Deco, Go West: How A Monumental Exposition in Paris Conquered Los Angeles

Name: Deco, Go West: How A Monumental Exposition in Paris Conquered Los Angeles
Start: 2026-02-08T13:00:00-08:00
Location: James Oviatt Building

Schedule

Sun, 08 Feb, 2026 at 01:00 pm

UTC-08:00

Location

James Oviatt Building | Los Angeles, CA

Eighteen years of research on two continents.
An acclaimed presentation in Paris at the World Congress on Art Deco.
A captivating Los Angeles story whose full scope has never been told…until now.
Join ADSLA Board Chairman Marc Chevalier for the U.S. debut of his presentation that some called the best and most visually beautiful at last year’s World Deco Congress. See and hear the story inside the very place where much of it happened: the Oviatt Building, a 1928 Art Deco jewel at the heart of our city.
In the 1930s, countless Hollywood movies glittered with Deco sets, props, and costumes. Film audiences worldwide tended to assume that Los Angeles had embraced Art Deco since the style’s grand 1925 debut in Paris -- but they were mistaken. The road was slower, and the story behind it was lost and deliberately obfuscated. Creative genius, egotism, astonishing projects both open and hidden, and a self-aggrandizing lie which nearly buried it all for 80 years…this is how French Art Deco in its first, golden age, truly arrived in the City of the Angels.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER:
Currently the board chairman of the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles (ADSLA), Southern California historian Marc Chevalier researched, wrote, and produced THE OVIATT BUILDING, a 2008 documentary film by Seth Shulman about downtown L.A.’s first Art Deco skyscraper. In his research, Marc stumbled across an unknown web of connections between that building and the trailblazing 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris: a discovery which led to 18 years of further investigation. This will be Marc’s first North American presentation of his findings.
This event takes place on the ground floor of the Oviatt Building.