As one of two curators for the museums and historic buildings in L.A.'s original settlement, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, Mariann Gatto had a busy El Cinco de Mayo.

The nearby Plaza Catholic Church needed help finding old photographs for a celebration. Gatto, whose many hats include managing a collection of more than 6,000 objects and tens of thousands of photographs, plucked some suitable ones from the archives.

A fourth-grade class in South Gate needed her services, too -- for them, she wrote up a history of the 19th century Pico House (pictured). Gatto, who grew up in Silver Lake and earned history and teaching degrees from UCLA and Cal State Los Angeles, said that the Los Angeles Unified School District and others use a history of L.A. that she compiled for elementary school children; she also has published a history of L.A.'s Little Italy.

Now a broke city may be on the verge of letting her go: The job Gatto has held for five years is in line to be cut under the austerity budget Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has proposed to cope with an estimated $485-million deficit.

--Surprise closing: Corcoran Gallery of Art ends its "Turner to Cezanne" exhibition early due to climate control issues. (Washington Post)

--Dispute over images: Artists' lawsuit accuses Google of "massive copyright infringement." (Huffington Post)

--Arch rivals: Five finalists named in competition to design St. Louis Arch park area. (Los Angeles Times)

--Bring back Christopher Walken: “Catch Me If You Can” musical headed to Broadway in spring 2011 (Playbill)

--Banding together: Egypt hosts meeting on recovery of “stolen treasures.” (BBC)

--Leadership change: Dallas Opera selects a new general director. (Dallas Morning News)

--Sterling & Cooper show: The cast and crew of "Mad Men" do “Bye Bye Birdie” for show creator Matt Weiner. (New York)

--Theater in the theater: National Theatre's production of Alan Bennett's "The Habit of Art" to be broadcast live in movie theaters.(BBC)

--Making it official: Playwright Terrence McNally weds partner Tom Kirdahy in Washington. (Washington Post)

--Restoring a landmark: Plan revived to restore onion-shaped ornamental dome to 92-year-old carousel building at Santa Monica Pier. (Santa Monica Daily Press)

--Casting “what if”:  Sam Rockwell, now on Broadway in “A Behanding in Spokane,” could have been “Iron Man.” (Los Angeles Times)

--Here we go again: Why does everyone seem to dream the dream of finding “the next Susan Boyle.” Here’s the latest. (Daily Mail)

And in the Los Angeles Times: A review of a children's book by L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art , meant to demystify contemporary art; Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Americas & Americans" festival begins; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Fullerton Art Museum open shows tied to Ring Festival L.A.

-- Lisa Fung

Follow me on Twitter @lfung

Photo: St. Louis Arch. Credit: James A. Finley / Associated Press

-- New caretaker?: LACMA in talks to take over as curator and conservator of Watts Towers. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Not for sale: Ownership dispute forces Chicago auction house to delay sale of some items belonging to 20th century designers Charles and Ray Eames. (Chicago Tribune)

-- Whoops: Turns out ailing James Levine doesn't have a contract with Boston Symphony Orchestra. (Boston Globe)

-- New address: Independent Shakespeare Company moves from Barnsdall Art Park home to new site in Griffith Park. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Decisions, decisions: Where should Seattle put a $15-million Dale Chihuly glass museum? (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

-- New boss: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra names Stanley Romanstein as its new president. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

-- And the winner is...: Kennedy Center production of "Ragtime" wins big at Helen Hayes Awards in Washington, D.C. (Washington Post)

-- Should they stay or should they go?: Preservation debate heats up over two plain-Jane barracks in San Francisco’s Presidio (San Francisco Chronicle)

-- Appeal on the horizon: CNET founder Halsey Minor has something to say about $6.6-million judgment against him in favor of Sotheby’s. (CultureGrrl)

-- And it's fast, too: BMW unveils Jeff Koons’ design for its next BMW Art Car. (Wall Street Journal)

-- TiVo time: "Glee" cast on "Oprah" Wednesday (Show Tracker); “Addams Family’s” Nathan Lane on “The Marriage Ref” on Friday, (NBC); "Green Day Rocks Broadway" on MTV beginning April 16. (Playbill).

And in the Los Angeles Times: A man’s quest to recover a Camille Pissarro painting follows a long and twisted path; “Love Never Dies,” the sequel to “Phantom of the Opera,” delays its move to Broadway due to composer’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s health issues; theater critic Charles McNulty remembers Corin Redgrave, who died Tuesday at age 70.

-- Lisa Fung

Follow me on Twitter @lfung

Photo: Watts Towers. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

--Death in the family: Corin Redgrave, brother of Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, dies at age 70. (Telegraph, Los Angeles Times)

--Tell all: Judge orders artist Shepard Fairey's lawyers to disclose identities of anyone who deleted or destroyed records in the Barack Obama "Hope" image case. (San Francisco Chronicle)

--Star of the party: Barry Manilow helps Los Angeles County High School for the Arts mark its 25th birthday. (Los Angeles Times)

--Woof: Clueless NYU art students show visiting First Lady of France Carla Bruni Sarkozy their "best" work -- video of a waving dog. (New York)

--Preserving the legacy: Dion Neutra wins the latest battle in Gettysburg -- for preservation of the Richard Neutra-designed Cyclorama Center. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

--Feeling better: In his first public appearance since his colon cancer surgery, Placido Domingo pays a visit to his restaurant in New York. (BBC)

--More legal woes: New York investment firm Brunswick Capital Partners sues photographer Annie Leibovitz for $315,000 in finance fees. (Bloomberg News)

--Looking for clues: Archeologists in Stratford-upon-Avon search for scraps of William Shakespeare's life. (Guardian)

--Move over, Obamas: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, daughter Chelsea and her fiance Mark Mezvinsky attend "Next to Normal" on Broadway. (Playbill)

--Win a prize, get a commission: LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton picks Pritzker Prize winners SANAA for hotel project in Paris. (Bloomberg News)

--Eyes on the prize: Dallas theater venues duke it out for touring productions of Broadway shows. (Dallas Morning News)

--Park that thing outside: Artist Robin Rhode explains that bright green bicycle made of soap in LACMA's Ahmanson building. (Unframed)

--Also in the L.A. Times: J. Paul Getty Trust adds former U.S. Ambassador to Italy to its board of directors; "Looped," the play featuring Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead, is closing on Broadway.

-- Lisa Fung (Follow me on Twitter @lfung)

Photo: Vanessa Redgrave, left rear, brother Corin and sister Lynn behind their mother, Rachel Kempson, in 2000. Corin Redgrave died Tuesday at age 70. Credit: Peter Jordan / Associated Press

The only part of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian regularly open to the public -- the museum store that had weekend hours only -- will close next month when its space is taken over by a conservation project.

The decision by the Autry National Center of the American West, which runs both the Southwest Museum in Mt. Washington and the larger Museum of the American West in Griffith Park, to virtually suspend public operations for an estimated three years immediately inflamed the already heated suspicions of some Southwest Museum supporters. 

The Autry critics, including Los Angeles City Councilman José Huizar, fear that the Southwest is being relegated to a minor role, if not being written off entirely as a site for displaying a prized collection of almost 300,000 Native American artworks and artifacts.

“I’m very disappointed,” Huizar said Wednesday. “It’s actually confirming our suspicions that they had no intent to make this a viable destination” for museum-goers.

But Autry spokeswoman Joan Cumming said long-range plans remain unchanged. They call for revitalizing the Southwest Museum as a “multiple-use” facility that would include space for educational programs and community events, as well as galleries that would show parts of the collection not being displayed in Griffith Park.

Plans to build a large skateboarding park next to Simon Rodia’s folk-art masterpiece, the Watts Towers, has unhappy admirers of the towers girding for a land-use fight against high-powered opposition.

City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes Watts, is a key proponent of the skate park, which also is being pushed by Circe Wallace, a manager for the L.A. sports marketing and management company, Wasserman Media Group, and two of her pro skateboarder clients, Terry Kennedy and Paul Rodriguez. Skateboarding star Tony Hawk has raised $44,000 toward its estimated cost of $350,000 or more.

Although acknowledging that youngsters in Watts need more recreational opportunities, opponents of the skate park, which would be longer than a football field and two-thirds as wide, are asking why it has to occupy a vacant parcel about 40 yards from the vulnerable towers.

They worry that a noisy attraction could interfere with visitors’ enjoyment of the towers and that the skate park could bring in graffiti taggers, drug users and violence, threatening both the physical safety of Rodia’s fantastical, ornately decorated structures and their potential to draw tourism.

With apologies to the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," here’s some theme music  for Saturday’s half-centenary celebration at the Watts Towers of a remarkable moment in L.A. lore: the 1959 rescue of Simon Rodia’s triple-spired folk art masterpiece.

It was fifty years ago today/And they couldn’t make the Towers sway!

But that came as no surprise to N.J. (Bud) Goldstone, a hero of that long-ago showdown between community activists who cherished the world-renowned sculptures that are now a National Historic Landmark, and city officials who were eager to tear them down as a purported safety hazard in danger of collapsing in gale-force winds.

Goldstone was a young aeronautical engineer who would go on to work on both the Apollo mission and the space shuttle program, including tests of the Apollo command module and one of its booster assemblies. But he remembers the test he devised to prove that the Watts Towers could withstand an 80-mph wind as “the most complicated test I ever did.”

Rodia had worked on the three mast-like spires of the towers, and the surrounding, ship-shaped sculptural fantasyland he dubbed “Nuestro Pueblo,” from 1921 to 1954. With his solitary work completed, he gave the property to a neighbor and went to live out the rest of his days in Northern California. Within a year the small house he’d lived in had been destroyed by fire, and by 1957, city building officials had condemned the towers as an unstable safety hazard.

Now that buildings constructed in 1960 are about to turn 50, architectural historians and preservationists are turning their attention to new candidates for special status. Which buildings deserve to be protected? Which ones might be listed in the National Register of Historic Places?

It’s an endless discussion, but two upcoming programs will address questions and projects of particular concern to Southern Californians.

Alan Hess, a prominent California architecture critic and writer, will lecture on “Suburban Utopia” Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Downey Historical Society. He plans to talk about Downey’s mid-century architecture, including a restaurant that has evolved from Harvey’s Broiler to Johnie’s Broiler to a Bob’s Big Boy.

“The  Sixties Turn 50,” a panel discussion organized by the Los Angeles Conservancy, will take place Sept. 30 at 8 p.m. at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Building in downtown L.A.  Frances Anderton, host of KCRW’s “DnA: Design & Architecture,” will moderate. Other participants are Hess, architects Leo Marmol and David C. Martin, Christine Madrid French of  the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Chris Nichols, associate editor of Los Angeles magazine.

-- Suzanne Muchnic

Photo:  Johnie’s Broiler in Downey. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Opening tomorrow is the first of three schools planned for the former site of Myron Hunt's 1921 Ambassador Hotel. The K-5 school, designed by the Pasadena firm Gonzalez Goodale Architects, turns a friendly and upbeat face to the mid-Wilshire district.

It also ups the gregarious quotient by pairing zinc panels and expanses of glass with walls, ceilings and floors in Creamsicle orange.

But will it erase the bitterness of the preservation fight that preceded it? Will it help redeem the mostly mediocre architectural track record of the LAUSD's huge building campaign?

And what does its design say about prospects for the middle school and high school -- both also by Gonzalez Goodale -- scheduled to open on the site a year from now?

Find out in my review.

More photographs of the school after the jump.

--Christopher Hawthorne

There is no real equivalent in this country for the active, contrarian role that Prince Charles plays in debates over architecture and preservation in Britain. Maybe if Bill Clinton decided that a new building in New York by Rem Koolhaas needed to be stopped at any cost, or Jimmy Carter started a public-relations campaign against the work of Richard Meier, we'd have some sense of how the Prince-hates-contemporary-architecture arguments have been playing out this summer in London. But even that might not do it.

For my Critic's Notebook on what the Prince's campaign to protect his favorite historic buildings says about contemporary architecture -- and what it has to do with the federal stimulus package in this country -- click here.

For one of the most recent British roundups of the Prince versus the Starchitects row -- this one from the Guardian, which has been covering the story aggressively throughout the summer -- click here.

And for even fresher news, just stay tuned. This seems to be a dustup that neither the Prince nor the British press is content to let die. It's just too useful, in the end, for both sides.

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Photo: Prince Charles. Credit: Ben Stansall, AFP/Getty Images