Tupac without talking about Afeni, his mother, and you can’t talk about Afeni without talking about her involvement in the Panther Party, and you’re then talking about the connections with the Civil Rights movement.”It’s “a story about race in America using Tupac as a proxy,” he added.Shakur’s estate worked for more than six years and has a number of partners, among them Nwaka Onwusa, the chief curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Jeremy Hodges, the show’s creative director and founder of Project Art Collective. Shakur’s activism and his music will be highlighted, Saxe said. Part of the exhibition’s aim, he said, will be to demystify the legend.“There will be notebooks, song lyrics, poetry and also everyday stuff like shopping lists, and phone numbers on pieces of paper,” Saxe said. Humanizing him is a focus “because he and a lot of these other figures are mythical, larger than life.”After about six months, the exhibition will travel to other cities in the United States and internationally. More