Year in Review: The O.C. arts community weighs in

2014 will end in less than a week, and already the year-end lists have started to roll out. As the new year approaches, we asked some of the movers and shakers in the local arts community to name the highlights — and low lights — of the past 12 months.

What were your favorite and least favorite things that happened culturally in 2014, whether in Orange County or elsewhere? Email your responses to [email protected], and we’ll post some of them in a future issue.

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Michael Dale Brown

Board president

Costa Mesa Playhouse

Best: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten much more selective in my moviegoing decisions, and I see far fewer movies than I used to. Given that, my favorite movie of the year is “The Theory of Everything.” On an artistic level and an emotional level, it blew away everything else I saw.

Worst: Conservative Republican attempts to undermine and destroy a sitting president with twisted half truths and outright lies.

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Dan Cameron

Chief curator

Orange County Museum of Art

Best: Being in the audience for Supersonico, the all-day rock en espanol festival at the Shrine in L.A., which featured an international lineup of great musicians.

Worst: My repeated frustration over Los Angeles not having a central guide/map to its quickly expanding galaxy of art galleries, despite growing numbers of visitors who come here to look at art.

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Terry Dwyer

President

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Best: This once-in-a-lifetime reunion of the original cast of “Into the Woods” was pure joy. Extraordinary performers, gifted creators and a wildly enthusiastic audience. Unforgettable.

Worst: I realize it’s a very complicated issue, but it is a sad and troubling moment in our culture when threats result in the public being prevented from experiencing a creative expression of any kind.

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Kate Hoffman

Executive director

Huntington Beach Art Center

Best: The juxtaposition of art and surfing in Huntington Beach through “Surfboards on Parade,” a project of the local Rotary, and the Huntington Beach Art Center’s exhibition “The Art and Soul of Surfing.” Both celebrate the creative inspiration that occurs between the surfer, the artist and the ocean.

Worst: The political impact on the movie “The Interview,” the hacking of Sony Pictures and the removal of the film from theaters. Outrageous!

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Kalpna Singh-Chitnis

Founder and director

Silent River Film Festival

Best: Putting on the Silent River Film Festival for the fourth year in a row and having Louis Gossett Jr. visit our award-night ceremony to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Worst: Jay Leno retiring from late-night television.

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Malcolm Warner

Executive director

Laguna Art Museum

Best: “Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s” at LACMA (until April 26). Creative exhibitions about film look more and more at home in art museums.

Worst: The proposed sale of art from the Detroit Institute of Arts to pay city debts, now thankfully averted. All the more kudos to those cities that help their museums thrive.