LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Getty Foundation announced it will award $3.1 million in grants to 26 arts institutions across Southern California as part of the initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. Pacific Standard Time includes an unprecedented series of concurrent exhibitions throughout the region that highlight the significance of art in Los Angeles in the post World War II decades. Exhibitions and related programs are set to begin in Fall 2011 and conclude in Spring 2012.
Pacific Standard Time has become the largest collaborative project ever undertaken by museums in the region. The new grants, which will support the implementation of exhibitions and the publication of catalogues, bring the total awarded by the Getty Foundation in support of Pacific Standard Time to $6.7 million. In addition to the current grants, in 2008 and 2009 the Foundation awarded nearly $3.6 million in grants to support research and planning for the exhibitions.
“I commend the Getty for their leadership and investment in Los Angeles arts, and for bringing all these institutions together to share and celebrate an amazing history. The Getty, with its ongoing support, has demonstrated its commitment to arts in Los Angeles,” said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “This initiative will certainly drive cultural tourism to our city and show the world all we have to offer. Pacific Standard Time reinforces Los Angeles’ reputation as a major cultural destination.”
“It is thrilling to see how museums and other arts institutions in L.A. and all across Southern California – from Santa Barbara to San Diego to Palm Springs – are joining together to showcase the region’s incredibly vibrant postwar artistic scene. It is the Getty Foundation’s privilege to support this very important collaborative effort that shows the pivotal leadership role played by Los Angeles in the arts, in the past as well as today,” said Deborah Marrow, Director of the Getty Foundation.
The dynamic Los Angeles postwar art community included artists such as John Baldessari, Judy Chicago, Fred Hammersley, Robert Irwin, Allan Kaprow, Craig Kauffman, Ed Kienholz, John Outterbridge, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, and Patssi Valdez (to name only a few), curators Henry Hopkins and Walter Hopps, gallerists Irving Blum and Patricia Faure, and Stanley Grinstein, collector and co-founder of the pioneering publisher and print workshop Gemini/G.E.L., among many others.
The Getty Foundation hopes the large scale commitment and collaboration on Pacific Standard Time will give visitors and scholars alike a greater awareness of Los Angeles as a major artistic center. The diverse series of exhibitions will include the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) California Art in the Age of Pluralism: 1974-1980, an exhibition of 120 artists who contributed to the enormous variety of artistic practices that emerged on the West Coast during this decade; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way, featuring over 300 works ranging from household items to “lifestyle” objects like automobiles and surfboards; Orange County Museum of Art’s (OCMA) State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, examining the interconnectedness of Northern and Southern California conceptual artists and the early institutions that supported them; and the J. Paul Getty Museum’s major survey of painting and sculpture in L.A. from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The Hammer Museum will provide a comprehensive survey of the work of African American artists entitled Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, and the California African American Museum (CAAM) exhibition will recreate community settings where African American artists were able to exhibit their work, while the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) will examine artist Millard Sheets and his milieu in Searching for Peace, Post WWII Innovations in Clay, exploring changing attitudes towards ceramics and craft in the postwar era and the connection between craft and the social reform of 1960s counter culture.
"The Pacific Standard Time initiative is extremely ambitious and affirming. It shines a light on a story that has yet to be fully told the story of the full richness and creative history of this amazing city during a very fertile time. I think the project as a whole will be a revelation for people," said Ann Philbin, Director of the Hammer Museum.
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) will offer Phenomenal: California Light and Space, showcasing artists who pioneered distinctive approaches to making art that focused on the process of recognizing objects through touch.
“I am more convinced every day about the importance of Pacific Standard Time,” said Hugh Davies, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. “This Getty initiative is going to have the effect of really changing the course of Southern California art history by getting arts institutions to collaborate, by emphasizing research and scholarship, and by supporting a critical mass of coinciding exhibitions. People will look back and see that this is the watershed moment when art history on the East Coast and West Coast began to be put in proper balance.”
The Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA will stage three related exhibitions: Los Angeles: The Mexican American Generation, 1945-1965 to be held at the Autry National Center, Los Angeles: Chicano Art Organizations, 1965-1980 to be held at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, and Los Angeles: Space is Place, to be held at LACMA.
In addition to those who have received grants, other Southern California institutions also are welcome to participate in this regional celebration of modern art from 1945-1980. Many already have indicated plans to do so, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is featuring California-related works in its 2011 season, and the Norton Simon Museum, which is exhibiting selections from its extensive collection of prints from the legendary Tamarind Lithography Workshop. A list of the 41 institutions currently participating in the Pacific Standard Time initiative, not all of which are grantees, is available.
“Our hope is that Pacific Standard Time will also lead to future collaborations among arts institutions in the greater Los Angeles area that will continue to build on the region’s reputation as a major center for innovation in the visual and performing arts,” said Marrow.
Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty in collaboration with arts institutions across Southern California. It is an exciting large-scale regional event including nearly 30 thematically linked exhibitions, along with numerous related performances and programs, which highlight the work of Los Angeles artists during the dynamic period following World War II. Concurrent Pacific Standard Time exhibitions will run from Fall 2011 to Spring 2012 throughout the Los Angeles area and from Santa Barbara to San Diego to Palm Springs.
Getty Foundation grants are supporting the Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, from planning to publication. The Foundation began in 2002 to support projects designed to rescue and preserve the archives which hold the historic record of art in L.A. during the seminal period 1945-1980, and over six years provided $2.7 million in grants through an initiative entitled On the Record. In 2008, the Foundation inaugurated Pacific Standard Time, and awarded $3.6 million in grants to conduct research based on the archives and to prepare a series of exhibitions. Now the Foundation is announcing additional grants of $3.1 million for the exhibitions that will bring this history to a widespread public audience.
“It has been extraordinary to watch the members of the Pacific Standard Time consortium work together collegially and collaboratively to make sure that this initiative as a whole will add up to much more than a series of individual exhibitions. We believe Pacific Standard Time will substantially change public perception of the role of Los Angeles in the development of the art of the second half of the 20th century,” said Joan Weinstein, Deputy Director of the Getty Foundation.
In developing this initiative, the Getty Foundation has worked from the beginning in partnership with the Getty Research Institute (GRI). The GRI also has been active in recent years in acquiring important collections from this era (such as the archive of architectural photographer Julius Shulman, the Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive, and the archive of the magazine High Performance), creating oral histories, and presenting groundbreaking public programs.
“Many of the key figures were getting up in years, their papers were being dispersed, and the Getty Research Institute really wanted to document and preserve whatever we could of L.A.’s rich history during the period from 1945-1980,” said Andrew Perchuk, Deputy Director of the Getty Research Institute, who also serves as curator of Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Paintings and Sculpture 1945-1970, the major survey exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The Getty Conservation Institute will work in collaboration with the GRI to apply its extensive expertise on modern materials to specific research projects.
“Today’s new grants will bring the results of years of behind-the-scenes research by the Getty programs and all of our external partners to widespread public attention for local and international audiences,” added Weinstein.
