La Senora Research Institute Inc.

Provide a readily available source of accurate historical information on the topics we cover.

Provide an intimate Chamber Music venue for the Westside, sharing the Hacienda's acoustically perfect Music Salon with LA's vibrant young classical performers and audiences. Introduce the Mexican opera tenor, Jose Mojica, who built the hacienda to showcase his talent

Allow visitors to experience "The SM Canyon Salon Era" with its artistic, intellectual, scientific components hostessed by screenwriter Anita Loos from the 1930s - WW II

Introduce the "Golden Age of Cinema" dipping back to 1913 when Thomas Ince filmed the first Western ever shot West of Chicago (or even outside) on Rancho land; Anita Loos' roots from Griffith's Birth of a Nation to Collette's Gigi; Lyle Wheeler (Selznick's art director) whose films earned him 37 Oscar Nominations. La Senora's 'Screening Room' seats 60 and is also used for our historic lecture and K-University education programs.

Education: Our programs won the Governor's Award demonstrating excellence, innovation,and broad based integration of materials.
Classical Music Venue: Collaborate with established musical venues to build our own audiences and use our Colburn Foundation seed money grant to produce exceptional programming.
The SM Canyon Salon Era is such a fascinating period, and our Hacienda was one of its site. It's not difficult to drawn visitors to one of these presentations. The Film Series fill quickly. We have rich background resources from the relatives of those makers about the making of the films.

We started with critical assets that would otherwise have taken years to acquire. These allowed us to quickly achieve goal plateaus. Our Historian brought 50 years in the field of local history, his knowledge, relationships and collections of materials, and we are sited, at no cost, in an historic hacienda and botanical garden

The management of our organization was undertaken not by a ‘history buff’ but by a full time volunteer professional CEO with decades of experience in managing start up entrepreneurial organizations. We run a ‘working board’ organization with each Director being fully responsible for a segment of the management of the institute.
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We recruit volunteers in each area of focus and Academic Fellows of world-class educators in the fields in which we are engaged. We partner with every historic society, and most classical music organizations in our region. We spread our own influence and gain a large measure of the influence of others by collaboration.

Accomplishments: 1- We've been instrumental in 'bonding' collaboratives in a field in which there formerly existed some competition but more apathy; 2- Our educational programs have been lauded by individuals and schools and have won awards; 3- we've formed successful long term mutually supportive relationships with major institutions including the Autry, the Getty, the Huntington, the Cotsen Institute and numerous smaller organizations; 4- We secured cultural heritage designation for the land in front of the historic cemetery, negotiated for the purchase of that land and turned it into a native garden ensuring access in perpetuity to the cemetery;
Have not yet accomplished: Finding a practical, cost effective way to have our organization retain the use of the Mojica Hacienda after its initial fifteen years gift of use is over.