Episode 451: #357 - Leave the Street Lights Alone

Like many of us, India “fell” into lighting. Except India’s interest is in the history of Los Angeles street lighting, from the “moon towers” of the 1880’s, to the Golden Age of street lighting in the 40’s and 50’s to the skyrocketing of street lighting over crime concerns in the 60’s. Some of these classic light poles are still in use, but alas, with copper wire theft and some of these cast iron poles being literally ripped out of the ground and taken for scrap metal, we may be losing the beauty of the past. Come on, leave the street lights alone! India Mandelkern was born in Los Angeles, California, received her B.A. from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, and received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. After all this school, she made her way back to Los Angeles, where she has worked as a curator, consultant, and critic, writing on art, culture, design, and cities for a variety of publications, both local and national. From 2016-2018 she served as a fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she got interested in public art and worked as the speechwriter for the CEO. During her tenure there, she created a 'field guide' to the 16 different 1920s and 1930s streetlight designs included in Chris Burden's famous streetlight sculpture located at LACMA's south entrance, Urban Light. The guide became an overnight hit at the museum, which led her down a rabbit hole, so to speak, and resulted in her latest book, Electric Moons: A Social History of Street Lighting in Los Angeles, published in late 2023 by Hat & Beard Press. In the book, she uses the streetlight as a "flashlight" to reexamine the history of LA, looking at how lighting shaped conversations about civic identity, transportation, policing, and the definition of public space, to name a few. She currently works at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) –– a fortuitously "streetlight-adjacent" gig –– where she oversees the agency's blog and writes about Metro construction projects and policies.