Van Leo Easter Egg!
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| Van Leo (Levon Boyadjian), Portrait of Youssef Nabil, 1995 |
Easy to miss in LACMA's "Now Showing: Youssef Nabil's I Saved My Belly Dancer" (through Jan. 11, 2026) is this portrait of the artist by Van Leo, the Armenian-Egyptian glamor photographer. Van Leo's photographs—particularly his staged, stagey, cross-gender, and surreal self-portraits—have gained a cult following. They were the subject of a 2023 show at the Hammer.
At the time of Nabil's portrait (1995), he was 23 and would have known the 74-year-old Van Leo as a legend/relic of Cairo's Golden Age as "Hollywood on the Nile." It's not a color photograph (which Van Leo disliked) but a hand-colored B&W print.
The LACMA installation presents Nabil's 2015 video I Saved My Belly Dancer alongside stills and vintage movie posters.
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| Van Leo, self-portrait, 1940s. He wasn't bald; he shaved his head for this photo |
Comments
Cairo gets the Grand Egyptian Museum while LA gets Hauser & Wirth at LACMA.
BTW,, a major daytime heist just occurred at Paris's Louvre. I understand one of the prized objects was broken. News reports also show long lines of visitors standing outside France's big-time museum.
Security at LACMA (to prevent theft---although graffiti vandalism is always a threat) doesn't have to be nearly as good, particularly for what's often in the Resnick. Also, far fewer daily visitors at 5905 Wilshire Blvd who will be eyewitnesses of a potential crime too. Oh, well, win some, lose some.
I looked up Van Leo. He bequeathed his entire corpus to the American University in Cairo.
I actually find him more interesting, if not more important, than Youssef Nabil. Each to his own taste.
That would allow visiting tourists especially greater opportunity to study LACMA's own core collection. If locals haven't bothered to see the exhibit by 3 months in, chances are diminished ever further as more time passes.
Time to start building a literature now, now that you've built your house.