RM 669, Douglas Wheeler, 1969. Vacuum-formed plexiglass and white UV neon light. 96 x 96 in. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, purchased with funds provided by Bullocks Wilshire.

An experimental city by all accounts, Los Angeles has been variously described as an "earthly paradise," a "huge desert encampment," a "city of dreadful joy," or, more recently, a "city of quartz." A place at once raw and compelling, it spawned an art that is equally multifaceted, bringing new materials, visions, and technical skills to the project of radical artistic innovation.

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980, a collaboration between the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute, documents the emergence of Los Angeles as an international nexus of contemporary art after World War II. It culminates in a series of over forty concurrent exhibitions across Southern California in fall 2011.

Black Girl's Window, Betye Saar, 1969. Mixed media assemblage, 35 1/4 x 18 x 1 1/2 in., Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York.

"The whole notion of turning Southern California into one big extended museum with the freeways functioning as the hallways between the galleries, it's just a very exciting idea."
—Ann Philbin, Director, Hammer Museum

The dynamic Los Angeles postwar art community included artists as diverse as John Baldessari, Wallace Berman, Judy Chicago, Llyn Foulkes, Robert Heinecken, Mike Kelley, Robert Irwin, Allan Kaprow, Ed Kienholz, John Outterbridge, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, Beatrice Wood, Harry Gamboa, Patssi Valdez, and many more. Together with curators Henry Hopkins and Walter Hopps, gallerists Irving Blum and Patricia Faure, and pioneering publishers Stanley Grinstein and Sid Felsen of the print workshop Gemini G.E.L., they created a highly influential art scene that evocatively blended popular culture, vernacular architecture, and visionary art forms.

Spearheaded by the Getty Foundation, which committed nearly $10 million in funding, Pacific Standard Time is the largest collaborative project of its kind. Its mission is to uncover the largely hidden historical record of Southern California art and present its richness and diversity to a wider audience. To that end, the Getty Foundation awarded an initial series of archival grants (2002–2008), followed by exhibition research and planning grants to select institutions (2008–2009), as well as grants covering publication and exhibition-related expenses (2010).

Buster, Billy Al Bengston, 1962. Courtesy of the artist.

"I'm more convinced every day about the importance of Pacific Standard Time. This Getty initiative is going to have the effect of really changing the course of Southern California art history by getting arts institutions to collaborate, by emphasizing research and scholarship, and by supporting a critical mass of coinciding exhibitions. People will look back and see that this is the watershed moment when art history on the East Coast and West Coast began to be put in proper balance."—Hugh Davies, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego