©2016 JUDITHE HERNÁNDEZ
Today the Getty Foundation announced an increase in funding, as well as expanded programming, for the third edition of its region-wide art initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, which begins next September and focuses on Latin American and Latino art in relation to Los Angeles.
The Getty has added 24 cultural institutions to its official list of participating exhibition spaces, upping the total number to 75, as well as awarding more than $1.25 million in new grants, to the REDCAT arts center for an 11-day performance art festival in January 2018, and the LA Promise Fund and the Los Angeles Unified School District to ensure that Los Angeles–area students are able to visit exhibitions that are part of PST: LA/LA. The news means that a total of $15 million has been committed by a variety of funders to PST: LA/LA.
“To do justice to its vast and complex theme and engage audiences throughout the region, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA needs to be as encompassing as its subject,” said Jim Cuno, the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, in a statement. “We’re thrilled that the initiative is still growing, and we’re proud that the Getty is helping to realize these ambitions through additional grants.” Cuno hinted that additional grants and projects will be announced in coming months.
Among the new exhibitions announced are a history on pre-Columbian art in South America at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, a survey of Cuban video art at ESMoA in El Segundo, and a two-person exhibition of pioneering Chicana artists Judithe Hernandéz and Patssi Valdez (a founding member of the collective ASCO) at the Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona.
Also, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which will host the first major U.S. survey of Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino, announced that its Geffen Contemporary building will do a show with Argentine-born artist Adrián Villar Rojas that will include a new site-specific installation. The Broad, the private museum of L.A. philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, is also on board to participate in PST: LA/LA. Its exhibition has not yet been announced.
REDCAT has received $600,000 for its performance festival, and will organize its own programs as well as issue an open call for proposals from L.A.-area arts organizations. The festival will happen across the city and include both contemporary performance art as well as restagings of historical works.
The first edition of PST, which was well-received for its far-reaching and canon-expanding exhibitions, opened in October 2011 and carried the theme of “Art in L.A. 1945–1980.” The second edition in 2013 focused on modern architecture in the city. While more than half of the exhibitions take place in the L.A. area, PST also includes institutions in Orange County, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and the Inland Empire. Among the previously announced highlights of PST: LA/LA are LACMA’s Carlos Almaraz retrospective, the Hammer Museum’s “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985” exhibition, a retrospective of outsider artist Martín Ramírez at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art), an exhibition about the influence of Día de los Muertos art on Latinx artists in L.A. at Self Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights, and a retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar at the Vincent Price Museum of Art in Monterey Park.