Six years after launching Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980—a widely acclaimed 2011 effort to document the birth of the L.A. art scene collaboratively in galleries across the city—Getty spearheaded an even more ambitious Pacific Standard Time.
2017’s PST: LA/LA explored the far-reaching subject of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Its partners spanned hundreds of miles—from Santa Barbara to San Diego, Santa Monica to Palm Springs—and visitors were offered more than 80 visual art exhibitions at more than 70 cultural institutions, upward of 500 performances and public programs, dedicated K-12 educational offerings, and some 60 publications—all made possible by $16.5 million in grants awarded by the Getty Foundation to arts organizations large and small.
Why focus on Latin American and Latino art in L.A.? “Getty was founded on the principle that the arts transcend political borders and help us better understand different cultures, times, and places,” said then-Getty President and CEO Jim Cuno at the time. “In this spirit, we have launched PST: LA/LA, and through it we can recognize the cultural connections that unite us and build bridges instead of walls.” The initiative also recognized L.A.’s long relationship with Latin America and the city’s majority Latino population.
From the Autry’s exhibition on the influential photojournalism of L.A.’s bilingual newspaper La Raza to the Huntington’s survey of South American nature images, thematic exhibitions brought under-studied collections to museum walls throughout the region. Monographic shows shed light on underrecognized artists such as Laura Aguilar, Carlos Almaraz, León Ferrari, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Gilbert “Magu” Luján.
Four PST: LA/LA exhibitions were presented at the Getty Center. Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas, a major collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, brought together South American and Mesoamerican objects that conveyed the majesty of pre-Columbian kingship and ritual. The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930 looked at a century of rapid urban growth, sociopolitical upheavals, and cultural transitions in six Latin American capitals. Making Art Concrete: Works from Argentina and Brazil in the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros explored the avant-garde artists of the Concrete movement and what Getty researchers and scientists discovered about these artists’ materials, methods, and motivation. And Photography in Argentina, 1850–2010: Contradiction and Continuity offered visitors a wholly new perspective on the country through 300 images by 60 Argentine artists.
The Center’s exhibitions and events, together with those of PST partners across Southern California, had a monumental impact on the general public and the art world alike. Audiences outside Southern California would be affected too: nearly two dozen PST shows traveled to museums around the country and the world. The New York Times's Holland Cotter wrote in his review of PST: LA/LA, “I guess there’s a God. During one of the meanest passages in American national politics within living memory, we’re getting a huge, historically corrective, morale-raising cultural event, one that lasts four months and hits on many of the major social topics of the day: racism, sexism, aggressive nationalism.”
And there was PST: LA/LA’s economic impact. The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp released a report showing that the 2017 PST drew an estimated 2.8 million visitors (34 percent of whom had traveled from outside Southern California), generated $430.3 million in economic output (total value of goods and services produced), supported 4,080 jobs, and added $24.3 million in tax revenue to state and local government coffers. As Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said of the PST, “An investment in the arts is an investment in our future.”
PST: LA/LA’s educational components proved a boon as well. Undergraduates at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena developed experimental installation designs for Golden Kingdoms. L.A. County teens were invited to enter a student art contest and win college scholarship funds (their prompt: “L.A. is ___. Am I L.A.?”). And a special grant program supported a robust suite of activities for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) K-12 teachers, students, and their families—namely professional development for educators, free student field trips to exhibitions, free family museum field trips, and a student art challenge—all organized around PST: LA/LA’s themes of art, activism, borders, diaspora, displacement, identity, and globalism.
Overall, the program engaged 50,000 students, many from the region’s most underserved schools. Five hundred teachers participated in professional development sessions and saved the printed resource guides to use in future classes. And special field trips and family days enabled some 12,500 students and family members to visit PST: LA/LA partner museums.
“The support for teachers and students to gain this vital exposure outside the classroom is critical, especially the commitment to reach the most underserved schools in our district,” said Rory Pullens, then head of LAUSD’s arts education branch. “With the support of the Getty Foundation, thousands of students across the county are being transported into a cultural and artistic experience that is certain to make a lasting impression.”
