August 2023 events calendar for Los Angeles

A giant of weird pop, alt rock and anti-folk since the early ’90s, L.A.’s own Beck hits the road with Phoenix and their twinkly, danceable hooks. Jenny Lewis and Sir Chloe open the show.

Say what you will about Metallica’s creative output for the past few decades, the pushing-60 thrash metal stalwarts still know how to fill stadiums with propulsive fits of rage. Even if you haven’t kept up with Hetfield and co. in recent years, expect their live sets to still draw heavily from their first four (or five, depending on where you stand on The Black Album) nearly-perfect albums—in fact, for this M72 tour, they’ll be playing two shows with no songs repeated between the two nights.

Every Sunday you can find dozens of food vendors at this market at ROW DTLA, with a mix of much-loved pop-ups and future foodie stars. Look out for this year’s new vendors, including The Golden Skewer, Shlap Muan and Thai Town's Rad Na Silom.

The term CicLAvia stems from a similar Spanish word for “bike way,” and in L.A. it’s become a shorthand for the temporary, festival-like closing of L.A.’s streets. The event (inspired by the first Ciclovías in Bogotá, Colombia) welcomes bikes, tricycles, skateboards, strollers and basically anything else without an engine to ride a rotating cast of car-free routes. You’ll inevitably always find a route each year around Downtown, but past events have taken it anywhere from the harbor to the San Gabriel Valley. For 2023, CicLAvia makes its return with a five-mile route along Sherman Way, though Canoga Park, Winnetka and Reseda, on February 26. The rest of the year’s lineup includes Mid-City Meets Pico Union (Apr 15), South L.A.: Vermont Avenue (June 18), Koreatown Meets Hollywood (Aug 20), Heart of L.A. (Oct 15) and South L.A.: Leimert Parks Meets Historic South Central (Dec 3). This year will also see the introduction of CicLAmini, a pair of one-to-two–mile pedestrian-focused events in Watts (May 21) and North Hollywood (Sept 17). Expect music, street performances and food trucks, as well as general whimsy and shenanigans along the way. Shop owners and restaurants along the CicLAvia route also tend to host specials. It goes without saying that you should bike or take the Metro to your desired spot along the route.

More than 100 works spanning from the 17th century to today chart the history of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies in the African diaspora. The works and expressions on display in this LACMA exhibition come from just about every landmass that touches the Atlantic—and therefore places that participated in the slave trade—with works that are hundreds of years old shown next to contemporary creations.

Keith Haring’s colorful, energetic designs—like his barking dogs or crawling stick figure-like radiant baby—have moved well beyond the world of street art over the past four decades and ingrained themselves as instantly recognizable pieces of pop art. Now, the Broad will examine that body of work in a museum setting with this display of over 120 artworks and archival materials. The specially ticketed “Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody” will explore the late New York artist’s artistic practices as well as his activism, including his work centered on nuclear disarmament, anti-Apartheid movements and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Tickets for the exhibition will go on sale in the spring of 2023. In conjunction with the show, the free-to-visit permanent galleries upstairs at the Broad will display works from Haring’s contemporaries, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf and Andy Warhol; and the gift shop will transform into a space inspired by Haring’s own 1980s New York retail space.

Before it became synonymous with soaring stock prices and sound bites from the now-Chief Twit, Tesla was just a car company blending automotive design and technology in a way that was truly ahead of the curve. The Petersen Automotive Museum is looking back on the electric car company’s two-decade history and into its future with this display of concept and prototype vehicles, including the Roadster and the maybe-it’ll-come-out-next-year Cybertruck.

Bountiful feasts and bowls of fruit have peppered the scenes of European artwork for centuries. But what do they actually say about the hunger, excess and sustenance of those times? And how has art impacted food trends? The Norton Simon examines all of these with 60 paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures from 1500 to 1900.

We’re all kind of obsessed with the lighting in Southern California, but the local progenitors of the 1960s Light and Space movement really love it. (Fun fact: The glossy, slick style that ties these industrial-inspired pieces together is often referred to as “finish fetish.”) LACMA is digging into its collections to pull out all sorts of reflective and refractive works from the likes of Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Judy Chicago, Mary Corse, Fred Eversley and Robert Irwin, among others (though one notable name missing: James Turrell).

In the name of keeping Angelenos sane—and who couldn’t use some sanity right now?—the Hammer Museum holds free weekly drop-in sessions on mindful awareness, which is defined as “the moment-by-moment process of actively and openly observing one’s physical, mental and emotional experiences.” The 30-minute sessions are held on-site at the Hammer, as well as streamed on the museum’s website. If you can’t make it to a program (held Thursdays at 12:30pm), you can listen to the archives. Sessions are led by instructors from the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. Think of them as your experts in stress reduction and overall health improvement.