Celebrating 35 years of Los Angeles art

1 October marked the launch of Pacific Standard Time, an unprecedented, six-month-long exploration of the Los Angeles art scene from 1945 to 1980.
Initiated with $10 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions located in and around Los Angeles, as far south as San Diego, north as Santa Barbara and east as Palm Springs.
The multi-venue project — which studies developments in modernist architecture, design, crafts, film and art movements from LA Pop to post-minimalism — is taking place, for the most part, until April 2012, at many of California’s major museums and at more than 70 art galleries. There are also several concerts and festivals taking place.
Highlights of the Pacific Standard Time project include two exhibitions on Charles and Ray Eames, the architects and furniture designers, at the A & D Architecture and Design Museum and the Eames House Foundation; an exhibition on California design from 1930 to 1965, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; an exhibition on print-making at the Norton Simon Museum of Art; and an exhibition on Beatrice Wood, the Dada artist turned ceramicist, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.
Exhibitions at the J Paul Getty Museum will focus on Los Angeles painting and sculpture from 1950 to 1970, and on photographs made in the city from 1945 to 1980, while the Grammy Museum will explore Los Angeles’ pop music scene from 1945 to 1975. There will also be exhibits on landscape photography at the California Museum of Photography; on the Los Angeles work of tabloid photographer Weegee at the Museum of Contemporary Art; and on swimming pool photography at the Palm Springs Art Museum.
On 8, 9 and 11 December at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will play concerts of film music, by composers ranging from Bernard Herrmann to John Williams. There will also be eight regional, weekend-long programs, beginning 21 October in the Santa Monica area and ending 26 February, 2012 in Santa Barbara.