Dr. Jeffrey Weiss is Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He is the curator of the National Gallery of Art exhibition, Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965.

Dr. Weiss holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. Between 1986 and 1989, he was a doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington. His book, The Popular Culture of Modern Art, was published by Yale University Press in 1994.

Dr. Weiss is also the editor and author of exhibition catalogues on Mark Rothko and Pablo Picasso. He has published articles and reviews on modern and post-war art in various periodicals and journals, including Burlington Magazine, Artforum and La Revue de l’Art. Recent essays have appeared in anthologies from Princeton University Press and the Getty Research Institute.

Dr. Weiss has served on various public art committees, including the General Services Administration in Washington. He currently holds the first Kirk Varnedoe Professorship at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. In preparation is the exhibition, Matisse: Painting and Drawing, 1935-1948.

Ruth Weisberg is Dean of the Roski School of Fine Arts of the University of Southern California. Known for her work in painting, printmaking, drawing and large-scale installations, she has recently completed a major mural commission for the New York Jewish Federation. Recent honors include Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, Hebrew Union College, 2001; College Art Association Distinguished Teaching Award, 1999; and Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, 1995, 1994 and 1992.

Ms. Weisberg has exhibited actively, with over 70 solo and 160 group exhibitions. Her work is included in 60 major museum and university collections, including Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco; The Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Istituto Nationale per la Grafica, Rome; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Ruth Weisberg Unfurled, on view May 8th – July 29th at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, presents three decades of painting and printmaking by celebrated Los Angeles artist Ruth Weisberg. The retrospective features, in its first complete showing in 20 years, the 94-foot-long masterwork The Scroll. In this acclaimed mixed-media drawing, Weisberg synthesizes her experiences as an American Jewish woman with life-cycle events—birth, childhood, coming of age, marriage, adulthood, and death—all portrayed in conjunction with scriptural motifs, Jewish history, and rabbinic legend.

In addition to The Scroll, more than 30 paintings, drawings, and prints from throughout Weisberg's career will be on view. Together these highlight the artist's extraordinary depictions of her life story and its convergence with art history and Jewish memory. They also illuminate the parallels Weisberg draws between the contemporary and biblical worlds, her desire to memorialize those who perished during the Holocaust, and her fervent belief in renewal.

Paul Scheele founded Learning Strategies Corporation, a respected private school and publisher in Minnesota, in 1981 as a vehicle to help people experience their potential.

Mr. Scheele’s unique expertise in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Accelerated Learning, and Preconscious Processing afforded him a perspective to create remarkable and highly effective self-growth tools that include books, individual CDs and DVDs, self-study programs, and live trainings. Millions of his books and CDs are in circulation in 155 countries.

His most popular program is PhotoReading at 25,000 words a minute. Over 700,000 people have his book, 200,000 have his self-study course, and tens of thousands have attended his PhotoReading trainings all over the world, presented in 15 languages. His other highly popular programs include the acclaimed Paraliminal learning sessions, Natural Brilliance, Abundance for Life, and Genius Code.

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Kat Wildish is a high-caliber dance instructor, currently teaching multi-level ballet and pointe technique for children and adults. Kat also trains teachers for the Dance Educators of America.

Kat is one of America ’s few ballerinas whose career has traced a path through the likes of Balanchine, Baryshnikov, and Nureyev, as well as Europe ’s most-revered choreographers, performers, and master teachers. Her performing credits include New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and numerous international companies. Kat is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Ford Foundation Scholarship under which she attended the School of American Ballet .

Danny Barber performs “Body Percussion”, known traditionally as "Hambone". He has chosen to call his music "SLAPJAZZ" due to the advancement of his art form over the traditional forms. Danny has taken SLAPJAZZ to the mainstream performance level, gaining the respect and interest of all age categories.

Danny’s sounds are generated through a series of beats or slaps on the inner and outer thigh and upper chest cavity. The chest produces a bass thud effect, and the thighs produce a snare drum-like effect.

Beatboxing sounds are used from the mouth to enhance the overall effects, and live and recorded music are also used during performances.

Danny has performed at the SONY Company 25-year anniversary celebration; The New World Africans stage show; the First Annual San Felipe Jazz Festival; the "Just Ellington" Concert (Palm Springs, CA); and "Artist On the Cutting Edge" (La Jolla Museum of Contempory Art), featured with local jazz trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos. These are a few of the many venues/events at which Danny has perfomed.

A member of the Actors Studio, and the Board of Directors, Elizabeth Kemp has worked extensively in theater, film, and television. She has performed both on and off Broadway including productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival and Circle In the Square.WPA. She was in the original cast of The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, which began at the Actors Studio. Her great mentor, Elia Kazan, took Tennessee Williams to see Ms. Kemp in this production when Mr. Williams was looking for the actress to play Baby Doll in the World premiere of one of his last plays, Tiger Tail. After the performance Mr. Williams gave her the part; an experience that proved to be most extraordinary, in that she worked closely with Tennessee Williams daily in developing the role.

Other highlights include playing opposite Christopher Reeve in a television series, Kevin Kline off Broadway and Tom Hanks (in her first film). Ms. Kemp was also directed by Shelley Winters in Full Moon and High Tide in the Ladies Room. She has performed in many films for television, miniseries, as well as guest starring in shows such as LAW AND ORDER and LA LAW, for which she received the Glaad Award. Most recently she has worked on several independent films, including Pills, Give Me Your Love, and the Belgian film, Two Sisters.

As a director and set designer Ms. Kemp has had productions in New York including The Glass Menagerie, Elektra, and Wound of Love at the Actors Studio, as well as Ubu Rep and the West Bank Theater. In Paris she directed Characters at the Claude Lelouche Theater, Cine 13. In Stockholm, she directed The Stronger and Homesick at Strindberg’s Intima Theater.

Ms. Kemp has taught at the Actors Studio Drama School since its inaugural year. She is currently the Chair of the Acting Department in the newly established Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University. For years she has taught privately and coached many leading and award-winning actors including recipients of the Oscar and Cesar awards. One of her passions is her Character Dream Workshop, which she does yearly in venues including New York, Rome, Paris, Zurich, and Berlin.

When Judith Martin is not hard at work as Miss Manners, rescuing American civilization—an ongoing task for which she received a National Humanities Medal—she can be found in Venice, Italy, happily steeped in the civilization of its glorious past and quirky present.

No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice, a witty romp in the company of such fellow Venetophiles as Lord Byron and Henry James, is her first travel book. In addition to twelve Miss Manners books and a history of American manners, Mrs. Martin is the author of two novels and a columnist for the United Feature Syndicate, the Microsoft Network and Child magazine.

Dr. Eric Denker received his Bachelors from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and his doctorate from the University of Virginia, writing on the American artist James McNeill Whistler. His dissertation was the subject of a book and an exhibition that he curated for the National Portrait Gallery in 1995, In Pursuit of the Butterfly: Portraits of James McNeill Whistler. In 1995 he also organized the exhibition Prints by Whistler and his Contemporaries at the National Gallery of Art.

Dr. Denker is the Senior Lecturer in the Education Division at the National Gallery of Art, where he has been since June 1978. From 1998 to 2006, he also has served as the Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Corcoran, overseeing the permanent collection and coordinating an active special exhibition schedule, including historical shows of John Singer Sargent drawings, James McNeill Whistler in Venice, Childe Hassam prints, and contemporary print exhibitions focusing on Wayne Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein, William T. Wiley, and Rupert Garcia.

Dr. Denker also serves in Washington as an Adjunct Professor at both Georgetown University and at Cornell University. He frequently lectures in Italy for the Smithsonian Institute and for the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, and around the Washington area on Venice, Italian art, Dutch painting, French 19th-century art, and the history and techniques of printmaking.

Lisa Melandri is the Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Ms. Melandri organizes exhibitions and manages oversight of the museum’s infrastructure and exhibition/education program. She was curator for Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico, and the upcoming Art After White People: Time, Trees, and Celluloid. Ms. Melandri also curates the Project Series at the museum and serves as an independent curator for projects such as Painted Faces.

Dr. Josh Kun is Associate Professor in the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. Professor Kun directs The Popular Music Project at The Norman Lear Center at USC. A former Arts Writers Fellow with The Sundance Institute, Professor Kun is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, which won a 2006 American Book Award. As a critic and journalist, Professor Kun is a regular contributor to The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently at work on a new book project: The World Begins Here: California Myths, American Dreams, and the Making of Tijuana.

Urban Marketplace 2007 is a unique conference on investment opportunities and development strategies for Southern California's emerging lower income and distressed neighborhoods. The ULI LA Urban Marketplace has become a national model over the past six years, attracting over 3400 real estate and related professionals, as well as community and government leaders to its case studies, roundtable discussions, and exhibits. Attendees learn best practices and solidify relations with key professionals and leaders at the forefront of revitalizing the inner city.

This year's event will explore strategies and best practices for investing and developing in Los Angeles' emerging neighborhoods. The discussion — entitled Where is L.A. Headed? Solving the Real Estate Puzzle — focuses on redevelopment and economic investment in four regions within the city: Hollywood, Downtown L.A., East L.A., and Inglewood.

As Councilwoman of the Los Angeles City Ninth District, Jan Perry understands the unique needs of her diverse constituency. Greater access to basic city services, expansion of after-school programs for kids, increasing green space, and fostering economic growth in all parts of the district are among her priorities for her second four-year term in office. Perry continues to work with the community to bring millions of dollars in capital improvements to parks and recreation centers, to increase public safety, and to achieve environmental justice for all.

Perry is committed to increasing green space and the clean-up of brown fields in the Ninth District. She has successfully “greened” eight parks, reducing blighted property on these essential community gathering places. Additionally, she recently unveiled the Augustus Hawkins Wetland, the first-of-its-kind, man-made wetland in a highly urban area in the nation. The wetland is a demonstration project aimed at launching the development of a larger urban wetland park that will bring nature to the heart of South Los Angeles.

As the past Chair of the Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee and present chair of the Energy and Environment Committee, Perry continues to ensure that the needs of her constituents are met. Perry co-authored and is credited with the passage of Proposition O. The funds created by Proposition O will be used to stop dangerous pollutants and bacteria from flowing from neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles into waterways. Additionally, the measure benefits every neighborhood in Los Angeles by upgrading storm-drain systems, eliminating flooding at key intersections, creating new community parks, and improving water quality.

The Ninth District encompasses Central City East, which faces the unique and challenging problems that accompany homelessness. In 2003, Councilwoman Perry effectively lobbied both the mayor and members of the Los Angeles City Council to provide more funding to keep the city’s portion of the emergency shelter system that was operating from December to mid March open year-round. This unprecedented effort has allowed for an additional 250,000 bed nights with supportive services for the homeless.

Perry currently serves as the Chair of the Energy and the Environment Committee; the Chair of the Ad Hoc Homeless Committee; Vice-Chair of the Arts, Parks, Health, and Aging Committee; the Vice-Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Recovering Energy, Natural Resources, and Economic Benefit from Waste for LA (RENEW LA) Committee, and as a member of the Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee, Ad Hoc Los Angeles River Committee, and Ad-Hoc Stadium Committee. She was appointed by the Mayor to represent the City of Los Angeles as a Governing Board Member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and was re-elected in January of 2006 by the Western cities to serve another 4-year term. She also serves as the Assistant Pro Tempore for the Los Angeles City Council, making her the first African-American woman to hold this position in the history of the city.

Urban Marketplace 2007 is a unique conference on investment opportunities and development strategies for Southern California's emerging lower income and distressed neighborhoods. The ULI LA Urban Marketplace has become a national model over the past six years, attracting over 3400 real estate and related professionals, as well as community and government leaders to its case studies, roundtable discussions, and exhibits. Attendees learn best practices and solidify relations with key professionals and leaders at the forefront of revitalizing the inner city.

This year's event will explore strategies and best practices for investing and developing in Los Angeles' emerging neighborhoods. The discussion — entitled Where is L.A. Headed? Solving the Real Estate Puzzle — focuses on redevelopment and economic investment in four regions within the city: Hollywood, Downtown L.A., East L.A., and Inglewood.

Gail Goldberg was appointed Director of Los Angeles City Planning Department in February 2006. As director, Ms. Goldberg is responsible for organizing and directing the policies and planning activities of the City’s Planning Department. Those activities include the development, maintenance and implementation of all elements of the City’s General Plan as well as a range of other special zoning plans. Additional responsibilities include plan implementation measures, subdivisions and other controls.

Prior to joining the Los Angeles Planning Department, Ms Goldberg worked for 17 years in the Planning Department of the City of San Diego, the last five years serving as Planning Director. Her responsibilities included all long-range city-wide and community planning. Other responsibilities included Facilities Financing, Transportation Planning, the Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP), and special projects. She oversaw a planning process to update the city’s 20-year-old General Plan. The initial result was the adoption of a strategic framework plan that articulated a 20-year vision for the City and a long-term strategy for achieving that vision known as the “City of Villages” plan.

Ms. Goldberg is a native Californian and holds a degree in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of California San Diego. She is an Urban Land Institute Trustee, as well as Past Chair of the San Diego/Tijuana ULI District Council; Immediate Past President of the San Diego Chapter of the Lambda Alpha Honorary Land Economics Society; a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners; and a member of the California Planners Roundtable. Ms. Goldberg has also served on the Statewide Coordinating Committee for the Urban Land Institute’s California Smart Growth Initiative; as a board member of the American Planning Association; and as co-chair of the State American Planning Association 2002 Conference.

Urban Marketplace 2007 is a unique conference on investment opportunities and development strategies for Southern California's emerging lower income and distressed neighborhoods. The ULI LA Urban Marketplace has become a national model over the past six years, attracting over 3400 real estate and related professionals, as well as community and government leaders to its case studies, roundtable discussions, and exhibits. Attendees learn best practices and solidify relations with key professionals and leaders at the forefront of revitalizing the inner city.

This year's event will explore strategies and best practices for investing and developing in Los Angeles' emerging neighborhoods. The discussion — entitled Where is L.A. Headed? Solving the Real Estate Puzzle — focuses on redevelopment and economic investment in four regions within the city: Hollywood, Downtown L.A., East L.A., and Inglewood.

Tom Murphy is a Senior Resident Fellow, ULI/Klingbeil Family Chair for Urban Development. Murphy, former mayor of Pittsburgh, joins six other ULI senior resident fellows who specialize in public policy, retail/urban entertainment, transportation/infrastructure, housing, real estate finance and environmental issues.

His extensive experience in urban revitalization—what drives investment, what ensures long-lasting commitment—is a key addition to the senior resident fellows’ areas of expertise.

Since January 2006, Murphy had served as Urban Land Institute’s Gulf Coast liaison, helping to coordinate with the leadership of New Orleans and the public to advance the implementation of rebuilding recommendations made by ULI’s advisory services panel last fall. In addition, he worked with the Louisiana state leadership, as well as with leadership in hurricane-impacted areas in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to identify areas appropriate for ULI involvement.

Prior to his service as the ULI Gulf Coast liaison, Murphy served three terms as the mayor of Pittsburgh, from January 1994 through December 2005. During that time, he initiated a public-private partnership strategy that leveraged more than $4.5 billion in economic development in Pittsburgh. Murphy led efforts to secure and oversee $1 billion in funding for the development of two professional sports facilities, and a new convention center that is the largest certified green building in the United States. He developed strategic partnerships to transform more than 1000 acres of blighted, abandoned industrial properties into new commercial, residential, retail and public uses; and he oversaw the development of more than 25 miles of new riverfront trails and urban green space.

He is an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects; a board member of the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities; and a board member of the National Rails to Trails Conservancy. He received the 2002 Outstanding Achievement of City Livability Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and was selected as the 2001 Pittsburgh Man of the Year Award by Vectors Pittsburgh.

Urban Marketplace 2007 is a unique conference on investment opportunities and development strategies for Southern California's emerging lower income and distressed neighborhoods. The ULI LA Urban Marketplace has become a national model over the past six years, attracting over 3400 real estate and related professionals, as well as community and government leaders to its case studies, roundtable discussions, and exhibits. Attendees learn best practices and solidify relations with key professionals and leaders at the forefront of revitalizing the inner city.

This year's event will explore strategies and best practices for investing and developing in Los Angeles' emerging neighborhoods. The discussion — entitled Where is L.A. Headed? Solving the Real Estate Puzzle — focuses on redevelopment and economic investment in four regions within the city: Hollywood, Downtown L.A., East L.A., and Inglewood.

Tom Cody is Principal with Gerding Edlen Development, headquartered in Portland, OR, with offices in Washington and California. Tom is responsible for Gerding Edlen’s California real estate development. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Urban Planning and Development from USC and a Masters in Urban Planning from Harvard University. Tom is a former Director of Development of Opus NW. Today, Tom and Gerding Edlen specialize in large scale, mixed-use, urban development and are leaders in environmentally responsible development. They have completed approx $4B and have another $3B currently in development. Tom is a Trustee of Alternative Living for the Aged in LA, Vice Chair of the Board of Oregon Ballet Theater, and a board member of the Architectural Foundation of Oregon. Tom and wife Rachel and three little girls live in Portland.

Jackie Keller is the Founding Director of NutriFit, LLC, author of Body After Baby (Avery/Penguin Group; May 2006), The Simple 30-Day Plan to Lose Your Baby Weight, and Cooking, Eating & Living Well, a cookbook and guide to nutrition-related lifestyle change. Ms. Keller is dedicated to a healthier body and mind, and is healthy lifestyle coach, nutrition educator, and culinary expert.

Jackie Keller has appeared as a nutritional expert and health coach on the Today Show, The Early Show, Discovery Health, History Channel, Fit TV, VH1, E! Entertainment, Access Hollywood, KNBC-TV, KABC-TV, KCBS-TV, and FOX 11. She was the featured nutrition and health expert on 20 segments of NBC’s The Other Half, guiding six women through a “Better Body Challenge”.

Ms. Keller is a recipient of the Outstanding Person in Cancer Control award from the American Cancer Society, and the Branch Chair award from the American Heart Association.

NutriFit has provided nutritional services to celebrities such as Barbara Streisand, Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie, Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron, Angelica Huston, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Penelope Cruz, Susan Sarandon, Val Kilmer, Tia Carrere, Billy Bob Thornton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Topher Grace, Lucy Liu and fitness guru Kathy Smith. In addition, Ms. Keller has conducted over 1200 health education classes nationwide, including Discovery Communications, Inc., Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Paramount Studios.

The Media Arts Center San Diego is presenting the 2007 San Diego Latino Film Festival (March 8th through 18th) with more than 185 films from Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Spain and the U.S. This prestigious and internationally recognized film festival is the longest running Latino festival in Southern California. With a projected audience of over 25,000 and the addition of a fourth screen, SDLFF is also one of the largest.

Featured films include Cansada de Besar Sapos (Mexico), Family Law (Argentina), Wood & Stock (Brazil), and Tortilla Heaven (U.S.). In addition, as part of SDLFF’s "Guest Director" series, Chilean legend Miguel Littin (La Ultima Luna and El Chacal de Nahuel Toro) will curate a series of movie classics that influenced his career (Rebel Without a Cause and Fellini’s Roma).

This year’s SDLFF program includes even more opportunities for the public to share the spotlight with over 100 guest filmmakers and actors onsite. Highlights include - workshops on On-line Filming, Indy Film Promotion, Documentary Production, and Getting Comics Produced for the Screen; "Para la Familia" events (with day-long events and a special appearance by Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer); the "Hecho en Chile” Retrospective of Chilean Films (1957-2006)," SDLFF’s "Top Ten to Watch"; the 1st Annual Cine’mation program; and celebrity tributes to acclaimed director Robert Young (Alambrista), and Mexican screen icons like Germán Robles (El Vampiro) and Damián Alcazar (Un Mundo Maravilloso and Solo Dios Sabe).

"This is a great opportunity for local audiences to see films presented at other major festivals like Cannes, Sundance, San Sebastian and Toronto, as well as many of Latin America’s Oscar contenders," says festival founder and director Ethan van Thillo. "We are also very proud to announce or unique growth into a truly Bi-national Latino film festival with our “Borders on Film” program offerings in Tijuana from March 16-18th at CineMark Minarete in Zona Rio.

James Cook is a painter who is in love with painting, with the feel of paint, with its smell, with its application, with its color, with its movement on the canvas. He paints quickly creating richly colored and exciting surfaces. Indeed, his bravura use of paint is akin to the Abstract Expressionists; unlike them, however, he provides the viewer with a recognizable reality, ordered by his own personal vision and controlled by his technical mastery. In subject matter and the interpretation of that subject, Cook’s is an American vision which owes much to tradition, but it is tradition that is, in the artist’s hands, fully redefined taking on a new, personal, but very important meaning.

The landscape paintings of James Cook are in the tradition of American landscape painting going back to the earliest painters of our country. But Cook’s paintings are not repetitions of those earlier works; they are uniquely his own and are part of the world today, stated and presented in the artist’s own dramatic and deeply felt terms. The paintings are also a consummate demonstration of years of hard work, of looking at and, literally, inhaling the landscape and rendering it in a sure and dramatic way. These are the paintings of an artist totally in control of his medium and totally sure of what he does. In them he achieves that elusive goal for which all artists strive: he realizes his personal artistic vision in dramatic and uncompromising terms when he presents that vision to us and we comprehend its meaning and intent.

Since 1982, James Cook exhibited in over 40 solo exhibitions, and since 1980, he exhibited in over 100 group exhibitions.