NEWSEVENTS
Regional News and Events
LECTURES, SYMPOSIA AND SCREENINGS
- Theorizing the Warpath: Landscapes of Movement and Conflict
October 23, 2009
UCLA
Fowler A222
4-6pm
Friday Seminar Series in War, Conflict and Society. Seminar by James E. Snead, Associate Professor of George Mason University. Reception to follow after the lecture.
- Class: Whole Rod Juncus Baskets
October 24, 2009
Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
219 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs
10:30am-4pm
Whole rod juncus basket making uses a simple technique to create utilitarian baskets. Renowned basket weaver Abe Sanchez (Purepecha) will teach students the basic principles of weaving and how to construct their own whole rod basket. Class fee includes materials. Fee: $35 / Free to Museum members.
- Baskets and Books with Pauline Murillo
November 13-15, 2009
Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
219 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs
10am-5pm
Pauline Murillo (San Manuel), author and basket collector, will be at the Museum for three days only. She will show and talk about her basket collection with visitors. Baskets made by her grandmother are special pieces she will share. She is the author of Living in Two Worlds and We Are Still Here Alive and in Spirit which relate her experiences growing up on the reservation with insight and humor. Free Admission.
- Living Traditions Class: Rabbit Skin Blankets
December 19, 2009
Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
219 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs
10:30am-4pm
Lorene Sisquoc (Cahuilla/Fort Sill Apache) Curator of the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, leads an introductory course on making a rabbit skin blanket. The use of traditional cloth and bedding materials will also be discussed. Class fee includes materials. Fee: $25 / Free to Museum members.
- Singing the Birds (Wikitmallem Tahmuwhae): Bird Song and Dance Festival
January 23, 2010
Palm Springs High School Gymnasium
2401 E. Baristo Road, Palm Springs
11am-8pm
Celebrate traditional bird singing and dancing. Through the ages, bird singing and dancing have been an important part of Native culture for tribes in southern California and other regions of the Southwest. This day-long event features honored bird singing groups and dancers from California and neighboring states. Free Admission.
- Living Traditions Class: Cahuilla Pottery
February 27, 2010
Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
219 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs
10:30am-5pm
The skill of pottery making was important to the Cahuilla people and to other Native Americans. Tony Soares (Choctaw/Seminole descendant) will teach basic techniques used to create pots for storing water and food. He will also share his knowledge of clay deposits, clay processing, and firing. Class fee includes materials. Fee: $25 / Free to Museum members.
- Festival of Native Film & Culture
March 10-14, 2010
Camelot Theatres
2300 E. Baristo Road, Palm Springs
Schedule of screenings to be announced
Now in its ninth season, the Festival of Native Film & Culture is one of the nation’s most highly regarded festivals of its kind – featuring the best in films by, about, and starring Native Americans and other indigenous people. The Festival includes feature films, documentaries, and short films. Ticket pricing to be announced.
- Living Traditions Class: Curator's Tour: Exploring Rock Art
April 10, 2010
Meet at Corn Springs Campground, Palm Springs
10am
One of the finest examples of rock art in the Colorado Desert is the petroglyph site at Corn Springs, approximately 90 minutes east of Palm Springs. Join Ginger Ridgway, Curator/Director of Programs, at the Corn Springs Campground for a bring-your-own picnic lunch, and visit several close-by panels of petroglyphs and grinding features. The walk is rated “easy,” with some spots slightly more difficult to reach. Additional information will be provided upon registration. Space is limited; registration is required. Participants are responsible for their own travel to the site. Fee: $10 / Free to Museum members.
- Native Performance at VillageFest, Downtown Palm Springs
May 13, 2010
Intersection of Palm Canyon Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs
6pm
Setting the stage for this year’s Southern California Indian Storytelling Festival, Agua Caliente Cultural Museum presents Native American performers at VillageFest in the heart of downtown Palm Springs.
- Southern California Indian Storytelling Festival
May 15, 2010
Mizell Senior Center
480 S. Sunrise Way (at Ramon Road), Palm Springs
10am-5pm / 7pm-9pm
California Indian storytellers recount tales based on indigenous oral traditions and languages. Presented by the California Indian Storytelling Association and Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, this incredible experience of Native cultural includes a special evening event — Story as Song. This Festival is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, in partnership with the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the James Irvine Foundation. Free Admission.
CURRENT EXHIBITS
- The Art of Ramon Contreras, and the Mexican Muralist Movement
Through October 25th, 2009
San Bernandino County Museum
The Art of Ramon Contreras and the Mexican Muralists Movement showcases works of art by the late Ramon G. Contreras, a San Bernardino artist who painted in the Mexican Muralist tradition. The paintings and drawings, most never before displayed publicly, are loaned for this exhibit, many from the Contreras family. His works are displayed in the Schuiling Gallery through October 25. Ramon Contreras' work reflects the stories his family members told him about life in Mexico before and during the Mexican revolution. In the tradition of the Mexican Muralists, his subject matter includes scenes from daily life in a rural setting, Catholic iconography, and pre-Columbian references. His association with other mural artists including Diego Rivera, graphic artists, and studios positioned him to become a well-known muralist of the period, if it had not been for his death at the age of 21 in 1940. The exhibit will feature more than a dozen of his works, including smaller oils depicting scenes of "country life" as he termed them, mostly from private collections or held by descendants, along with information about the Mexican Muralist Movement.
- Locating Landscape: New Strategies, New Technologies
October 30, 2009-December 5, 2009
Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Opening reception: Friday October 30, 6-9pm
Locating Landscape showcases artists working at the edges of photography, landscape, technology, and geo-location, and includes work by Lewis Baltz, Christiana Caro, Andrew Freeman, Frank Gohlke, Margot Anne Kelley, Mark Klett, Paho Mann, Adam Thorman, and Byron Wolfe. Inspired by the current revival of the influential and critically acclaimed New Topographics exhibition from 1975, which will be concurrently on view at LACMA, Locating Landscape highlights some of the most interesting young artists at work in Los Angeles and the Southwest today, linking their work with the New Topographics generation. These new landscapes incorporate novel methods to connect with the world they represent while drawing on the visual vocabulary developed by earlier generations of landscape photographers. Where the New Topographics photographers worked in black and white and made relatively small prints, Locating Landscape reflects the contemporary engagement with large scale and lush color. Likewise, if both beauty and politics were slightly submerged in the landscapes of the 1970s, today, the lyric and poetic comfortably coexist with cultural and political concern.
- Latin American Masters
September 12, 2009-December 6, 2009
The Bowers Museum; Santa Ana, CA
Latin American Masters showcases modern and contemporary works by celebrated artists such as Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Frida Kahlo, Roberto Matta, Diego Rivera, and Rufino Tamayo. This fantastic exhibition explores the 20th century art movements and styles of cubism, portraiture and landscapes, Mexican muralism, surrealism, and abstraction.
- Luis Melendez: Master of the Spanish Still Life
September 6, 2009-January 3, 2010 (Tentative Dates)
LACMA
Luis Melendez (1716-1780) was the greatest still life painter of eighteenth-century Spain and ranks as one of the greatest painters of the genre in all Europe. Overshadowed for centuries by the great Goya, Melendez's paintings have received attention by scholars and appreciation by collectors only in the last few decades. The exhibition includes more than twenty paintings, grouped with relevant works from abroad. Curator at LACMA: J. Patrice Marandel, European Painting.
- Charting the Canyon: Photographs by Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe
September 25, 2009-January 3, 2010
Museum of the American West
Institute for the Study of the American West; Los Angeles, CA
The Grand Canyon – natural wonder, sacred ground, national park, international tourist attraction—is perhaps the world's best "photo op." Vivid colors, breathtaking vistas and jaw dropping canyon depths have lured photographers to Northern Arizona for years. A new exhibition, Charting the Canyon: Photographs by Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe on view at the Autry National Center from September 25, 2009 through January 3, 2010, explores this celebrated place of dramatic beauty with large-scale sweeping panoramas that marry 21st century color photographs with historic drawings and images.
- Dreamers in Dream City
September 25, 2009-January 3, 2010
Museum of the American West
Institute for the Study of the American West; Los Angeles, CA
Native son and photographer Harry Brant Chandler brings to the Autry National Center a set of compelling and evocative color portraits, personal insights, and biographies of fifty-four of the most accomplished and colorful men and women from the City of Angels in the new exhibition, Dreamers in Dream City. From unknown hopefuls to international celebrities, surfers to scientists, quacks to entrepreneurs, Southern California has produced an unrivaled potpourri of dreamers unique in their unbridled optimism and world-class accomplishments. Fifty-plus color photographs of these dreamers, both current and historic, with accompanying short bios and quotes, plus some large-scale landscape photos and interactive features ('suggest your own dreamer').
- Home Lands: How Women Made the West
September 25, 2009-January 3, 2010
Museum of the American West
Institute for the Study of the American West; Los Angeles, CA
From ancient pueblos to modern suburbs, women have shaped the Western landscape through choices about how to sustain home, family, and community. Home Lands: How Women Made the West brings together women's history, Western history, and environmental history to show how women have been at the heart of the Western enterprise across cultures and over time. Historical artifacts, art, photographs, and biographies of individual women will lead visitors through four distinctive Western environments created and inhabited by women.
- Central Avenue and Beyond: The Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles
October 24, 2009-January 4, 2010
Huntington Library; San Marino, CA
Library, West Hall
This exhibition will focus on the extraordinary artistic, cultural, and intellectual expressions and accomplishments of African Americans in Los Angeles, on Central Avenue and beyond. The show will include material from both The Huntington Library and the Mayme A. Clayton Library, a new cultural and education institution founded by Avery Clayton to house and make available his mother’s extraordinary collection of African Americana gathered during her forty-year career as a librarian in Los Angeles.
- The Baroque World of Fernando Botero
September 12, 2009-January 6, 2010
The Bowers Museum; Santa Ana, CA
The Botero exhibit is the first major U.S. retrospective in more than 30 years by the renowned Columbian artist. The exhibit features 100 paintings, sculptures, and drawings, many never before seen in public.
- The Color Explosion: Nineteenth Century American Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection
October 17, 2009-February 22, 2010
Huntington Library; San Marino, CA
Boone Gallery
The Color Explosion presents more than 200 examples of 19th-century American lithography from The Huntington’s Jay T. Last Collection of Lithographic and Social History. Advertising posters, art prints, calendars, certificates, children’s books, color-plate illustrations, historical views, product labels, sales catalogs, sheet music, toys & games, and trade cards are just some of the artifacts that will be included in this comprehensive exhibition.
- In Focus: The Worker
November 3, 2009-March 21, 2010
The Getty Center
The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center presents "In Focus: The Worker", a photographic history of working people across a variety of cultures. Drawn exclusively from the Getty’s permanent collection, "In Focus: The Worker" includes photographs from the mid-nineteenth century through the late-twentieth century. The exhibition showcases more than forty works by seminal artists such as Thomas Eakins, Walker Evans, Hiroshi Hamaya, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Milton Rogovin, August Sander, and W. Eugene Smith. In addition to these prominent photographers, the exhibition also includes pictures by lesser known artists.
- Drawn to Satire: John Sloan’s Illustrations for the Novels of Charles Paul de Kock
October 24, 2009-March 29, 2010
Huntington Library; San Marino, CA
Scott Galleries, Chandler Wing
From 1903 to 1905, American artist John Sloan created 53 etchings to illustrate comic novels by French author Charles Paul de Kock. The books—satires of French society in the first half of the 19th century, full of slapstick violence—were a perfect subject for Sloan’s lively etching style of short, expressive lines and loose cross-hatching. The project also seemed to inspire Sloan to look at 20th-century New Yorkers with the same satirical eye that de Kock trained on Parisians of the previous century. In the years that followed, Sloan produced a number of etchings featuring humorous vignettes of life in the busy metropolis. A selection of Sloan’s etchings as well as related prints, drawings, and books will be on view, inviting close study of Sloan’s working methods as he was becoming a prominent member of the band of urban realists known as the Ashcan school.
- Impressions of an Age: Dutch and Flemish Prints of the 17th Century
December 5, 2009-March 29, 2010
Huntington Library; San Marino, CA
Works on Paper Room
Since its origins, printmaking has been appreciated by its practitioners for the speed and economy with which images can be reproduced. Yet this humble medium reached a technical and aesthetic highpoint in the Netherlands in the 17th century. Artists renowned for their painting, such as Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), became masters of printmaking, capturing both intimate subjects and grand scenes with subtlety and richness of execution. Representing diverse subjects—from the biblical to the everyday—this intimate exhibition draws upon The Huntington’s own holdings that testify to their makers’ creativity and skill.
- Journeys | Recorridos
Through April 4, 2010
LACMA
- Chinese Treasures from the Time of the Emperors
August 6, 2009–April 18, 2010
Riverside Metropolitan Museum
As China expanded its trade in the 17th century, Chinese objects entered the European market as luxury items and were acquired by royalty, nobility and the wealthy. By the 18th century, Americans living on the east coast had been introduced to Chinese furnishings and clothing and by the 19th century Riverside residents were using them in their homes and on special occasions. Many of these items can be seen at Riverside Metropolitan Museum's newest exhibit, "Chinese Treasures from the Time of the Emperors" which showcases the rich heritage of the arts and culture of Imperial China dating back as far as the Song Dynasty. The exhibit features a wide range of dramatic and important objects including decorated textiles, porcelains, paintings, and religious and personal objects from the Museum's collection, Edward-Dean Museum, and private collectors.
- The Art of Native American Basketry: A Living Tradition
November 7, 2009-May, 2010
Museum of the American West
Institute for the Study of the American West; Los Angeles, CA
Presenting over 250 baskets selected from the world's largest collection of Native American basketry from the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. This remarkable exhibition features Native American baskets from 11 different regions, representing more than 100 cultures from across North America. Ranging in size from small Pomo feathered baskets to massive Apache ollas, the basketry materials, techniques, and designs vary regionally, as do the distinctive styles of individual artists. This display of historic and contemporary baskets, combined with multimedia elements, tells the story of a living art through the voices of the weavers themselves.
- Bobbi Emerson Kitsman Jenike
Now Showing
Sherman Indian Museum; Riverside, CA
Born and raised on the Navajo Indian Reservation she is of the Towering House Clan. Bobbi is a self taught artist, with 35 years experience in Plein-air painting. She is a Master printmaker, and member of the Masters Group affiliated with the Southwest Indian Foundation of Gallup, New Mexico. Bobbi has exhibited worldwide, with works in the collections of several National Museums and galleries. More Info
- BILL SOZA WARSOLDIER: Oil Painting from the Aspen Wolf series
Now Showing
Sherman Indian Museum; Riverside, CA
Bill Soza Warsoldier, (Soboba Band of Cahuilla Indians/White Mountain Apache), is one of the primary catalysts for a change which would make all of us "never look at Indian Art the same way again." His work has a sophisticated starkness which almost forces an observer to be aware of the truths he talked about as a young man, and of which he talks of now. Please contact the Sherman Indian Museum for exhibit days and times. (951)276-6719. Visit warsoldierartwork.com for more information.
PERMANENT EXHIBITS
- The Bowers Museum; Santa Ana, CA
Ancient Arts of China: A 5000 Year Legacy
Curated by authorities of Chinese history and culture from the Shanghai Museum, this incredible collection portrays the evolution of Chinese technology, art and culture utilizing rare examples of bronze vessels, mirrors, polychrome potteries, sculptures, porcelains, paintings, ivory carvings and robes.
California Legacies: Missions and Ranchos (1768-1848)
California Legacies: Missions and Ranchos (1768-1848) features displays of California and Orange County history that are must-sees for California students and residents alike.
Classic California: Recently Conserved Paintings from the Permanent Collection
Classic California: Recently Conserved Paintings from the Permanent Collection features 22 paintings by California’s most celebrated artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that have been recently conserved from the Bowers Museum’s permanent collection.
First Californians
This installation showcases the Bowers' extensive permanent collection of Native American art and artifacts in stone, shell, plant fiber (through spectacular basketry) and feathers.
Vision of the Shaman, Song of the Priest
Arts from the sophisticated Pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico and Central America are highlighted in a series of galleries.
Masters of Adornment: The Miao People of China
This important collection of exquisite textiles and silver jewelry on loan to and from the Bowers Museum’s permanent collection highlights the beauty and wealth of the Miao peoples of southwest China.
- La Roldana's Saint Gines: The Making of a Polychrome Sculpture
Daily through December 31, 2014
The Getty Center
South Pavilion, Plaza Level
Luisa Roldan (Spanish, 1650–1704), affectionately known as La Roldana, was one of the most celebrated and prolific sculptors of the Baroque period. This intimate exhibition introduces visitors to La Roldana, whose artistic superiority catapulted her to fame at the royal court in an otherwise male-dominated profession. She ran a workshop, worked for the king, raised a family, and was a celebrity in her own day. With her polychrome sculpture of Saint Gines de la Jara from the Getty Museum's collection as a focal point, this exhibition explores the artist's life, artistic achievement, and the multifaceted process used to create masterfully lifelike polychrome sculpture.
- Foundry to Finish: The Making of a Bronze Sculpture
Daily through December 31, 2014
The Getty Center
South Pavilion, Plaza Level
Get a rare look at how bronze sculpture is born in Foundry to Finish. Visitors explore a process called direct lost-wax casting—a method that yields a single, unique bronze cast of an artist's original clay- and-wax model. Thirteen step-by-step models illustrate the sculpting and casting process. Through X-radiographs, visitors can even get a glimpse inside an original sculpture to see firsthand evidence of how the bronze was cast. The installation complements Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, an international touring exhibition also on view.
- Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art
The Huntington; San Marino, CA
The newly expanded Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art open May 30 to reveal a completely transformed space in which the growing American art collection will be displayed in an area more than twice its previous size. With 16,379 square feet of reconfigured galleries, this will be one of the largest presentations in California of American art from the colonial period through the mid- 20th century.
- Latin American Art: Ancient to Contemporary, LACMA Permanent Collection
LA County Museum of Art
Art of the Americas Building
New Galleries: The newly reinstalled galleries "Latin American Art: Ancient to Contemporary" open to the public on July 26, 2008. Located on the third floor of the Art of the Americas Building, the galleries feature numerous recent acquisitions of ancient American, Spanish colonial, modern, and contemporary art. The ancient galleries are designed by renowned artist Jorge Pardo, who has created an innovative and experimental environment that encourages visitors to look at these works in compelling new ways.
The heart of the collection of the art of the ancient Americas is a rich cross section of objects from the major civilizations of ancient Mexico. A significant portion of the collection, which was assembled by Proctor Stafford and acquired by the museum in 1986, represents the ceramic funerary offerings found in the tombs of the West Mexican states of Nayarit, Colima, and Jalisco. These ceramic sculptures appear to reflect the objects and activities of daily life and were made popular by such collectors as the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
- A Bridge to the Americas: the molaa Permanent Collection
Museum of Latin American Art; Long Beach, CA
In June, the molaa Permanent Collection is presented as, "A Bridge to the Americas," offering over 80 works of art presented both geographically and thematically in two of the Permanent Collection Galleries.
The first gallery highlights approximately 25 works of art, one to four from each of the 19 Spanish/Portuguese speaking countries in the regions of Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, to profile the various countries and their leading art movements and artists represented in the molaa Collection.
The second gallery will present approximately 60 works of art presented in 3 thematic movements-Cultural Landscapes, The Mestizaje of Identity and Spiritual and Religious Practices-offering an interpretation of the art related to the distinct and varied representation of ethnic identity, heritage and cultural practice specific to Latin America. Sample: Eduardo Kingman's Depressed Woman, 1964