As the Los Angeles County Museum of Art continues its 50th-anniversary acquisitions campaign, the museum announced over $200 million in new art received as “anniversary gifts” to the institution. A number of the works go on view this week as part of the museum’s “50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA’s Anniversary” exhibition. (more…)
Pierre Huyghe, Zoodram 5 (2011)
Following a year of strong solo exhibitions and special projects in the United States and abroad, Pierre Huyghe has opened a the first major retrospective devoted to his work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, pulling together a combination of his most ambitious videos, sculptures and installation environments, allowing a broad few of the artist’s continued interests in fluctuations of time, space and matter as expressed within the gallery environment. Huyghe’s retrospective, which first opened in Paris, early last year, finally makes it to U.S. soil, bringing with it a group of 50 projects culled from the artist’s 20 year career. (more…)
The Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair will open its doors once again in late January, and has released its exhibitor list this week for the sixth edition of the fair. Attendees among the 60 gallery list include The Hole, CANADA, Standard (Oslo), and Francois Ghebaly. (more…)
Architect Peter Zumthor has altered his plans for the expansion of the LACMA campus, taking into account its close proximity to the La Brea Tar Pits, and instead has shifted the design to snake around the museum campus, avoiding the pits altogether. “The original design would have severely impacted six of the nine active tar pits,” said Jane Pisano, director of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, which oversees the tar pits. “We are so pleased, I do believe this design direction preserves and protects the tar pits.” (more…)
Francesco Vezzoli, All About Anni – Anni vs. Marlene (The Saga Begins) (2006), via MoCA
Much like predecessors Rainer Fassbinder, George Kuchar and Tom Wesselmann, Franceso Vezzoli grew up around the golden ages cinema and television, and his work often toys at fusing their higher art forms with a violent appreciation for popular culture in very different ways. It’s these interests that dominate his show Cinema Vezzoli,currently on view at MOCA in Los Angeles, part of the three museum retrospective of Vezzoli’s work, titled The Trilogy. (more…)
Hammer Projects: Andra Ursuta (Installation View), all images courtesy Hammer Museum
On view currently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is an exhibition of the latest body of work from Andra Ursuta, inspired by the artist’s fear and obsession with death. The show is Ursuta’s first solo exhibition in a United States museum, and will remain on view through May 25th.
The Broad Museum’s Un-Private Collection series played host to a massively attended conversation between Jeff Koons and John Waters last night in Los Angeles. The two covered a broad list of topics during the talk, including both Waters and Koons’s first memories of their experience with art. “I remember when I first went to the Baltimore museum and bought a little Miró print and brought it home.” Waters said. “All the other kids said ‘Ugh, that’s ugly, why would you put that ugly thing on your wall?!’ I thought: ‘Ah, the power of art!’ It really made me feel glad everyone hated it.”
Painter Ed Ruscha has been elected to a three-year term serving on the board of trustees for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, almost exactly one year after he left his same post at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The move comes as SFMoMA begins a landmark $610-million expansion that will leave its main building closed until 2016. Ruscha also voiced his support for departing MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch. “I thought he would add some unconventional touch to the picture. Maybe it didn’t work out for him. But he started to get the engine rolling.” (more…)
James Turrell, Roden Crater (Sunset) (2009), via Kayne Griffin Corcoran
With concurrent shows opening at LACMA, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, James Turrell is certainly in the spotlight this summer. The Kayne Corcoran Griffin gallery is also joining in on the artist’s ubiquity, filling its new space on south La Brea with an exhibition focused on the Roden Crater project. Aptly named Sooner Than Later, Roden Crater, the show examines Turrell’s unfinished transformation of the crater into a sight-specific masterwork that has been in development since 1974. (more…)
Former MOCA Chief Executive Charles E. Young has called for the removal of museum director Jeffrey Deitch following a tumultuous month that included the resignation of long-time curator Paul Schimmel and artists John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger and Ed Ruscha. In an email to donor and influential board member Eli Broad, Young concluded that “I will do anything I can to try to right the MOCA ship, but nothing will work, in my mind, without a new Captain/Director.”
