The ornate Variety Arts Theater in Downtown Los Angeles is flickering back to life this Friday (Feb. 6) for the first time in decades, reimagined as a late-night video art takeover. The Julia Stoschek Foundation’s What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem will occupy the five-story movie palace through March 20, swapping out traditional screenings for a drift-through-after-dark experience. A long-quiet landmark suddenly finds itself as one of the city's buzziest cultural attractions.
A collection built for roaming nights
Curated by Udo Kittelmann, the project pulls from the Julia Stoschek Foundation’s collection and splices contemporary video art together with early cinema in one sprawling program, according to the foundation’s event site. Listings show 45 artists and 45 time-based works spread across multiple floors, and the foundation notes that hundreds of pieces in its holdings are digitized for research and public viewing. For six weeks, the organization is essentially turning the Variety Arts Theater into a cinematic mystery tour instead of a conventional museum-style show.
Move through the building, do not expect assigned seats
There are no fixed seats and no timed screenings. Visitors are nudged to roam the building at night, and the full program would take roughly 12 hours to watch straight through, according to the Los Angeles Times. That setup lets quiet, meditative projections sit right next to restless pop-culture montages, so familiar images are reframed in new, sometimes disorienting ways. With evening-only hours and a deliberately fragmented route, the event plays more like a nocturnal cultural walk than a single gallery visit.
Key works and a new premiere
Among the attention-grabbers is Arthur Jafa’s Apex (2013), which is getting a Los Angeles debut, as noted in advance coverage by Artnet. The program stretches from Buñuel and Méliès to outspoken contemporary artists, setting early experiments beside current heavy-hitters. Doug Aitken will stage a one-night happening tied to the exhibition: the U.S. premiere of his new film HOWL, paired with a live soundscape event on Feb. 8, per the artist’s gallery. The works are meant to be stumbled upon in bits and pieces, through short films, sharp juxtapositions and staged encounters that reward wandering over straight-through viewing.
Why Downtown L.A. gets this moment
The five-story, Venetian-style Variety Arts Theater, long used for events and film shoots but mostly dormant since the 1990s, is getting a fresh shot of energy with this takeover, the Los Angeles Times reports. "We are surrounded by moving images," Julia Stoschek told the paper. "They are the major artistic language of our time," a line that helps explain why the foundation picked a city built on cinema for its first large U.S. presentation. The exhibition also lands just ahead of Frieze week and the city’s February art fair season, handing downtown a high-profile cultural spotlight in the middle of an already packed arts calendar.
Practical details
The exhibition runs from Feb. 6 to March 20 and is open Wednesday through Sunday evenings, 5 p.m. to midnight. The Julia Stoschek Foundation’s event page lists hours, a ticket reservation portal and visitor guidelines. Listings including Time Out and local event calendars show public admission as free, with reservations recommended due to limited capacity and the building’s unusual layout. For the latest details and to lock in a spot, check the foundation’s event site before heading downtown.
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