From Nazis to the Palisades
Villa Aurora, high above the ocean in Pacific Palisades, was the home of German-Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger and his artist wife Marta, who fled the Nazis for coastal Los Angeles in the late 1930s. The house was home to many salons featuring the likes and thoughts of other emigres such as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht -- and Charlie Chaplin, too. Now it's a cultural institute and artists' retreat owned by the German government, and Sunday afternoon Claremont Graduate University celebrated the beginning of its new concentration in museum studies for advanced degree students in cultural studies with a salon on the importance and future of museums in America ... this gargoyle was leaning out toward the Pacific from a front porch of the mansion.