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Gallery 32 and Its Circle Gallery 32 and Its Circle January 25–March 22, 2009 “Gallery 32 offered a space where people could express an independent voice in their Gallery 32 and Its Circle and Its Circle Carolyn Peter and Damon Willick work and not be labeled. Gallery 32 was never a black In late 1968 a very young Suzanne Jackson address the aesthetic and political issues that gallery, a women’s gallery, opened an art gallery west of downtown Los concerned them. As a result, it often became Angeles in unit number 32 of the Granada a site for artistic innovation and community or a men’s gallery; it was a Building, at 672 North Lafayette Park Place. activism. While it closed after only two years, January 25–March 22, 2008 gallery about artists who came She called it Gallery 32 in homage to Alfred the history of Gallery 32 offers a glimpse into Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University through with something to Stieglitz’s Gallery 291 from earlier in the century. the vibrancy of the Los Angeles art scene of Bob Heliton, Timothy Washington in front of Rather than bringing European modernism to say.” —SUZANNE JACKSON Gallery 32 and Its Circle was curated by Carolyn Peter, director and curator of the Laband Art the period. Gallery 32, 1969, gelatin silver print, Courtesy of the New York audiences, as Stieglitz did, Jackson Gallery, and Damon Willick, assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history, Bob Heliton Archive. Loyola Marymount University. introduced the work of young, relatively Suzanne Jackson opened Gallery 32 while unknown L.A. artists to a broad West Coast taking drawing classes from Charles White THE EXHIBITION IS FUNDED IN PART BY A GRANT FROM THE NORTON FAMILY FOUNDATION audience. Significantly, Gallery 32 was one of at Otis Art Institute. For $150 a month, she ON BEHALF OF EILEEN HARRIS NORTON . Laband Art Gallery just a handful of local arts organizations—along rented a one-thousand-square-foot, two- Fritz B. Burns Fine Arts Center with the Brockman Gallery, the Black Arts story space to house her studio and modest Loyola Marymount University Council, and the Watts Towers Art Center— living quarters. It was just around the corner 1 LMU Drive that supported and exhibited the work of Los from Otis and Chouinard Art Institute, a Image on front cover: Angeles’s emerging African American artists site overlooking the hustle and bustle of Greg Edwards, Annie Bianucci, George Evans, and Suzanne Jackson in the courtyard of the Granada Building, Los Angeles, CA 90045 in the late 1960s and 1970s. Though never MacArthur Park. She decided to sacrifice her home of Gallery 32, 1969, gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches, Suzanne Jackson Collection. Gallery hours: exclusively a “black gallery,” Gallery 32 evolved spacious downstairs studio in order to exhibit Wednesday through Sunday, into a particularly dynamic venue where many many of the talented artists enrolled in White’s Copyright ©2009 Loyola Marymount University. All rights reserved. noon to 4 p.m. (The gallery be closed of Los Angeles’s young African American courses who were seeking venues to display March 11–15 for LMU’s Spring Break) artists could experiment and take chances. their work. White viewed art as a vehicle for Jackson welcomed a diverse group of artists social activism and change, and Jackson Parking and admission are free. working in a wide range of media, including envisioned a gallery that embodied many of watercolor, drawing, painting, engraving, his ideals. Issues of aesthetics, race, politics, Gloria Bohanon, Roots, c. 1970 FOR MORE INFORMATION , PLEASE VISIT assemblage, sculpture, and jewelry. The and society were questioned within this forum. Oil on canvas, 14 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches Collection of Suzanne Jackson HTTP ://CFA .LMU .EDU /LABAND themes and styles of the art on display were She explained: “It was a place where people OR CALL (310) 338-2880 equally varied. The gallery strove to maintain a could come to and talk. You never knew sense of openness, and its artists were free to what was going to happen at Gallery 32. It LABAND ART GALLERY | 2 “It was a place where people could come to and talk. Bob Heliton, John Stinson in Front of His Mail Truck You never knew what was going to happen at Gallery 32. It was according to the ideas that came out (Gallery 32 announcement card for John Stinson exhibition opening, February 7, 1970), 1970 of a lot of discussions.” —SUZANNE JACKSON 6 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches (closed) Collection of Suzanne Jackson was according to the ideas that came out of and mock-ups for his powerful Black Panther FBI consistently visited the gallery to monitor Swanson, alongside Timothy Washington, a lot of discussions.”2 Artists such as Gloria newspaper illustrations as a fund-raiser for its its activities. The surveillance was not veiled an African American. The diversity of the Bohanon, Senga Nengudi, John Riddle, Dan children’s breakfast program. This exhibition or covert. Jackson remembers a man, who artists and their work—Dipple was a jewelry Concholar, John Outterbridge, and David was organized by Yvonne Carter, the widow obviously worked for either the FBI or CIA, maker, Swanson an abstract painter, and Hammons would frequently come together of the Panther leader Alprentice “Bunchy” often attending openings with five or six Washington a multidimensional draftsman to eat and talk late into the night upstairs in Carter, who had recently been shot dead on cameras around his neck; he selectively posed and assemblagist—testifies to the gallery’s Jackson’s studio/living area. She recalls that the UCLA campus. The show was so well groups in order to document the patrons and openness. Gallery 32’s audiences were equally they often returned to the question of “was attended that the Black Panthers approached artists associated with the gallery.5 Jackson integrated, with professors and students from there such a thing as ‘Black Art,’ and if so, Jackson about turning over the gallery to also received a bomb threat while installing Otis and Chouinard, actors and dancers, city how was it defined?”3 Though they never the party for its own purposes. Jackson Elizabeth Leigh-Taylor’s politically charged employees, political activists, and friends came to any definite consensus on this declined the offer, however, explaining that “it charcoal drawings of single figures. Some of the artists of all races and backgrounds question, their inspired conversations fueled was more beneficial to have a gallery space highlighted American countercultural leaders coming to openings and buying works. their artistic productions and their lives. where people from all parts of the community, such as Angela Davis, while others critically working-class, middle-class people, people attacked the fascist regime in Greece. The One of the gallery’s best-attended exhibitions The gallery hosted many significant group who normally would not go to a Panther harassment extended beyond the gallery to featured the abstract paintings of John exhibitions and fund-raisers that addressed event, would come and see an exhibition and many of its African American artists, who felt Stinson. Many visitors were drawn to the particular community issues and needs. not be afraid to come in or be admonished individually targeted by the police; Jackson, show by the announcement card, which It held a Christmas exhibition to benefit by the police.”4 In actuality, the Los Angeles for example, spent a weekend in jail for showed Stinson in his postal uniform posed the Black Arts Council, a group that had Police Department (LAPD) had tried to deter uncollected parking tickets, and Hammons in the doorway of his mail truck. Bob Heliton’s evolved out of protests over the Los Angeles the public from visiting the Emory Douglas was stopped numerous times by the police photograph spoke to the artist’s working-class County Museum of Art’s refusal to exhibit show by stopping people on the street before for seemingly no reason other than his color background, with Stinson proudly displaying contemporary African American artists. entering the gallery, only fueling interest in and unconventional appearance. the day job that undoubtedly funded his Gallery 32 also exhibited works made by what would be found inside. art practice. The opening reception’s large Emory Douglas, Gallery 32 Poster for Emory Douglas Exhibition, October 17–19, 1969, 1969 children at the Watts Tower Art Center to raise It is important to note that Gallery 32’s crowd included many politicians, government Screenprint, 24 x 16 inches funds for their programs. The Los Angeles Amid the tumult of the late 1960s, it is programming was never limited to African Elizabeth Leigh-Taylor, Sharona, 1967 workers, and fellow mail carriers, who lined up Collection of the Center for the Study of chapter of the Black Panther Party even held perhaps not surprising that Gallery 32 drew American artists. Its inaugural exhibition Ink on paper, 12 x 9 3/4 inches along the balconies and on the street to enter Political Graphics a three-day exhibition of Emory Douglas’s the attention of law enforcement. Particularly was a three-person show that included Collection of Suzanne Jackson the gallery. Once inside the gallery, visitors pastel paintings of party leaders, posters, after the Emory Douglas show, the LAPD and two white artists, Gordon Dipple and David were treated to a selection of paintings by LABAND ART GALLERY | 4 John J. Stinson, Untitled, 1970 Although Gallery 32 closed after only two years, it left a legacy Mixed media on board, 7 x 8 inches Collection of Bernie Casey that reverberates today, forty years later.
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