November 2020 events calendar for Los Angeles
Plan your month with our November 2020 events calendar of the best activities, including free things to do, festivals and our favorite fall concerts
There are plenty of things to do in our November events calendar before you need to start thawing that turkey. Balance the upcoming holidays with equal parts generosity—try one of these volunteer opportunities—and gluttony—gorge on the best pies in Los Angeles. So bundle up for an early peek at Christmas lights and take advantage of all there is to do in our November 2019 events calendar.
RECOMMENDED: Full events calendar for 2020
Time Out loves
“Facing the Giant: 3 Decades of Dissent”
See new mixed media works from Shepard Fairey that respond to the street artist and graphic designer’s 30-year career.
Moonlight Forest
This nighttime event, held across the grounds of the Arcadia botanical garden, returns for its second year with two additional themes: “polar dreams” and “ocean visions.”
Holiday Ice Rink Pershing Square
L.A. doesn’t typically seem like much of a winter wonderland, until, that is, you create an ice skating rink right in the midst of Downtown skyscrapers and L.A. icons.
Enchanted: Forest of Light
The botanical garden’s nighttime experience masterfully mixes hands-on art installations with atmospheric, luminescent forests, all against a background of uplit trees and shimmery sound effects.
LA Zoo Lights
The L.A. Zoo is staying open after dark every night through January during this light-up holiday tradition, which for 2019 is adding more animal-inspired lights, an even longer tunnel of lights, Chinese lanterns, a voice-activated lighting display and an oversized, illuminated pop-up book.
Gabba Gallery’s Wishlist
Each year, HiFi’s Gabba Gallery presents a gallery show with works that are all actually affordable. Prices start at just $50—a steal for a quality piece of art—and never exceed $1,000. But you’ll have to move quickly: Once a piece is bought, it’s immediately removed from the wall and replaced with another. This year’s show, the seventh annual one, kicks off with an opening celebration on November 16 (7–11pm) and then runs through December 21.
Chinese Lantern Festival
Hundreds of illuminated lanterns take over the Fairplex grounds with oversized displays inspired by seasons, biomes and mythical creatures.
“Disembodiment”
See works from six young, emerging black artists in this UTA Artist Space show curated by Mariane Ibrahim Lenhardt. Figurative works from Jarvis Boyland, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Jerrell Gibbs, Marcus Jahmal, Clotilde Jiménez and Vaughn Spann dive into and upend narratives about race and living in a “post-racial” America.
For the Record: Love Actually Live
We feel it in our fingers, we feel it in our toes: Christmas is all around, and we bet no one knows it better than the cast of Love Actually Live. Throughout December, cult-favorite musical series For the Record presents a stage show based on one of the world’s most beloved holiday movies, Love Actually.
Queen Mary Christmas
Cozy up—and make sure to bring your jacket—to the Queen Mary for its annual Christmas makeover. It’s the time of year when the iconic ship is transformed into a winter wonderland, which this year is decking out every facet with classic Christmas decor. Slip on some skates and glide across the rink and around a 26-foot-tall Christmas tree with views of the Long Beach waterfront. The event also includes meet-and-greets with Santa, musical performances, light displays and more. RECOMMENDED: The best places to go ice skating in Los Angeles
L.A. Kings Holiday Ice
The annual L.A. Kings ice skating rink once again returns to L.A. Live. Skate around the dazzling Christmas tree that stands in the middle of the outdoor rink, and take in an LED holiday light show on the huge screens around the plaza. RECOMMENDED: The best places to go ice skating in Los Angeles
Rooftop Cinema Club
The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings in Hollywood and Downtown L.A.
Melrose Rooftop Theatre
West Hollywood’s ultra-chic restaurant and rooftop bar, E.P. & L.P., is serving much more than just sumptuous handcrafted cocktails and modern Asian bites. The L.A. hot spot is now host to the Melrose Rooftop Theatre, an outdoor screening series on the rooftop space adjacent to its open-air bar, L.P.
“Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again”
“I Will Greet the Sun Again” will make you angry: angry about the subjugation of women around the world, angry over entire populations being unwelcome in their own homelands and angry that such a beautiful body of work from Shirin Neshat hasn’t been on display in Los Angeles before.
“Julie Mehretu”
A co-presentation with New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA takes a first-ever mid-career look at the Ethiopian-American artist’s striking large-scale abstractions, with 35 paintings and 40 works on paper.
“With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985”
See colorful, abstract and pattern-driven works of painting, sculpture, collage, ceramics, installation art and performance documentation in this survey of the Pattern and Decoration movement, which defiantly embraced forms typically held to be inferior to “fine art.”
“Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs”
Years before he'd put the unmistakable imagery of 2001 and The Shining to celluloid, Stanley Kubrick was a teenage photojournalist in New York. The Skirball is celebrating that lesser-known period in Kubrick's career with a collection of over 130 of his photographs.
“Natural History of Horror”
It’s alive. It’s alive! The Natural History Museum is taking a look at the science and history that inspired some of film’s most iconic, hideous creatures.
“Nineteen Nineteen”
Travel back a hundred years as the Huntington Library marks its centennial with an in-depth examination of the year 1919.
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Popular
Mar Vista Art Walk
This fun neighborhood stroll highlights the numerous artists, musicians, shops and galleries of Mar Vista, where huge vivid murals brighten exterior walls everywhere you look. Since launching in 2015, the quarterly event has dramatically expanded, now featuring several clusters of activity along Venice Boulevard. Catch local musicians and performers throughout the evening, artists selling their works as well as creating new ones on the spot, grab food from trucks, and browse galleries and shops that stay open late. The walk takes place the first Thursday of March, June, September and November, each time featuring a different theme and the artists are curated by Monique Boileau and Mitchelito Orquiola.
Cub Scout
Given that Silver Lake is where the bears like to play, is it any wonder that the cubs have taken such a shine to the neighborhood as well? Cub Scout, presented by popular nightlife personalities DJ Chris Bowen and DJ Victor Rodriguez, is a monthly den of sexy fun with cheap drinks and a furry crowd on the first Friday of every month. But don’t be misled: This cruisy, no-frills party attracts boys from all parts of town and every stripe of the rainbow. Bears, cubs, otters, wolves and pups are all welcome and sure to find something—or someone—to cozy up to at this all out man-fest.
Free
Mar Vista Art Walk
This fun neighborhood stroll highlights the numerous artists, musicians, shops and galleries of Mar Vista, where huge vivid murals brighten exterior walls everywhere you look. Since launching in 2015, the quarterly event has dramatically expanded, now featuring several clusters of activity along Venice Boulevard. Catch local musicians and performers throughout the evening, artists selling their works as well as creating new ones on the spot, grab food from trucks, and browse galleries and shops that stay open late. The walk takes place the first Thursday of March, June, September and November, each time featuring a different theme and the artists are curated by Monique Boileau and Mitchelito Orquiola.