LAGUNA BEACH, CA.-Laguna Art Museum presents two exhibitions for its fall exhibition schedule. Opening first is Los Angeles-based artist Ruby Osorio’s first solo museum exhibition in California, Ruby Osorio: A Story of a Girl (Who Awakes Far, Far Away). The exhibition features her unique gouache paintings on paper that incorporate thread and ink that explore female identity and its construction through whimsy with a punch. Osorio makes connections between the ephemeral nature of the medium and a distinctly feminine psyche. Ruby Osorio was born in Los Angeles, California, where she currently lives and works. Support for the exhibition comes from Chris and Marsh McCall and Charlotte and William Ford.

A full-color catalog published by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, features essays essays by Shannon Fitzgerald and Sue Spaid, and an interview between the artist and Tyler Stallings. The catalogue is distributed by D.A.P. / Distributed Art Publisher. The exhibition was originally conceived and organized by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and curated by the museum’s chief curator, Shannon Fitzgerald. A revised version has been reorganized for Laguna Art Museum by the Museum’s chief curator, Tyler Stallings.

Opening on November 6, 2005 and continuing through February 26, 2006, A Broken Beauty: Figuration, Narrative and the Transcendent in North American Art features the recent work of fifteen North American artists who deploy a range of figurative and narrative modes in painting, sculpture and mixed media. As artists who matured in the Post-Modern milieu of the late twentieth century, they ponder the meaning of human embodiment by rendering states of physical, mental and spiritual brokenness. The result is often an upending of traditional and conventional notions of beauty in the human form, coupled with the quest for redemption and hope in personal moments or historical events. The title of the exhibition, "A Broken Beauty", originates with Simone Weil (1909-43), the French metaphysical philosopher who saw a symbiotic relationship between beauty and brokenness that she felt was essential to our understanding of the complexities of the human condition in the modern world. The exhibition was curated by Gordon Fuglie, director of the Laband Gallery at Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles, California. After closing at Laguna Art Museum, the exhibition will then travel to the Joseph D. Carrier Gallery, Columbus Centre, in Toronto, Canada and will be on exhibition from April through May 2006. Support for this exhibition comes from Joni Rehnborg and Gail Garner Roski.

Support for the Museum’s exhibition schedule has also been provided by the Laguna Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau, the Business Improvement District, The Festival of Arts Foundation, and South Coast Plaza.