It’s a big weekend for openings and closings at LACMA. Two major exhibitions are in their final days—Sunday is your last chance to see California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern Way” and Robert Adams: The Place We Live.
Robert Adams, Longmont, Colorado, 1979, Yale University Art Gallery, purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
California Design has been on view for eight months, and that means we’ve gotten a lot of great blog posts out of the show. Here’s a look back at some of our favorites:
- Installation: Leading up to the exhibition, we watched “the Clipper” trailer load into the Resnick Pavilion; looked at the installation of the Eames living room; and we did a Q&A with Architects Hodgetts + Fung on their exhibition design for the show
- Artworks up close: individual blog posts on the Swinger camera and the one and only Barbie—plus an inside look at how our curators found some of the objects on view (hint: eBay)
- Connections between California Design and other exhibitions: including Fracture: Daido Moriyama, the recently closed In Wonderland, the Huntington’s Pacific Standard Time exhibition on Sam Maloof, and a fascinating connection to Watts Towers
- LACMA and LA design history: we looked back at some incredible graphic design done at LACMA in the mid-60s, and made some related catalogues available in our Reading Room; we also looked back on the old Pasadena Art Museum’s influential California Design exhibitions of the 1950s and ’60s
Installation view, California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern Way,” October 1, 2011–June 3, 2012, photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA
In conjunction with California Design’s closing weekend, we’ve got one last film series to go along with it. Grand Designs: Mid-Century Life in the Movies explores modern living through four terrific classics. Friday night it’s Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey in Desk Set followed by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in The Long Long Trailer. Saturday night starts with the rarely screened English version of Jacques Tati’s wonderful My Uncle, followed by the iconic James Dean in Rebel without a Cause.
LACMA members get an added treat this weekend: exclusive access to the new exhibition Sharon Lockhart | Noa Eshkol. Photographer/filmmaker Lockhart photographs and a five-channel film installation on the work of Israeli dance composer and textile artist Noa Eshkol, who developed a unique notation system for dance practice in the 1950s. The exhibition is open to members only on Saturday from 11am–4pm and all day Sunday. It opens to the general public starting Monday. Lockhart will be in conversation with curator and art historian Sabine Eckmann on Sunday afternoon—free and open to all.
Sharon Lockhart, production still from Five Dances and Nine Wall Carpets by Noa Eshkol (detail), 2011, five-channel film installation (35mm film transferred to hd, sound), © Sharon Lockhart, 2012
As with every weekend this summer we’ve also got free concerts every night. Friday it’s Jazz at LACMA with drummer and composer Alphonse Mouzon. Mouzon is a charter member of Weather Report and has also collaborated with titans of jazz like Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Sonny Rollins, and more. On Saturday, San Francisco-based Grupo Falso Baiano brings traditional and modern Brazilian choro music to Latin Sounds. And the weekend concludes with UCLA Camarades performing pieces by Schoenberg and Korngold during LACMA’s Sundays Live chamber music series.
Scott Tennent