lacma MEMBERS MAGAZINE September | October 2011 periodicals 5905 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD | LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90036 | LACMA.ORG LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90036 | 5905 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD | ^ Tickets, Hours, & More hours Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: 12–8 pm Friday: 12–9 pm Saturday, Sunday: 11 am–8 pm Closed Wednesday restaurants All restaurants: Closed Wednesday Ray’s: Lunch 12–3 pm; dinner 5–10 pm Reservations: 323 857-6180 Stark Bar: 11 am–11 pm Plaza Café: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: 12–8 pm Friday: 12–8:30 pm Saturday, Sunday: 11 am–8 pm museum stores Open during regular museum hours lacmashop.org Director’s Note Art Catalogues: 323 857-6587 Gift Shop: 323 857-6146 October 1 marks the first anniversary of the Resnick Pavilion, and it isn’t until now that we are truly seeing the posi- admission tive results of our expansion. After years of erecting new buildings on the west side of campus and refurbishing General: $15, adults; $10, seniors and students permanent gallery space on the east, the focus can now rightly be on the museum’s robust and diverse program. This Free general admission: after 5 pm for L.A. County residents, fall we have no fewer than eight exhibitions opening—in addition to three more already on view. Of course, as you’ve children under 18, and on the second Tuesday of each month seen in the news, we are also prepping the newest addition to lacma’s campus, Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass, which For tickets, visit lacma.org or the ticket office, or call 323 857-6010 will open to the public in November along with Chris Burden’s Metropolis II and a newly acquired artwork by Bruce tim burton tickets Nauman (see below). Includes general admission Adults: $20 | Free for members and for children under 18 Five of the exhibitions opening this fall are part of the unprecedented Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time. Visitors Members: reserve your free tickets at lacma.org or 877 522-6225 from around the world are coming to Los Angeles to experience this extraordinary collaboration of more than sixty parking Southern California arts organizations to tell the multifaceted history of art in Los Angeles. I am more than thrilled Parking is available in the Pritzker Parking Garage, located on 6th Street just east of Fairfax Avenue. Additional parking is available that lacma’s contribution includes the first-ever survey of midcentury California Design and a retrospective of the in the lot at Wilshire Boulevard and Spaulding Avenue. influential Chicano performance art collective Asco, as well as an exhibition of Ed Kienholz’s controversialFive Car membership Stud, on view for the first time in forty years after being restored by Nancy Reddin Kienholz. To renew your membership, or to give a lacma membership as a Perhaps the most satisfying result of the first two phases oflacma ’s still ongoing project is seeing more gift, visit lacma.org or call 323 857-6151. Transformation of our permanent collection on view than ever before. After opening in phases over the last year, our European lacma on the web lacma.org facebook.com/lacma galleries are now fully open on the third floor of the Ahmanson Building, showcasing a variety of masterpieces, from lacma.org/unframed twitter.com/lacma silver and micromosaics to utterly extraordinary baroque paintings to our world-class seventeenth-century Dutch twitter.com/enlacma paintings. Permanent gallery reinstallations are continuing to other areas of the collection: next on the agenda is On the Cover: Silhouettes of (foreground) Charles and Ray Eames, Molded Plywood Division, Evans Products South and Southeast Asian art. While those galleries get their makeover, many of the objects are traveling to the Company, DCW (dining chair wood), 1946–49, Decorative Arts and Design Council Fund; and (background) La Gardo Tackett, Architectural Pottery, Garden Sculpture, c. 1955, collection Museo Nacional de las Culturas in Mexico City for a special exhibition organized by lacma. Whether sending objects of the Lawrence family, lent in honor of Max and Rita Lawrence, © La Gardo Tackett Estate, from our collection to an international institution, installing a major earthwork on campus, or being a part of a Architectural Pottery, Vessell® USA Inc. All rights reserved. regionwide exhibition initiative, one thing is clear: the world’s eyes are on lacma. Vol. 50, no. 4, Connect (issn 1551-0654) is published bimonthly by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Ten dollars of membership dues goes toward one year’s subscription to Connect. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA. lacma is accredited by the American Association of Museums. © 2011 Museum Associates dba Los Angeles County Museum of Art. All rights reserved. Public programs photography, courtesy of Brant Brogan and Jennifer Huxta. Unless otherwise noted, all works lacma; all photographs © 2011 Museum Associates/lacma. postmaster: Send address changes to Connect, Membership Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Michael Govan senior editor: Scott Tennent | graphic designer: Katie Hanburger ceo and Wallis Annenberg Director Printed by on 60lb Smooth Opaque Offset on a Hantscho press For questions or comments about Connect, e-mail [email protected]. news & highlights Monumental Artworks by Kruger and Nauman York and London and slated to travel to Houston, Acquired Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. in 2012. Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Shafted), commissioned for the Indian Art Collection Travels to Mexico opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008 India’s Universe: Masterworks of the Los Angeles County Museum and originally a long-term loan from the artist, has of Art will go on view October 15–January 29 at the been acquired for the museum by lacma trustee Carole Museo Nacional de las Culturas in Mexico City. The Bayer Sager. The large-scale work stretches up bcam’s exhibition features 115 objects from lacma’s permanent massive three-story elevator shaft and features a litany collection—one of the most comprehensive collections of words and phrases in a powerful critique of consum- of South Asian art in the Western hemisphere—and erism. Also just acquired, Bruce Nauman’s 2011 video, explores the elaborate cosmologies of ancient India’s For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers), is three main indigenous religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, a large-scale two-channel video depicting the artist’s and Jainism. hands opening and closing in different combinations, Brody Condon Video Commissioned for Stark Bar following verbal instructions. The artwork, acquired through the generosity of French entrepreneur François Three American Art Acquisitions Commissioned exclusively for lacma and made possible Pinault, will go on view in November alongside Chris by Samantha Spitzer Lucas and the Spitzer Family The newly formed American Art Acquisitions Commit- Burden’s Metropolis II. Foundation, artist Brody Condon has created an tee has generously acquired two artworks for lacma’s eight-hour video performance inspired by choreogra- collection: The Piper, a marble sculpture modeled in 1854 pher Trisha Brown’s “Lineup” pieces from the 1970s. by Chauncey Bradley Ives, and Sharecropper, a linocut by Featuring costumes designed by Rodarte, the perform- the artist Elizabeth Catlett from 1952. American art ers were encouraged to improvise but were required to curators made an additional appeal to the American Art follow three strict rules—their twelve-foot poles must Council, which made possible the acquisition of Edward stay connected at all times, they should move slowly Biberman’s powerful portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., I and constantly, and any viewers encountered could not Had a Dream, painted shortly after Dr. King’s assassina- be touched or spoken to. The result, Line-Up (After Trisha), tion in 1968. I Had a Dream and Sharecropper are on view is on view daily in the Stark Bar. now in the American art galleries. Urban Light Ad Receives Telly Award lacma Displays First Major Public Sculpture by Ai Weiwei A 3-D commercial for lacma created last year by director Brian Daly, produced by Mob Scene, and On view in lacma’s North Piazza through February 12, executive produced by lacma trustee Carole Bayer 2012, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is the first major Sager, recently won a Telly Award for best use of 3-D. public sculpture by artist Ai Weiwei, recently freed after Now in their thirty-third year, the Telly Awards are a widely publicized three-month detention by Chinese devoted to honoring television commercials, video and authorities. The twelve oversized animal heads are film productions, and work created for the web from based on sculptures that were originally cast around around the world. 1750 and located at the Zodiac fountain in Yuan Ming left: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Shafted), 2008, gift of Carole Bayer Sager, Yuan in Beijing, then looted by British and French commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum troops in 1860. lacma is the only West Coast venue for middle: Edward Biberman, I Had a Dream, 1968, purchased with funds this traveling installation, previously on view in New provided by the American Art Council lacma.org/exhibitions Glenn Ligon: AMERICA October 23, 2011–january 22, 2012 |BCAM Glenn Ligon: AMERICA is the first midcareer retrospective of Ligon’s work in the United States. The exhibition includes unknown early material and the reconstruction of seminal bodies of work such as his Door paintings, the coal dust Stranger canvases, and the Coloring series. Over the course of his career, Ligon has worked in a variety of media, including painting, neon, installation, video, and print. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ligon became known for work that explores race, sexuality, representation, and language, including his iconic black-and-white text-based paintings that reference the writings of noted African American authors James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston.