With the support of nearly $20 million in grants from Getty, dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will present more than 60 deeply researched exhibitions and an extraordinary spectrum of public programs over the course of five months, all exploring the intersections of art and science—past, present, and in the imaginable future. Topics of the unprecedented initiative range from biotechnology to sustainable agriculture, from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from artificial intelligence to environmental justice.
PST ART is presented by Getty. The lead sponsors supporting PST ART are Bank of America, Alicia Miñana & Rob Lovelace, and the Getty Patron Program. Additional support is provided by the Simons Foundation.
Teams of curators, scientists, and artists have spent years immersed in research and exhibition development supported by Getty grants. The total number of artists represented in the exhibitions now stands at more than 800, ranging from ancient sculptors and 14th-century Islamic scribes to contemporary artists such as Mel Chin, Carolina Caycedo, Olafur Eliasson, Nancy Baker Cahill, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Tavares Strachan. Complementing the exhibitions will be a schedule of public programs that range from cutting-edge performing arts commissions to rocket launches, and from community science initiatives and participatory art projects to a free outdoor art and science family festival.
“When I arrived in Southern California, I was struck by the enthusiasm and pride the community felt for PST ART,” says Katherine E. Fleming, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, “and when I traveled abroad, PST ART was the Getty initiative everyone credited for cementing Los Angeles’s place as a global cultural capital of the 21st century. I am proud of Getty’s commitment to continuing these large-scale, interdisciplinary collaborations that produce new knowledge and engage broad audiences by establishing PST ART as a regularly funded initiative, with a new edition every five years.”
“The exhibitions in this new edition of PST ART boldly go beyond the expected, sparking a fundamental shift in how we see the possibilities of both art and science,” says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation, who has stewarded all PST ART collaborations to date. “The questions that more than 70 partner organizations are posing in their exhibitions are crucial for our very future. What can artists and scientists do in collaboration to overcome ecological damage and imagine a more sustainable future? What does the history of Southern California’s aerospace industry tell us about the movies, and about current structures of surveillance and control? How have scientists visualized the natural world, and how do artists now envision once-unthinkable scientific developments? With Art & Science Collide, PST ART is again venturing into new territory and revealing the unexpected.”
E. C. Krupp, director of the world-famous Griffith Observatory, says, “Science and art are both in the business of discovery and perspective, but because they are not generally mentioned in the same breath, their contact almost inevitably generates surprise and wonder. In this artful engineering of the unexpected, PST ART is certain to lift the shades on the windows of perception.”
“Art and science share a common commitment to curiosity and a quest for the unseen,” observes multidisciplinary artist Tavares Strachan, who will be included in several exhibitions. “Whether that is a scientist using a microscope to look at what is invisible to the human eye or an artist like me studying scientific pioneers who have disappeared from or were never included in the history books, both of us are driven to explore. It’s what we do and how we survive.”
“Bank of America is proud to continue as a sponsor of Getty’s unparalleled multi-institution collaboration PST ART: Art & Science Collide,” says Raul Anaya, Bank of America’s President of Business Banking, and Greater Los Angeles President. “PST ART will once again break new ground and engage diverse audiences while providing an enormous boost to the region’s economy.”
Alicia Miñana says, "PST ART will gather some of the most exciting minds in the realms of art and science for a cross-disciplinary dialogue that promises to fascinate and inspire us all. Rob and I are delighted to support Getty in this initiative that will bring outstanding educational and cultural opportunities to so many diverse communities across Southern California, while showcasing that Los Angeles remains at the forefront of innovation in the stories, technologies, and ideas that propel the future.”
Bringing Artists, Institutions, and Audiences Together Across the Region
PST ART: Art & Science Collide will draw from and reflect the resources of a region that is recognized internationally as both a hotbed of innovative art and a leading center of scientific and technical research. Participants in the collaboration will include:
Exhibition Partners: Spanning Southern California from Santa Barbara to Palm Springs to San Diego, with a dense concentration in Los Angeles, the PST ART partners that have researched and organized exhibitions include civic institutions such as LACMA, the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, and the San Diego Museum of Art; independent art museums such as The Broad and MOCA; leading academic institutions including the California Institute of Technology and SCI-Arc; university-affiliated museums and galleries such as the Hammer Museum and Fowler Museum at UCLA and UCR Arts at UC Riverside; organizations working at the convergence of contemporary art, science, and education including Fathomers and the Beall Center for Art + Technology at UC Irvine; and world-renowned scientific institutions, such as Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/Caltech).
A complete list of partner institutions and their exhibitions may be found online.
Programming Partners: Organizations that are developing and presenting schedules of public programs are CaltechLive; Clockshop; Crenshaw Dairy Mart; The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; L.A. Dance Project; LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab; LA Phil; The Music Center; The New Children’s Museum; REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater); Skirball Cultural Center; and the University of Southern California.
A complete list of partner institutions and their programs may be found online.
Community Hubs: To create opportunities for community-based organizations to get involved in PST ART, Getty has invited three organizations—La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, LA Commons, and the Lancaster Museum of Art and History—to become Community Hubs. Each organization will use its time-tested strategies to encourage and coordinate activities by grass-roots organizations and young creatives in its area, including local environmental action groups, community science organizations, STEAM educators, artist collectives, and public agencies, bringing the themes of Art & Science Collide to populations across Los Angeles County from Antelope Valley and the Mojave Desert to East and South LA, as well as the neighborhoods across the city.
SoCal Galleries: As in past editions of PST ART, galleries throughout Los Angeles and Southern California that choose to present their own independently organized exhibitions on the collaboration’s theme may be designated as affiliates of the initiative. Information on exhibitions at affiliate galleries will be available closer to the launch of PST ART: Art & Science Collide in September 2024.
Frieze: Getty has launched a global partnership with Frieze to amplify the presence of Art & Science Collide internationally, beginning with Frieze Seoul in September 2023 and Frieze London in October 2023. The partnership reflects the shared commitment of Getty and Frieze to champion Southern California’s diverse ecosystem of artists and institutions.
Edinburgh Science: Getty will join with the internationally renowned Edinburgh Science organization in November 2024 to present a free, three-day PST ART x Science Family Festival. Offering hands-on workshops, roving demonstrations, a full performance slate, and a celebratory atmosphere with music and food, the outdoor festival will bring the theme of Art & Science Collide to children ages 4 to 14 and their families.
Exhibition Highlights
The vast range of artistic materials to be shown in Art & Science Collide includes ancient Aboriginal drawings from Australia, Mesoamerican vessels and textiles, medieval Islamic illustrated books, Chinese hanging scrolls, 19th-century British Romantic paintings, mid-20th-century US abstract paintings and sculpture, computer-based art from 1960s and 1970s South America, contemporary installations and cross-disciplinary art, and a host of videos and films.
Among the themes being developed in the new PST ART, and the exhibitions that explore them, are:
The Body: Site, Image, Possibility
Fathomers, Emergence: an exploration of the inner and outer biological landscapes of the future human, presented at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Scientia Sexualis: a survey of contemporary artists whose work confronts, dissolves, and reimagines sex and gender within the scientific apparatus.
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability: a look at art practices that contend with the impact of medicine and technology on our conceptions of the self and the body.
Ecology and Environmental Justice
California African American Museum, World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project: an examination of the impact of George Washington Carver on contemporary art and environmental science.
Hammer Museum, Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice: an exhibition of the work of contemporary artists, scientists, and activists focusing on the lungs of our planet—oceans, atmosphere, and forests—including tangible contributions toward their protection.
Self Help Graphics & Art, Sinks: Places We Call Home, presented at the Luckman Gallery, Cal State LA: a project in which artists, who are partnering with communities and scientists, examine the impact of toxic manufacturing sites on communities near Self Help Graphics & Art in East LA.
Picturing Science
California Institute of Technology, Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020: a retrospective of the last 100 years of Caltech as a site for scientific and artistic image production, and through it the visual culture of scientific institutions.
Palm Springs Art Museum, Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945–1990: an examination of how concepts and technologies from advanced scientific research have impacted the development of abstract or non-figurative art in postwar Southern California.
UCR ARTS at UC Riverside, Digital Capture: Southern California and the Pixel-Based Image World: an exhibition tracing the history of today’s digital imaging back to the Southern California research laboratories of the Cold War and the 1960s Space Race.
Global Cultures
J. Paul Getty Museum at Getty Center, Lumen: The Art & Science of Light: a major exhibition demonstrating how the study of light, vision, and the movement of the heavens were explored by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians to understand the sacred during the “Long Middle Ages” (c. 800–1600).
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 奪天工 Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China: an exhibition focusing on the gardens of China’s early modern literati, where scholars hybridized plants, domesticated wild flora, cultivated herbal medicines, and gained an understanding of themselves and their place in the universe.
Mingei International Museum, Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo: a look at the history and possible future of a plant with roots going back 6,000 years in Peru and 4,500 years in Egypt, exploring its universal appeal as a dyestuff and pigment.
Visions of the Future
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures: an experiential exhibition and programming series examining the global impact and lasting influence of Cyberpunk on cinema culture.
Autry Museum of the American West, Future Imaginaries: Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology: an experimental installation of the work of Indigenous artists who have taken up aspects of science fiction, often combined with digital media, performance, and traditional knowledge systems.
ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, presented at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, Sci-fi, Magick, Queer LA: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation: a consideration of the overlooked importance of science fiction fandom and the occult to US queer history.
The Skies and the Cosmos
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mapping the Infinite: Cosmologies Across Cultures: an exploration of the breadth of cosmologies, including astrology and astronomy, across time through a selection of around 100 sculptures, manuscripts, photographs, and astronomical instruments. The Griffith Observatory Foundation will extend this exploration of cosmologies with the 23-minute digital film Pacific Standard Universe.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Brand Library & Art Center, Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination: an exhibition of existing and newly created artworks, presented as “objects from the future,” which ask how our exploration of the cosmos may shape new kinds of relationships between humans and robots.
Technologies of Seeing and Control
Center for Land Use Interpretation, Remote Sensing: Explorations into the Art of Detection: an investigation of aesthetic and cultural responses to remote sensing technologies, developed by the Los Angeles aerospace industry and now inescapable presences in daily life.
OXY ARTS, Invisibility: Powers and Perils: a presentation of the work of artists, scientists, and activists who are rendering visible the people, histories, and planetary conditions that have been erased within the cultural mainstream.
The Wende Museum, Surveillance and Countersurveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency: a history of present-day biometric technologies such as facial recognition going back to the Cold War, and a survey of artistic responses to surveillance celebrating the ability of people to connect “under the radar.”
Claiming Tomorrow
Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Public Library, No Prior Art: Illustrations of Invention: a celebration of invention as a key feature of both scientific and artistic advances, featuring an exhibition of works by more than a dozen artists and inventors including Mixografia, artist Pippa Garner, and the KAOS Network.
REDCAT, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: proposals for reclaiming the emancipatory potential of artificial intelligence, as seen through a broad range of multidisciplinary art forms reflecting BIPOC, feminist, non-Western, and non-binary systems of thought.
SCI-Arc, Views of Planet City: a radically optimistic vision of the future, in which the most audacious scientific and technological advances of our time are used to reverse human encroachments onto nature and enable the world’s 8 billion people to live in one sustainable, hyperdense city.
Programming Highlights
A broad range of events and public programs will be organized by PST ART partners. Highlights include:
Blasting Off
LACMA's Art + Technology Lab will produce American Artist's The Monophobic Response. The performance will engage the ideas of science fiction author Octavia E. Butler's Parable novels to reimagine a rocket engine test that was carried out in Arroyo Seco Canyon in 1936 by the precursor to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In a performance designed and implemented by participants in Stanford University’s Student Space Initiative, The Wende Museum will send a replica of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite into orbit on the 67th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch.
Bringing Science to the Stage
The biological basis of empathy will be the foundation of the L.A. Dance Project’s Resonance, featuring commissioned dance works by outstanding contemporary choreographers in collaboration with research scientists.
The Music Center will present The Gift, for which the historic Mount Wilson Observatory and The Music Center’s outdoor plaza in DTLA will become intimate “reading rooms” augmented with a musical score and digital interventions.
The practice of field recording—capturing audio outside the studio from sources as varied as underwater sounds, electromagnetic vibrations, or insect activity—will be the focus of LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight festival of new music at Walt Disney Concert Hall, featuring well-known and emerging composers, performers, and ensembles.
Grassroots Activism and Confronting Climate Change
Crenshaw Dairy Mart will organize a season of workshops, conversations, and community events around its abolitionist pods—autonomously irrigated, solar-powered gardens in geodesic domes, designed by the Inglewood-based arts non-profit to serve communities across LA County.
Skirball Cultural Center will present a program featuring young climate activists, poets, and artists who bring an intersectional approach to combatting the devastating effects of climate change.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens will be the site of a large-scale youth summit on sustainability and climate change.
Additional information on programs will be available closer to the launch of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Getty will also organize PST ART Weekends bringing together neighboring institutions.
About PST ART: Art & Science Collide
Southern California’s landmark arts event Pacific Standard Time—now PST ART—returns in September 2024 with more than 70 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past, present, and future. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, to share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART: Art & Science Collide follows Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (September 2017–January 2018) and Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 (October 2011– March 2012). PST ART is presented by Getty. Lead partners are Bank of America, Alicia Miñana & Rob Lovelace, Getty Patron Program. The principal partner is Simons Foundation. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art
Press materials in English and Spanish are available online.