Don't Miss These Art Exhibits in Los Angeles this Fall
Picasso, Warhol, LA artists and many more
The arrival of fall marks the start of "Art Season" in Los Angeles, when new exhibits open at museums and galleries across the city. It's also the last chance to check out exhibits that are closing to make way for the upcoming works on view. From Picasso and Warhol to local artists, read on for the best of the fall Art Season in LA.
"William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows" - The Broad (Nov. 12, 2022 - April 9, 2023)
Opening on November 12, William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows is the artist's first monograph presentation at The Broad and his first major exhibition in Los Angeles in two decades. Featuring more than 130 works spanning 35 years of the celebrated South African artist’s practice, this landmark exhibition includes all 18 works from The Broad collection with substantial loans from across the United States and South Africa.
Curated by Ed Schad, the exhibition is organized both thematically and chronologically throughout the museum’s first-floor galleries. A highlight of the exhibition is The Broad collection’s 30-minute five-channel video and multimedia installation The Refusal of Time (2012). In addition to key drawings, sculptures, prints, and tapestries featured at The Broad, the artist’s 11 Drawings for Projection films will be on view, as well as a series of films that reflect on early cinema. Important early works rarely or never before seen in the United States show Kentridge’s long-lasting political engagement, upholding artistry and the creative act as its own form of transformative knowledge.
To coincide with In Praise of Shadows, the world theatrical premiere of Houseboy, a production of the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg directed by William Kentridge, will take place at the nearby REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) from November 17–20. Tickets to Houseboy are now on sale at the REDCAT website.
"Henry Taylor: B Side" - MOCA (Nov. 6, 2022 - April 30, 2023)
Spanning 30 years of Henry Taylor’s work in painting, sculpture, and installation, B Side celebrates a Los Angeles artist renowned for his unique aesthetic, social vision, and freewheeling experimentation. Opening at MOCA Grand Avenue on November 6, B Side is the first large-scale museum exhibition in the artist's hometown.
Taylor’s portraits and allegorical tableaux are populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars, and entertainers. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist’s installations often play upon art historical tropes and modernism’s appropriations of African or African-American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor’s practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century.
The Geffen Contemporary
"Judith F. Baca: World Wall" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
Celebrated Chicana artist Judith F. Baca began her collaborative, portable mural World Wall: A Vision of the Future Without Fear in 1987. An ambitious, utopian, and international project, World Wall is rooted in the philosophy that in order to achieve world peace, we must first be able to envision it. Baca painted the first four 10 x 30 foot canvas panels; as the work traveled abroad between 1990 and 2014, artists and community groups from Finland, Russia, Israel and Palestine, Mexico, and Canada contributed five additional panels, employing figurative and symbolic visual vocabularies to depict a vision of the future without fear.
All nine panels will be shown at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary in an enveloping installation - it's the first-ever complete presentation of this monumental project. Pointing to the legacies of both the Chicano arts movement of the 1970s and Mexican muralism movement of the 1920s, this timely exhibition considers the visionary role of activist-artists in imagining a peaceful future for us all.
"Lonesome Crowded West" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
"What should a picture of the West look like today?" The artists featured in Lonesome Crowded West: Works from MOCA's Collection respond to this question from a multiplicity of perspectives - tracing the contours of the American West through individual stories and collective histories, and through reflection on climate and the tension between the built and natural environment. Speaking with a plurality of voices, they ask not so much what the West means, but rather what it is, and what it can mean to be in.
"Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
Featuring a selection of recent single and multi-channel films and videos, Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody is the first solo museum presentation of the work of Los Angeles- and New Orleans-based artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley. Employing a collaborative and research-based approach to filmmaking, Bradley explores the space between fact and fiction, addressing themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice, southern culture, and the history of film in the United States.
"Tala Madani: Biscuits" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
The first North American survey of Iranian-born artist Tala Madani’s paintings and animations, Biscuits gathers 15 years of the artist’s incisive work. The exhibition highlights the often-absurd socio-cultural dynamics enacted within Madani’s art and, more broadly, the potent and combustible relationship between art history and global history.
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
"Arte para la gente: The Collected Works of Margaret Garcia" (through June 11, 2023)
Now on view at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Arte para la gente, The Collected Works of Margaret Garcia is a retrospective exhibition with more than 75 artworks by pre-eminent Chicana artist Margaret Garcia. The exhibition features Garcia’s vast body of work, which captures and encapsulates her culture, family, community, and urban life in Los Angeles and beyond. As an elder in the Los Angeles Chicana/o Art Movement for the past five decades, the Boyle Heights native has championed and advocated for women, community, and individuals who are marginalized by society. By revering the people, neighborhoods, and local landmarks of her pueblo through her colorful portraits and landscapes, Garcia celebrates the subjects that have inspired her art and the creation of its ever-evolving community.
"Hostile Terrain ‘94" (through July 9, 2023)
Hostile Terrain ‘94: The Undocumented Migration Project is a multimedia exhibition that records the journeys and testimonies of undocumented migrants and their families who attempt to cross the U.S.–Mexico border. The exhibition includes photographic narratives of border crossers, found objects left behind by migrants in the desert, videos, an interactive story-recording studio where the public may share their personal immigration stories, and a 20-foot long participatory wall map of the Arizona/Mexico border.
"BeHere / 1942" - JANM (through Jan. 8, 2023)
Created by visionary Japanese media artist Masaki Fujihata, BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration opened at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) 80 years to the day that Exclusion Orders 32 and 33 forced Japanese Americans to leave Little Tokyo. BeHere / 1942 invites visitors to experience the photographic archive of this dark history in new ways, including through two augmented reality (AR) installations.
Through Fujihata's curation of little-known photographs by Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee - some presented in hyper-enlarged form or reimagined as video - BeHere / 1942 allows visitors to discover things in the archive that they never knew were there. Cutting-edge AR technology takes the discovery a step further, inviting visitors to become photographers themselves, actually participating in the scene.
The exhibit inside JANM is complemented by a groundbreaking public AR installation in the plaza between the museum’s main campus and the historic Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. A dedicated BeHere / 1942 app lets visitors step into the past, and walk among Japanese Americans on the verge of leaving for the camps. Realized with the participation of members of the local Japanese American community, this recreation includes three people who themselves experienced life in the camps as children.
California African American Museum
"For Race and Country: Buffalo Soldiers in California" (through Oct. 30, 2022)
Be it from Bob Marley or from movies, many of us have heard the term “Buffalo Soldiers.” This nickname for all-Black U.S. Army regiments was initially coined during the Indian Wars of the late 19th century and lingered through 1948, when the military was desegregated.
On view at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Exposition Park, For Race and Country: Buffalo Soldiers in California is an enlightening exhibition that explores the surprising history surrounding these men who - in and out of uniform - helped shape the Golden State, including building churches and parks. Peeling back myths, the exhibit uses artifacts, interviews, photos, uniforms, newspapers, and historical records to explore historical debates in the Black community over participation in wars, confront the role of Black soldiers in Army violence against Native Americans, and to illuminate the conflict faced by Buffalo Soldiers between commitment to equality for their people and to the country they chose to serve.
Art + Practice
"Chloë Bass | #sky #nofilter: Hindsight for a Future America" (through Jan. 21, 2023)
Co-presented by Art + Practice and CAAM as part of a five-year collaboration, #sky #nofilter: Hindsight for a Future America is a photography, text-based, performance art, and public sculpture project by New York-based conceptual artist Chloë Bass. It culminates the artist’s ongoing project, #sky #nofilter, for which she captured images of cloudless blue skies to mark time in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election. Bass then coupled the images with personal and political writings that she shared on Instagram over the course of a year.
Bass has conceived a newly commissioned public sculpture in South LA that features 16 blue glass panels adapted from the original #sky #nofilter photos. Together they form a participatory analemmatic sundial - the viewer’s body functions as the shadow-casting element that determines the time of day. Each sundial panel is engraved with text drawn from Bass’s original #sky #nofilter writings that will cast its own shadow and offer a linguistic point of reflection. In advance of the public art installation, which will debut in late fall, Bass will exhibit a series of works on paper, glass studies, and video at Art + Practice.
"Justen LeRoy | Lay Me Down in Praise" (through Jan. 21, 2023)
Created by multidisciplinary artist Justen LeRoy, Lay Me Down in Praise is a three-channel film installation that asks how the scream, moan, and melisma—aka the vocal run—provide a sonic route toward Black environmentalism. By layering clips of Black performers with images of geological activity, LeRoy considers how resistance and regeneration inhabit the wordless screeches of the Earth and the history of Black sound. Lay Me Down in Praise insists the Earth’s aches and upheavals - felt in volcanic eruptions, tectonic shifts, and other cataclysmic events - are entangled with Black resistance and liberation.
"Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022" - ICA LA (through Jan. 15, 2023)
Presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the Arts District, Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022 is a 21-year survey of LA-based painter Rebecca Morris, an artist best known for her large-scale paintings and inventive approach to composition, color, and gesture. One of the most formidable and inventive painters working today, Morris’s practice demonstrates a rigorous commitment to experimentation and abstraction.
Marking the artist’s first major museum survey since 2005, the exhibition is the first of this scale in Los Angeles, where she has lived and worked for nearly 25 years. The occasion also marks a return of Morris to the ICA LA (formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art), which hosted the artist’s first museum exhibition, Frankenstein, in 2003.
Hauser & Wirth
Martin Creed (Oct. 27 – Dec. 30, 2022)
Opening this October, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles will present a solo exhibition by Martin Creed. "Martin Creed, Turner prize-winning artist performer composer ‘Punk poet’ (The Guardian) warm-hearted heart-warming head-scratching hair-combing talk songs cabaret feelings spoken-word anti-war love jokes tricks friendly ‘Creed is a social artist’ (The Observer) loneliness experimental piano juggling clothes including socks ideas thoughts bums spelling mistakes hard-hitting easy-going."
"Cindy Sherman 1977 - 1982" (Oct. 27, 2022 – Jan. 8, 2023)
Cindy Sherman revolutionized the role of the camera in artistic practice and opened the door for generations of artists and critics to rethink photography as a medium. Following its critically acclaimed New York presentation, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles will exhibit over one hundred works from Sherman’s ground-breaking and influential early series – including the complete set of 70 Untitled Film Stills, Rear Screen Projections, Centerfolds and Color Studies – in her second major solo exhibition with the gallery.
Vincent Price Art Museum
"Phung Huynh: Sobrevivir" (through Feb. 18, 2023)
Phung Huynh: Sobrevivir activates the Vincent Price Art Museum as a convening space for intergenerational dialogue about reproductive justice and community healing. Original artworks and design renderings tell the story of the Sobrevivir monument’s fabrication, while an ongoing series of patchwork quilts created by artists, advocates, and supporters engages with the history of forced sterilization on a personal and collective level. Additional programming developed with reproductive justice advocates will examine this traumatic history and its repercussions in communities of color today.
"Librería Donceles" (through Feb. 18, 2023)
Artist and educator Pablo Helguera created Librería Donceles out of a desire to address the lack of bookstores that serve the growing Hispanic and Latinx communities in the United States. Part functioning bookstore and part participatory installation, Librería Donceles provides space for the community to engage with Spanish language-specific books and multilingual programming designed to encourage cultural understanding, tolerance, and social activism.
"New Voices" (Nov. 5, 2022 - Jan. 21, 2023)
New Voices: The 2022 District Wide Juried Student Art Exhibition highlights exceptional artworks produced in diverse media across numerous instructional departments. For the first time in sixty years, the exhibition will feature not only the work from East Los Angeles College students, but from all nine colleges within the Los Angeles Community College District.
"Canciones de ti" - Self Help Graphics & Art (through Nov. 23, 2022)
Opening in October at Self Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights, Canciones de ti will highlight how songs are fundamental to our connection with our loved ones, keeping their memory and spirit alive. With this celebratory theme, this group exhibition will demonstrate the multiple ways we honor these memories. Canciones de ti features artists Kalli Arte, Paul Botello, Ofelia Esparza, Jose Lozano, and Nayeli Delgado and more.
The public is invited to view the exhibition for free via appointment on Eventbrite. Guided exhibition tours will be available on Saturdays in October during Día de los Muertos workshops, at 12:30pm and 2pm.
Autry Museum of the American West
"Dress Codes" (ongoing)
Dress Codes is organized around six enduring icons of Western style: blue jeans, plaid shirt, fringed jacket, aloha shirt, China Poblana dress, and the cowboy boot. More than 150 objects are on display - drawn primarily from the Autry's extensive clothing and textile collection, as well as art, photography, and historical artifacts. In addition, Dress Codes includes loans from the Levi Strauss & Company Archives, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and private lenders.
"The Silent West" (ongoing)
Featuring highlights of American West–themed posters from the silent film era, The Silent West shows the wide range of the industry prior to “talkies” and the consolidation of the studio system. The posters showcase a stunning art form in a remarkable era of commercial lithography. This small exhibition also reveals the cinematic West of the 1910s and '20s to be quite modern, engaging topics still relevant to the real West. Although a large number of silent films are sadly lost, the posters reflect film artists and entrepreneurs experimenting with a new medium. Women and people of color served as writers, directors, stunt performers, and other creative roles in greater numbers than in later movies.
Jeffrey Deitch
Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism (Nov. 5, 2022 - Jan. 14, 2023)
The immersive world of the polyhedric graffiti writer, visual artist, musician, lyricist, performer, fashion designer, innovator and philosopher Rammellzee lands at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles this November. Rammellzee: Gothic Futurism surveys his oeuvre from his graffiti beginnings on the A train in the mid-1970s to his fine arts and performance practice developed over the following three decades.
George Clinton: The Rhythm of Vision (Nov. 5 - Dec. 23, 2022)
The Rhythm of Vision, an exhibition of paintings and other artworks by legendary musician, performer, and the godfather of funk, George Clinton, will open at Jeffrey Deitch on November 5. The opening date coincides with the 40th anniversary of the release of "Atomic Dog," Clinton’s #1 record that inspired much of the hip hop music of the 1980s and ‘90s. The exhibition title, The Rhythm of Vision was selected by Clinton from the lyrics of a 1978 Parliament song.
George Clinton has been creating visual art for almost as long as he has been creating music. Starting with a rock drawing in 1959, and then evolving his iconic autograph derived from a silhouette of a dog, he was continuously sketching in the back of his tour bus. Clinton’s paintings translate the psychedelic world of his music, costumes and stage sets into visual art. During the past several years, when he was unable to tour because of the pandemic, he entered a new chapter in his visual art, synthesizing 60 years of themes and characters.
"Add Fuel: Youth Eternal" - Subliminal Projects (Nov. 12 - Dec. 10, 2022)
Subliminal Projects presents YOUTH ETERNAL, by Portuguese artist Diogo Machado, aka ADD FUEL. In his inaugural Los Angeles solo exhibition, ADD FUEL debuts a series of works and projects that intimately narrate a transition from adolescence to maturity, presented through the artist’s diverse practice.
The exhibition features an installation of Machado's signature tile-based works, sculpture, and a public mural at Subliminal Projects’ favorite local watering hole, Little Joy in Echo Park.
A collaborative limited edition screenprint with gallery founder Shepard Fairey will be released in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition.
"Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898 – 1971" - Academy Museum (through April 9, 2023)
Now on view at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898 – 1971 is a first-of-its-kind exhibition that explores and celebrates the achievements and challenges of Black filmmakers in the U.S. from cinema’s beginnings through the height of the civil rights movement. Featuring rarely seen excerpts of films restored by the Academy Film Archive, Regeneration offers a unique opportunity to learn more about how Black performers and filmmakers have helped define cinema in this country.
The Academy Museum’s second major temporary exhibition, Regeneration also includes narrative films and documentaries, newsreels and home movies, photographs, scripts, drawings, costumes, studio equipment, posters, and throwback artifacts such as entrance tickets, notecards, and telegrams. A highlight is the unique, state-of-the-art AR experiences designed specifically for Regeneration.
Petersen Automotive Museum
"Andy Warhol: Cars" (through Jan. 22, 2023)
In 1886, German inventor Carl Benz patented his Benz Patent-Motorwagen, widely regarded as the first automobile. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of this milestone, Mercedes-Benz commissioned Andy Warhol to create 80 silkscreen prints featuring 20 different Mercedes models spanning that century. Unfortunately, Warhol was only able to complete 49 works – 36 silk-screen paintings and 13 drawings representing eight models - before his untimely death in 1987 at age 58.
Andy Warhol: Cars – Works from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection gathers 40 of Warhol's pieces, the first time in more than 30 years that any of the collection has been exhibited in the U.S. and North America. The works are displayed along with five iconic Mercedes depicted in the collection, including the famed 1954 300 SL Gullwing, the 1970 Type C 111-II experimental vehicle, and a replica of the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen. Warhol’s own 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow is on view in the Petersen's lobby.
LACMA
"The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
The first exhibition of its kind in the West, The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art covers the years 1897 to 1965 - loosely organized chronologically, stylistically, and conceptually. The Space Between spans the arc of European-influenced art via Japan in the Korean Empire (1897–1910) and colonial period (1910–45); explores American influences absorbed throughout the Korean War (1950–53); and provides a glimpse into the beginning of the contemporary. Featuring 130 works that reflect the influx of foreign-introduced new media, the groundbreaking show includes oils, ink, photography, and sculpture.
"Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890–1980" (Oct. 9, 2022 - Feb. 5, 2023)
Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890–1980 is the first exhibition to examine the extensive design exchanges between the U.S. and the Nordic countries during the 20th century. The exhibition will present a new international story, featuring accounts of Scandinavian designers who immigrated to the United States; Americans who studied or worked in Nordic countries; the ambitious campaigns to market and export Scandinavian design to American consumers; and the American and Nordic figures who championed sustainable and accessible design practice.
"Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany" (Oct. 29, 2022 - April 29, 2023)
Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany explores the shared subjects and visual strategies of two key moments in 20th-century political printmaking: the revival of German Expressionist graphics in response to a nationwide revolution in 1918; and the formation of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Print Workshop) in Mexico City in the late 1930s. Drawn primarily from LACMA’s collection, the exhibition underscores the enduring power of the printed image and highlights the contributions of Mexican and German artists to a global iconography of political graphics.
Craft Contemporary
"Because of You, In Spite of You" (through Jan. 8, 2023)
Luis Flores’s largely autobiographical work functions as an account of emotions and experiences accumulated as a young man within a toxic masculine culture. Transformational events, such as getting married and becoming a father, have profoundly affected Flores, motivating him to view the world differently. Because of You, In Spite of You depicts a transitional moment for the artist, keen to trade a painful past for an optimistic and promising future for the benefit of his children. In this exhibition, Flores uses crocheted and bronzed sculptures to create a Monster Rally setup as a metaphor for parental love. The artist depicts a couple holding steady the ramp on which a small Monster Truck glides safely while a second truck triumphantly breaks through barriers.
"Diorama Drama" (through Jan. 8, 2023)
Renowned Los Angeles artist Lezley Saar constructs worlds within worlds by transforming the museum’s gallery into a series of large-scale dioramas. Saar has been fascinated with dioramas since childhood and continually references them in her work. For Diorama Drama, Saar elaborately stages her own painted tapestries, totem sculptures, collages, altered books, and other mixed media works to construct fantastical tableaux in which visitors can immerse themselves. Themes of race, gender, neurology, and sexuality – all longstanding concerns in Saar’s work – converge in this series of dioramas and illustrate the power of conjuring one’s reality and finding truth in the surreal.
Skirball Cultural Center
"Fabric of a Nation" (Nov. 17, 2022 – March 12, 2023)
Discover the extraordinary stories behind three hundred years of American quilts. Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories features works by more than 40 artists, including Harriet Powers, Bisa Butler, and Sanford Biggers. Celebrate the artistry and vision of a diverse and largely under-recognized group of creators in an exhibition that brings to light stories that enrich, deepen, and complicate our understanding of the American experience.
"Together for Good" (Nov. 17, 2022 – March 12, 2023)
See Caron Tabb’s dramatic work Fabric of Humanity – Repairing My World alongside an all-ages community quilt-making activity. Measuring more than 12 x 9 feet, Tabb’s striking large-scale quilt was created in response to the ongoing pandemic and the associated feelings of hopelessness and isolation. The quilt is composed of materials collected from the artist’s friends and family around the world and assembled into one, cohesive piece.
With the assistance of professional community artisans and facilitators, the Skirball invites visitors to add their own artistry and stories to help co-create a new Skirball community quilt. As the Skirball’s quilt grows over the course of the exhibition, it will embody shared experiences, unique perspectives, and the intrinsic value of coming together.
"Chloë Bass: Wayfinding" (Nov. 17, 2022 – March 12, 2023)
Presented in partnership with CAAM, Chloë Bass: Wayfinding marks the first time in the Skirball's history a continuous art exhibition will utilize the 15-acre outdoor campus. Wayfinding is organized into five sections - each one is anchored by a large, mirrored billboard sculpture that poses a question exploring human emotions that range from compassion and desire to anxiety and loss. Surrounding each billboard are dozens of small- and medium-sized sculptures.
Hammer Museum
"Picasso Cut Papers" (through Dec. 31, 2022)
Devoted to a little known yet foundational aspect of Pablo Picasso’s artistic practice, Picasso Cut Papers spans the artist's full career, from his first cut papers made in 1890 at nine years of age, through the 1960s, with works he made while in his eighties.
Picasso Cut Papers features some of the artist’s most whimsical and intriguing works made on paper and in paper, alongside a select group of sculptures in sheet metal. Although Picasso rarely sold or exhibited his cut papers during his lifetime, he signed, dated and archived them just as he did all his works. They were part of a more private studio practice, created as independent works of art or in relation to works in other mediums, but also as models for his fabricators and as gifts or games for family and friends. Many examples have been stored flat or disassembled in portfolios until now and will regain their original three-dimensional forms when presented in the exhibition.
"Joan Didion: What She Means" (through Jan. 22, 2023)
Organized by acclaimed writer and New Yorker contributor Hilton Als, Joan Didion: What She Means is an exhibition as portrait - a narration of the life of one artist by another. Opening at the Hammer Museum less than a year after Didion's death at age 87, the exhibition features 50 artists ranging from Betye Saar to Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Jorge Pardo, Ed Ruscha, Pat Steir, and many others. Laid out chronologically according to the places Didion called home, the 250 works include paintings, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video, and footage from a number of the films for which Didion authored screenplays.
"Bob Thompson: This House is Mine" (through Jan. 8, 2023)
The first museum exhibition devoted to Bob Thompson in more than 20 years, This House Is Mine traces the artist’s brief but prolific transatlantic career, examining his formal inventiveness and his engagement with universal themes of collectivity, bearing witness, struggle, and justice. Over a mere eight years, he grappled with the exclusionary Western canon, developing a lexicon of enigmatic forms that he threaded through his work. Human and animal figures, often silhouetted and relatively featureless, populate mysterious vignettes set in wooded landscapes or haunt theatrically compressed spaces. Sometimes fellow contemporaries appear, such as jazz greats Nina Simone and Ornette Coleman and the writers LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) and Allen Ginsberg.
"Inspiring Walt Disney" - The Huntington Library (Dec. 10, 2022 – March 27, 2023)
The international traveling exhibition, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts explores the early inspirations behind Disney Studios' creations, examining Walt Disney's fascination with European art and the use of French motifs in Disney films and theme parks.
Approximately 50 works of 18th-century European decorative art and design - many of which are drawn from The Huntington Library's significant collection - are featured alongside hand-drawn production artworks and works on paper from the Walt Disney Animation Research Library, Walt Disney Archives, Walt Disney Imagineering Collection, and The Walt Disney Family Museum.
"Narsiso Martinez: Rethinking Essential" - MOLAA (through Jan. 8, 2023)
Narsiso Martinez’s paintings and mixed media installations include individual portraits and multi-figure compositions of farm laborers set against the agricultural landscapes and brand designs of grocery store produce boxes. Drawn from his own experience as a farm worker, Martinez’s work focuses on the people performing the labors necessary to fill produce sections and restaurant kitchens around the country. In a style informed by inter-war Social Realism and European Realism, Martinez’s work makes visible the difficult labor and onerous working conditions of the American farm worker.
Rethinking Essential was specially designed for the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) and its subsequent exhibition at ICA San Diego. In addition to the strength of its visual poetics, the exhibition is also a way to raise awareness and propose new conversations on issues that cannot be postponed and that involve us all. Rethink what is essential in a post-pandemic context to build a more dignified future. Art transforms and can always be the beginning of something better.
The Cheech
"Collidoscope" (through Jan. 22, 2023)
Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective is the inaugural temporary exhibition at The Cheech, the new center in Riverside that houses the contemporary Chicana/o Art collection gifted by Cheech Marin.
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Einar and Jamex de la Torre have navigated life on both sides of the border from a young age. Due to their bi-national and bi-cultural background, their work has been interpreted through the lenses of border art and Chicano art for decades. The brothers use an array of materials and techniques that range from glass blowing to the more recent practice of lenticular printing, signaling an appreciation of traditional crafts as well as an interest in technology and popular mass-produced objects.
The de la Torres' particular vision of the Latino experience and American culture is explored in their work through a combination of humor and critical earnestness, borrowing elements from Mexican culture (pre-Columbian, historical, popular, and pop) and other places - the chameleonic-kaleidoscopic process explodes into a myriad of layered images and meanings.
"Fred Brashear: Endemic Treasures" (Sept. 24, 2022 – Jan. 18, 2023)
Fred Brashear’s series Endemic Treasures is a photo-based project that focuses on preventing the removal of Joshua trees for future construction of residential communities and businesses in the Mojave Desert. With the Joshua tree as his muse, issues of the ongoing climate crisis and the continual encroachment of humans for capitalistic gains into the Mojave landscape point to wider issues of urbanization, industrialization, and socio-economic disparities found within our society.