$8.45 million in exhibition grants to 43 Southern California organizations
The Getty Foundation today announced $8.45 million in exhibition grants to 43 Southern California organizations participating in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a region-wide exploration of Latin American and Latino art opening September 2017 and running through January 2018. Together with the $5.5 million in planning and research grants previously awarded to participating institutions, nearly $14 million in funding has been awarded since 2013.
Arts organizations from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, will be presenting exhibitions and programs highlighting different aspects of Latin American and Latino art from the ancient world to the present day. Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA has been in preparation for over three years, with hundreds of curators and other scholars researching dozens of topics that will now help shape upcoming exhibitions, programs and events.
“Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA will take a fresh look at vital and vibrant traditions in Latin American and Latino art through a series of thematically linked exhibitions and programs across Southern California,” said James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “The Getty Foundation grants have made it possible for participating institutions to create a dynamic program of exhibitions. Using the collaborative approach that characterized the first Pacific Standard Time initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA involves visual and performing arts organizations in partnership with colleagues and institutions across Latin America – an extensive network that is alive with discoveries.”
“All of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’s exhibitions are grounded in significant original research carried out by teams of curators— including scholars, artists, and critics— in the United States, Latin America, and Europe,” said Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation. “The fruits of their collaborative research will be evident in the resulting exhibitions. The exhibitions will also leave a lasting legacy of scholarship through numerous catalogues and other publications. The Getty Foundation is proud to support all of this work.”
The Getty also announced that Bank of America will be the presenting sponsor. “We are deeply grateful that Bank of America will support this important initiative, which will reinforce Los Angeles’s role as a cultural leader in the Americas,” said Maria Hummer-Tuttle, Chair of the J. Paul Getty Trust Board of Trustees.
“We’re proud to be part of this exciting project which is going to help people better understand the extraordinary contributions of Latin American artists to the culture and consciousness of the Southland,” said Janet Lamkin, California State President for Bank of America. “In addition, as we learned from our engagement with the original Pacific Standard Time, which brought more than $280 million to the region and created nearly 2,500 jobs, a cultural undertaking of this size and scope is going to provide a tremendous boost to the Southern California economy.”
Exhibitions in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA will range from tightly focused single-artist shows, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s look at Chicano artist Carlos Almaraz or the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s exhibition on Brazilian-born artist Valeska Soares, to broad surveys. Examples of the latter include Laguna Art Museum’s exhibition about the unique amalgam of Mexican and American culture in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries, a show on South American kinetic art of the 1960s at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the Hammer Museum’s examination of Radical Women in Latin American Art, 1960-1985.
Other survey shows include Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Memories of Underdevelopment, a collaboration between the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Museo Jumex in Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte Lima; and Axe Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. (A complete list of exhibitions, with descriptions and images, is available at http://pacificstandardtime.org/press.)
Film, performing arts, and literature will also play an important role in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Los Angeles Filmforum all receiving grants. Other performing arts participants, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Music Center, are still in development.
Today’s announcement was made at a celebratory event in downtown Los Angeles attended by leaders in the Southern California arts community. The initiative will be supported by an extensive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging the participation of audiences across the Southland and beyond. “This will be a celebration of our region’s global culture, of art that deserves to be better known by a vast and diverse audience,” said Cuno. “We hope to reach people young and old, near and far, with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.”
About Pacific Standard Time
Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented collaboration of arts institutions across Southern California, each presenting thematically linked exhibitions and programs designed to celebrate the region’s cultural history.
Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 included more than 60 cultural institutions coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. Between October 2011 and March 2012, each institution made its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through the multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs on post-World War II art in Los Angeles.
The newest iteration of the initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at cultural institutions from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs.
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
