Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980
Exhibition Planning Grants Awarded

American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA)
$141,000

The decades following WWII saw tremendous growth and experimentation in ceramic craft and studio pottery, as well as the establishment of the American Crafts Council, which aimed to identify the philosophical and sociological role of craft in contemporary society. Southern California's contribution to this shift was perhaps best embodied by artist Millard Sheets (1907–1989) and the legacy he inspired as a teacher and leader among the studio potters of Los Angeles. The American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) will examine Sheets and his milieu in Searching for Peace, Post WWII Innovations in Clay, to better understand the changing attitudes toward ceramics and craft in the postwar era and the connection between craft and the social reform instigated by 1960s counter culture.

Armory Center for the Arts
$110,000

Although it is unusual to consider the works of Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken in the same context, these two prominent post-war Los Angeles artists had similar approaches to artmaking. Both worked extensively with collage, Berman with his Semina journal and Heinecken with experimental photocollages, using mass media imagery to resist the status quo. Both artists also shared a disdain for the creative compromises that often came with commercial success. The Armory will consider these similarities in dreams/circles/cycles: Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken, bringing works by both artists into close conversation for the first time.

California African American Museum (CAAM)
$225,000

During the postwar period, institutions such as Alonzo and Dale Davis's Brockman Gallery, Cecil Fergerson and Claude Booker's Black Arts Council, and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company building (located at the intersection of Adams and Arlington Boulevards) emerged to support the work of black artists through exhibitions, commissions, and community organizations. Because the collective history of African American artists in L.A. remains largely untold, the California African American Museum will showcase an exhibition called Places of Validation, Art and Progression dedicated to the prominent players who encouraged black artists and helped make their work visible during the postwar period. The show will include artworks of the era as well as photographs and ephemera.

California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
$145,000

Since its establishment in 1961, CalArts has fostered experimental approaches to art making, from the Feminist Art Program and its pioneering Womanhouse exhibition, to the ephemeral happenings of former faculty member Allan Kaprow. CalArts will build on this legacy by bringing together prominent contemporary artists and intellectuals to consider three threads of postwar art making in Los Angeles: the use of newly available industrial materials; novel approaches to lifestyle, from the architecture of Lautner and Neutra to the counterculture of Topanga and Malibu canyons; and the creation of independent venues for discussing and presenting art. Entitled The Experimental Impulse: Los Angeles Art from 1945 to 1980, the exhibition will be presented at the school's REDCAT gallery, housed in the Walt Disney Hall complex.

Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA
$225,000

A look at postwar art in Los Angeles would not be complete without considering the essential contributions of the city's Mexican American and Chicano artists. Important figures from Domingo Ulloa, the "father of Chicano Art," have yet to receive critical attention. The Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA will stage two related exhibitions and a contemporary art installation focusing on The Mexican American Generation: 1945–1965 to be held at the Claremont Museum of Art; Chicano Art Organizations: 1965–1980 to be held at UCLA's Fowler Museum; and Mapping a Chicano Sense of Place in L.A. Art History, an installation at LACMA. All three will explore aspects of the Mexican presence in Los Angeles during the post World War II era.

City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA)
$66,000

Between 1945 and 1980, the Department of Cultural Affairs managed two arts venues that have played important roles in the development of post-war art in Los Angeles: the Municipal Art Gallery (MAG) and the Watts Towers Art Center (WTAC). Although both spaces demonstrated an early commitment to the work of local artists, particularly women and minorities, their exhibitions and collecting activities have received little scholarly attention to date. A team of art historians and former and current directors of the MAG and WTAC will research the exhibition history of each venue and explore the publics reception of their programs. Drawing heavily on the facilities’ institutional archives and on municipal records, the team hopes to create a more nuanced understanding of how these spaces supported diverse artists across the city.

18th Street Arts Complex
$132,000

Far more than just exhibition alternatives to the gallery system, Los Angeles's artist-run spaces of the 1970s and '80s were sites of community organizing and political engagement on issues ranging from gay liberation to feminism. From the time-based media collaborative EZTV to the Performing Archives co-founded by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz Starus, this vibrant infrastructure of artist-run spaces emerged to support innovative time-based practices, specifically video and performance. The 18th Street Arts Complex, which started as the headquarters of the influential High Performance magazine and now holds archives related to some of Los Angeles's most significant artist-run spaces, will present this history in Collaboration Labs: Southern California Artists and the Artist Space Movement. Showcasing artworks and archival materials, the exhibition will explore the links between Los Angeles's alternative spaces and the groundbreaking artistic practices that prompted their creation.

Hammer Museum
$200,000

During the postwar period, Los Angeles's African American artists made varied and important contributions to the vibrant art scene within the region and beyond. The Hammer Museum will provide a comprehensive survey of the work of African American artists in Los Angeles during the 1960s and '70s. Charting the work of key figures such as David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar, the exhibition will examine a prevailing artistic shift away from didactic artistic modes toward more abstract, conceptual, and performance-based practices.

Japanese American National Museum (JANM)
$60,000

As Japanese Americans returned to Los Angeles following their release from WWII internment camps, they struggled to assimilate and redefine their place in a society that had until recently deprived them of basic civil liberties. Artists in particular struggled to find their cultural role as they moved away from artistic modes rooted in their immigrant experiences. Their diverse creative responses, from the abstract lithographs of Matsumi "Mike" Kanemitsu, to the iconic design of Larry Shinoda's '63 Corvette Stingray and the social activism of designer turned filmmaker Robert Nakamura, will be featured in JANM's exhibition, Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design, & Activism in Post-War Los Angeles. Borrowing from JANM's rich collection and incorporating oral histories, the exhibition will explore these artists' significant yet often overlooked contributions to their community and to the larger postwar artistic landscape of Los Angeles.

Long Beach Museum of Art (LBMA)
$175,000

The rise of video in the 1970s and '80s was one of the most important artistic innovations that occurred in postwar Los Angeles. Few places in the world were more involved in the early experimentation of this nascent medium than the Long Beach Museum of Art's Video Media Center, which supported numerous video artists, including Nancy Buchanan, Tony Labat, and Tony Oursler. Through its on-site post-production facilities and exhibition programming, the museum enabled the creation of over 3,000 works that were held in its archives before being transferred to the Getty Research Institute in 2006. During the Video Media Center's heyday, LBMA's staff often collaborated with the nearby California State University Long Beach School of Art, and together the two institutions presented new works by preeminent video artists from America, Europe, Asia, and Australia to Southern California audiences. Working in consultation with a team of outside curators, the LBMA will collaborate with CSULB's University Art Museum to conduct research and planning for an exhibition that will explore its role in the local and international development of video art.

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE)
$132,000

Founded in 1978 as an alternative space for emerging media, many of LACE's earliest shows featured important figures such as Mike Kelley, and the organization came to define experimental performance-based practices in Southern California. Its institutional archive is thus one of the city's most significant resources for performance and activist art from the 1970s. Drawing on the archive, LACE plans to revisit this history for the exhibition Los Angeles Goes Live: Exploring the Origins of Performance Art in Southern California. The show will focus on synthesizing the disparate practices of early performance art in the region, and will include re-stagings of historic performances.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
$230,000

In the aftermath of WWII, a generation of consumers eager to overcome the Depression and wartime rationing transformed California into America's most important center for progressive architecture and furnishings. These elements helped form the aesthetic of California mid-century modern design, which played a central role in shaping material culture across the country in the decades to follow. LACMA will offer the first major scholarly study and exhibition of California's unique contribution to postwar visual culture with California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way," featuring over 300 works ranging from household items to "lifestyle objects" such as automobiles and surfboards.

Los Angeles Filmforum
$118,000

While Los Angeles is known primarily as the center of the country's commercial filmmaking industry, the region also fostered a diverse array of experimental film movements that were essential to the shaping of visual arts practices in the postwar period. For individual artists such as Gary Beydler, Peter Mays, and Ed Ruscha and collective organizations such as the Creative Film Society, Visual Communications, and the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis, the city served as a fertile staging ground for filmmaking experimentation from the 1950s to the present. The Los Angeles Filmforum will screen both seminal and lesser-known works by filmmakers of the period throughout the city during the exhibition period and will organize a major symposium to address the lasting impact of these experimental filmmakers.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
$238,900

The 1970s in California were a period of extraordinary fertility in the visual arts. From the Bay Area to San Diego, California artists challenged conventional art making strategies by generating new styles, genres, and movements, transforming the region into an international leader in the art world. Led by Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) will showcase California Culture, 1969–1980: Pluralism in the Postmodern Era, an exhibition of 120 artists who contributed to the unprecedented diversity of artistic practices that emerged on the West Coast during this decade.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD)
$225,000

As an institution that came of age in the mid-1960s, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) was at the forefront of exhibiting and acquiring works by many of the artists who came to be affiliated with the Light and Space movement. Favoring the shifting nature of environmental conditions and the viewer's perceptual experience over the physical object, artists such as Robert Irwin, Maria Nordman, James Turrell, and Douglas Wheeler formed the core of this distinctly Southern Californian group. Capitalizing on its unique position as a historic supporter of these artists and on its extensive archival holdings, MCASD will offer an exhibition of site-determined and ephemeral artworks from the 1960s and '70s.

Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA)
$175,000

The late 1960s in California saw an unprecedented critical interchange between the first generation of conceptual artists in Los Angeles and those in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although the ethos of each region was distinct, there were numerous points of convergence as artists such as Tom Marioni, Chris Burden, and Bruce Nauman traveled the length of the state for performances, curatorial ventures, or even permanent relocation. The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) will offer the exhibition Circa 1969: California Art on the Cusp, the first such show to examine the interconnectedness of the Northern and Southern California-based conceptual artists and the early institutions that supported them. The exhibition will be presented first at OCMA and then travel to the Berkeley Art Museum.

Otis College of Art and Design
$130,000

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Los Angeles was home to one of the most internationally renowned sites of feminist art activity, the Woman's Building. This center played an important and lasting role in shaping the city's cultural landscape and national discourses around feminism through large-scale public performance pieces, site-specific work, and extensive networking and collaboration. Pioneers in feminist art, such as Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, and Miriam Schapiro, worked at the Woman's Building to raise consciousness about the persisting gender inequity in the art world and society in general. Working primarily with local archives and oral histories, Otis College of Art and Design will present a comprehensive history of the Woman's Building and contextualize its artists, exhibitions, and activities within the development of the Southern California art scene.

Palm Springs Art Museum
$146,000

From Julius Shulman’s portraits of iconic modernist homes in the California desert to the photographs of derelict track housing by New Topographers Lewis Baltz and Stephen Shore, images of swimming pools from the 1940s onwards present compelling visual evidence of changing attitudes towards suburbia. The Palm Springs Art Museum’s exhibition, Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945–1980, will trace the shifting iconography of the swimming pool in post-war photography, and suburbia’s shift from utopia to dystopia in the cultural imagination. Using the Museum’s own Bill Anderson Collection and archives around the state, the project team will examine how this quintessentially Californian landscape element shaped and reflected the ideals and expectations of everyday Americans.

Pomona College Museum of Art (PCMA)
$190,000

From 1969 to 1973, Pomona College Museum of Art (PCMA) presented some of the most challenging exhibitions of contemporary art anywhere in the country through its experimental exhibition program curated by Hal Glicksman and Helene Winer. The display of groundbreaking works by key artists who bridged the gap between Post-Minimalism and Conceptual Art, such as Michael Asher, Tom Eatherton, and Allen Ruppersberg, formed the educational backdrop for a generation of artists who spent their formative years in Los Angeles and came to dominate the explosive New York art scene of the 1980s. Pomona College will offer an exhibition chronicling the activities of artists, curators, and critics associated with the college from 1969 to 1973.

Santa Monica Museum of Art
$145,000

A pioneering figure in postwar California visual arts, Beatrice Wood began her career in the New York Dadaist circle in the first decades of the 20th century before moving to Los Angeles in 1928. Although she was known affectionately as the "Mama of Dada," Wood forged her own artistic path in California by combining interests in ceramics, folk arts, and the mystical teachings of Dr. Annie Besant's Theosophical Society. Wood eventually moved to the utopian outpost of Ojai to be closer to the Indian sage Krishnamurti, and she taught and created ceramics there until her death in 1998 at the age of 105. While Wood's later ceramic works have been the subject of local exhibitions, the Santa Monica Museum of Art will now focus on her transition from Dadaism to Californian/Indian spiritualism and its impact on her artistic persona.

Scripps College
$175,000

During the postwar period, Scripps College was a vital component of the burgeoning ceramics art scene in Los Angeles. Following the path pioneered by Millard Sheets, Peter Voulkos continued to reform the practice of ceramics as an instructor at the Otis Art Institute (then known as the Los Angeles County Art Institute). Voulkos's students included Billy Al Bengston, Ken Price, and Paul Soldner, and together this generation of artists shifted the focus of ceramic arts away from utilitarian wares towards sculptural objects. Soldner brought this approach to Scripps, where he led the college's ceramics program from 1959 to 1991, and helped bring national attention to clay arts practice by organizing the longest-running exhibition of ceramics in the United States, the Scripps Ceramic Annual. Drawing primarily upon the extensive archives of its Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps will showcase Clay Reconsidered: Ceramics in Southern California, 1945 to 1980.

UCLA Film & Television Archive
$65,000

During the Civil Rights Movement of the postwar decades, California saw the rise of the Los Angeles Rebellion, a key movement of black filmmakers active from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The group, also known as the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers, met while studying at UCLA and formed the first collective to address the lives and concerns of African-American communities in film. From Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep to Larry Clark's Passing Through, the works of these artists demonstrate a shared commitment to countering the stereotypes of onscreen depictions of people of color. As these films have yet to receive adequate scholarly attention, the Film & Television Archive—an international leader in the conservation, exhibition, and interpretation of moving images—will conduct the first monograph-length study of this important movement and host a related film series.

University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
$140,000

Although architects such as John Lautner or Richard Neutra are among the figures most frequently associated with Los Angeles modernist architecture of the 1950s and '60s, these decades also saw the rise of L.A.-based designer Cliff May and the California ranch house aesthetic he helped popularize throughout Southern California. While this type of domestic architecture predominated in the region, its impact on design and daily life has yet to be fully explored. Using its newly available Cliff May archives, the University Art Museum at UCSB will organize a traveling exhibition entitled The Ranch House: Cliff May's Designs for Modern Living. Centered on May, the project will examine the domestic ranch house from its hacienda roots to its status as a global icon of middle-class consumption in the decades after World War II.

Though not a grant recipient, the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center also will be offering an exhibition as part of Pacific Standard Time:

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center

The J. Paul Getty Museum will present a focused survey of painting and sculpture in Southern California from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Los Angeles began to develop its own modernist forms and aesthetics; by mid century, assemblage sculptors such as Ed Kienholz, as well as ceramicists and hard-edge painters, had already demonstrated the beginnings of a unique modernism indigenous to Southern California. In the early 1960s, L.A. became an internationally recognized center for Pop Art through the work of artists such as Ed Ruscha and David Hockney. Artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell pursued the confluence of art and science, an aesthetic direction that eventually led to Light and Space art. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Los Angeles was also a center for practices that challenged the modernist object, particularly the conceptual work of artists such as Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, and Eleanor Antin.