La Conchita is hugged by mountains and is as close to the ocean as it is possible for non-millionaires to get anywhere between San Francisco and Mexico. It brought Roger Brown closer to the man he loved, whom he had lost only years before. It was the place in which he chose to draw closer to death, in an imperfect paradise of his own devising.

Artist Billy Al Bengston and architect Frank Gehry have been friends for more than 50 years. In 1968, when Bengston was given a museum survey at LACMA, they collaborated on the installation: Reconfiguring the galleries with plywood walls, borrowed furniture, Black Power posters, they knocked exhibition design out of the white cube.