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Pacific Standard Time developed out of the Getty's long-standing commitment to the vibrant history of postwar art in Los Angeles. For over a decade, the Getty Research Institute (GRI) has been locating and preserving significant archives related to artistic production in Southern California. These include the papers of artists Robert Irwin and Allan Kaprow; the photographic archives of Charles Brittin, Julius Shulman, and Edmund Teske; and the holdings of key institutions, including the Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive and the archives of High Performance magazine. Engaging with the rich historical legacy dispersed throughout the region, the GRI fosters an understanding of this period through distinctive programming. In 2002, the GRI launched Modern Art in Los Angeles, an ongoing series of oral histories and conversations that elicit and document the history of art in Los Angeles from 1945 to 1980. Focused symposia, screenings, lectures, and discussions have involved leading artists, filmmakers, musicians, curators, and critics, including John Baldessari, Judy Chicago, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, and Betye Saar among others.
Pacific Standard Time, a partnership between the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute, culminates in fall 2011 with more than 20 exhibitions across Southern California highlighting diverse aspects of the post-World War II Los Angeles art scene. The GRI, collaborating with the J. Paul Getty Museum, will undertake an exhibition and publication as part of this effort. The exhibition Pacific Standard Time: Painting and Sculpture in Los Angeles, 1945–1970 will highlight the tremendous creativity of the region's artists, while also demonstrating the integral place of Southern California art in national and international artistic movements. The show will offer a fundamental reappraisal and reinterpretation of postwar Los Angeles art as it leads viewers on a dynamic tour from the beginnings of a significant indigenous modernism in and around Los Angeles to the great diversity of artistic practices that characterize the end of the modernist era. Organized both chronologically and thematically, Pacific Standard Time: Painting and Sculpture in Los Angeles, 1945–1970 will explore specific artistic moments, including the mid-1950s hard-edge painting and ceramic sculpture, and the mid-1960s, contrasting Pop art with Color-Field painting, and such themes as assemblage, art and technology, and craft. Related programming will include performances, conversations, and historical recreations.
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