In 1991, a group gathered at LACMA to perform the AIDS Bottle Project, an interactive action piece that brought attention to the AIDS crisis. The performance was organized by the Los Angeles–based Institute for Cultural Inquiry, a nonprofit education and cultural organization that uses “visual technologies” to investigate the intersection of “human activity and capabilities we call ‘culture.’ “

AIDS Bottle Project, organized by the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Los Angeles. One of the pieces took place at LACMA on December 1, 1991.

Each bottle seen in the video above represents someone who has died from complications due to AIDS or HIV. Seeing the plane of bottles against the concrete is a chilling reminder of how many lives claimed by the epidemic. Names of the individuals and the years of their deaths are etched on the glass. Under each of the lids is a brief biography of the person. The public was encouraged to contribute to the work by adding pieces of ephemera or mementos that related to the person being memorialized. The bottles did not simply serve as memorials—they also represented the complex relationships and communities that linked all participants together in raising awareness about AIDS and HIV.

Today, December 1, 2013, is the United Nations’ World AIDS Day. The day raises awareness about the AIDS epidemic and reflects on the progress and future goals of fighting the disease. The theme of this year’s campaign is “Zero Discrimination”: “to end stigma, discrimination and complacency, to stop new HIV infections among children and to ensure access to care and treatment for all those that need it.”

For the art community, today also marks Day with(out) Art, a national day of action for and awareness of AIDS, and specifically the impact the epidemic has made on the arts community. While incredible progress has been made in battling AIDS and HIV, much more needs to be done. Day with(out) Art aims to bring attention to AIDS and HIV by raising the visibility of fight against this disease that has, as illustrated by AIDS Bottle Project, made a mark on so many of us.

Support your favorite nonprofit tomorrow as part of #GivingTuesday. There are many ways to give to LACMA, and some forms of participation do not involve a transaction. Here are a few suggestions:

• Visit LACMA. The museum is free for Los Angeles County residents after 3 pm on weekdays. Our public art—Urban Light and Levitated Mass—are always on view, and always free. Many of our public programs, such as Sundays Live, are also free. Your visit to the museum is invaluable—visitors activate the space of LACMA.
• In search of that perfect present? A gift of LACMA membership allows your recipient to enjoy 12 months of LACMA—this includes special exhibitions, education and public programs, films, music events, and more.
• Talk to us. We’re always interested in all that our fans have to say on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and here on Unframed.
• Engage with other nonprofits around the area.
• Make a contribution to our LACMA Fund. Your gift to this fund helps us do everything—from exhibitions to keeping the lights on.

We’d like to extend our thanks to all who have contributed in any form to LACMA—from visiting the museum for the first time to being part of the Legacy Circle. Your engagement encourages LACMA to strive to do more to serve its public.

Speaking of thanks, over Thanksgiving weekend, we considered the menus of artists and focused on Andy Warhol’s feast. The artist appropriately called upon icons of the annual meal for his own: stuffed turkey, sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and green beans. One could argue that the ingredients Warhol recommended were inspired by the same quotidian objects that informed his deadpan silkscreens.

The Artist’s Palate: Cooking with the World’s Great Artists is a collection of beloved recipes by artists, many of whom are part of LACMA’s collection (Warhol being one of them). While we’re used to seeing an artist’s visual production, this collection gives an interesting insight into the gustatory details of their lives.

Check out the rest of the recipes below, and perhaps they might inform your next Thanksgiving meal.

Is your smartphone decked out in polka dots or does it showcase your favorite team? For hundreds of years customized accessories have been conversation starters. This much is apparent from a new display of 11 precious gold boxes dating from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries at LACMA (Ahmanson Building, third floor), on loan from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and from The Marjorie W. Gilbert 2001 Trust in Los Angeles.

The new display on the third floor of the Ahmanson Building.

The snuffbox, or tabatière (as it was called in Paris, where many of the best boxes were made), was perhaps the most important status symbol of its day. These captivating objects provide a fascinating point of comparison with the contemporary world.

Jean Frémin (gold box) and Claude Bornet (enamel), Snuffbox with Putti and Nymphs, France, 1768–69, long-term loan from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

While our 18th-century counterparts could not have imagined the capabilities of our portable devices, we on the other hand marvel at the precision and craftsmanship of their paraphernalia. Often small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, gold boxes required a lid that closed tightly enough to keep the contents (usually tobacco) fresh, but the closure also had to be smooth enough to be opened gently and easily with the utmost refinement. Etiquette dictated the precise and proper gestures for taking out your snuffbox, opening the lid, and offering the contents around before taking a pinch yourself. The rituals varied in different countries at different dates, and depended on how well those involved knew one another. Charles Alexander of Lorraine (1712–1780), Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands, recorded in his diary the following formula he used with associates to indicate there was a note to pass on: shake the snuff from your fingers before closing the box, then blow several times. Then as now, the level of discretion no doubt dictated the subtlety with which the signal was given.

Snuffbox with Clusters of Fruit, Germany, c. 1760, long-term loan from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Both men and women took snuff in the 18th century, making snuffboxes as gender neutral and universal as cell phones are today. No fashionable person would be seen without a snuffbox. While boxes undoubtedly revealed things about their owners, it is dangerous to infer (just from the appearance of a box) who they belonged to. The famous collection of Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786), known as Frederick the Great, is one of several of the era that amounted to more than 300 boxes. These included examples decorated with sprays of flowers carved from beautiful semiprecious stones and easy to mistake for a lady’s snuffbox (if modern stereotypes about feminine patterns go unchecked). The same decorative technique is used on the honey-colored agate box covered in clusters of finely carved fruit made from a mouth-watering array of hard stones. We do not know who this box was made for, so do not leap to any conclusions. Looks can be deceiving.

Pierre-Claude Pottier (box) and Leonardus Temminck (portrait), Bonbonniere with Portrait of a Boy, France (box) and the Netherlands (portrait), 1787, long-term loan from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

We suspect a loved one commissioned the innocent face of a little boy with wild dark hair. The monogram “LT” to the right of the figure indicates that it was painted by the artist Leonardus Temminck. However, there is no evidence of the boy’s name. We know when the box was made, because it is marked, and we know when the miniature was painted, because of the style of the clothing, but we do not know why the miniature was set into a box that was already 20 years old at the time the portrait was painted.

By contrast, the other circular box in the display is set with a portrait miniature of a well-known individual. It is possible it was part of a collection of portrait miniatures of famous men. It is also the sort of thing that could have been sent to a patron, either to commend or recommend the sitter. However, while monarchs gave many portrait miniatures of themselves to loyal subjects as political propaganda, each miniature was painstakingly created by hand, and was therefore nowhere near as commonplace as a headshot or calling card.

Snuffbox with Putti at a Fountain, Germany, c.1750, long-term loan from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Sending a portrait miniature to a prospective patron in the 18th century was one thing. Transporting precious museum objects from London to Los Angeles in 2013 is quite another. Frederick the Great had his carried by camel whenever he moved from one residence to another. Perhaps the idea was that their soft tread was safer for fragile items than that of pack animals with hooves? Needless to say, the mode of transport arranged by the registrars and curators at LACMA and the V&A for the loans from London was more modern but equally attentive to the safety of such delicate cargo. We hope you enjoy these “new” arrivals.

Dr. Heike Zech, Curator of the Gilbert Collection, V&A, London
Dr. Rosie Mills, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Associate Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, LACMA

What’s in your closet? That’s the question we posed to 12 middle-school students from Santa Monica Alternative School House (SMASH). Out of their closets, and into LACMA’s, came hand-painted sneakers, black-sequined shorts, red feather earrings, and basketball socks—typical yet treasured wear for these So-Cal tweens.

What began as an exercise to help middle schoolers make personal connections to LACMA’s collection became a fascinating and delightful discovery of the links, in turn, that LACMA costume and textiles department curators Sharon Takeda, Kaye Spilker, and Clarissa Esguerra were able to make to the SMASH kids’ own choices of clothing. With each trip to the LACMA closet, out came a related museum object for the students to study. The red feather earrings prompted Spilker to pull out a plumed headdress dating from about 1400 from Peru, made of bright yellow parrot feathers, while a boy’s Velcro sneakers inspired Esguerra to produce a pair of white leather André Corrèges gogo boots from France,  dating from about 1965. She explained that Velcro was discovered in 1940 by a Swiss man who, walking in the woods with his dog, realized that the way burrs clung to his dog’s fur could be used to attach fabrics together. Another boy’s pair of white athletic socks spurred Esguerra to show the students a carefully preserved pair of European silk stockings from the early 1700s, intricately embroidered with metallic thread. With each item, a story unfolded to reveal the history, function, value, and even impracticality of the objects.

Students document and record their behind-the-scenes session with curators.

Why the exercise? The SMASH students were part of a focus group that the education department assembled to help develop a new project made possible by a generous grant from the John B. and Nelly Llanos Kilroy Foundation. The Kilroy Foundation has already funded a family guide and a series of art workshops and bilingual tours, and the new funds are allowing us to design programs for children and families that highlight LACMA’s costume and textiles collection.

Anthony gets a closer look at a Samurai campaign surcoat (Jinbaori).

LACMA staff—and the SMASH kids, using flip cameras—documented the show-and-tell session. Clearly, our focus group had become more than a quick foray into the minds of middle schoolers. Teachers and administrators at SMASH became interested in the project, and partnered with Marni Gittleman, an independent consultant and arts educator, to design an entire course at SMASH inspired by this exploration. The course asked students to imagine a world without clothes (you can imagine the giggles), to think about why textiles exist, and to consider what makes fashion an interesting art form. The students’ process of discovery in our original 12-person focus group ended up not only informing the project, but spawning a whole new dimension.

Kanoa shows off her glittery (but itchy) sequin shorts.

The footage of the discovery process culminated in Closet to Collection, the first of three Kilroy Foundation–funded videos that, through YouTube and other avenues, will make LACMA’s costume and textiles collection accessible to a wider audience. Check it out on LACMA’s website to discover how your closet may be connected to ours.

Karen Satzman, Director, Youth and Family Programs

This cold and windy weekend stay warm with LACMA. Film buffs and followers of French visual artist and filmmaker Agnès Varda take note: this weekend LACMA presents the beginning of The Cinema According to Agnès Varda, the Agnès Varda in Californialand exhibition film series. It all begins with Friday night’s double-feature; see both the breakthrough Cléo From 5 to 7 at 7:30 pm and Varda’s debut film from 1961, La Pointe Courte, at 9:25 pm with one ticket. Saturday evening Le Bonheur at 5 pm demonstrates Varda’s mastery of the camera and LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) at 7:30 pm sparkles in a brand-new, LACMA-supported restoration of the 1969 film. The series concludes next weekend.

Those thirsty for knowledge (and who isn’t these days?) will have two opportunities to learn something new. On Saturday be part of a lecture on Text and Image in Persian Art at 2 pm with the head of the Boston College Islamic and Asian Art department. In this discussion, lecturer Sheila Blair investigates the interplay between the verbal and visual of Persian art and the metaphors and allusions salient even today. Then on Sunday, join associate professor of art history at California State Polytechnic, Pomona Chari Pradel in The 26th-Annual Michele Berton Memorial Lecture on Japanese Art at 3:30pm. Pradel’s lecture looks at one of the most controversial and mythical historical figures of ancient Japan. Both events are free and open to the public.

Edward Steichen, Mrs. Paul Abbott, Vanity Fair (February 1924), reproduced with permission of Joanna T. Steichen, gift of Richard and Jackie Hollander

Throughout the galleries, theres much to discover. First, know that two exhibitions reach their end on Sunday—Talk of the Town: Portraits by Edward Steichen from the Hollander Collection and Down to Earth: Modern Artists and the Land, before Land Art. Elsewhere, guests are invited to join in on any of the handful of free tours of specific collections and exhibitions. These include 50 minute walkthroughs of some of our finest displays like the new and vibrant Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic (requires admission to the exhibition), the lush sculpture of Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa, the breadth and depth of See the Light—Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, and an overview of the Art of the Americas permanent collection. Finally, at 6 pm on Sunday, Sundays Live welcomes to the Bing Theater the UCLA Camarades, a group comprised of young musicians from the Herb Alpert School of Music’s string program. This event is free and open to the public. Better bundle up.

Roberto Ayala

Marjorie and Leonard Vernon were pioneer Los Angeles collectors who, beginning in the 1970s, amassed a group of images that covered in breadth and depth a global history of photography. See the Light—Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection is the second major presentation (this was the first) of the Vernon Collection at LACMA since it was acquired by Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation in 2008. In conjunction with the exhibition, Ryan Linkof and Eve Schillo organized the oral-history project. In this piece, they reflect on working with those who knew the Vernons and played a part in building their important collection. Parts of the oral-history project will be published online as part of the exhibition, and full transcripts and audio files will be available at the Balch Research Library at LACMA.

Jaroslav Rössler, Still Life with Small Bowl, 1923, The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, gift of the Annenberg Foundation and gift of Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin

Condensed into an acronym, the Vernon Oral History Project, or the VOHP, isn’t the easiest. VOHP looks a bit off-putting—a description which, of course, was incongruous to Marjorie and Leonard Vernon, the magnanimous people behind the Vernon Collection. Add the fact that the Vernons were one of the first collectors of photography in Los Angeles—and therefore really did know everyone—and a project of this magnitude begins to sprout yet another acronym, the PNEVC, Possibly Never-Ending Vernon Circle.

In 2012 Ryan Linkof and I began our pursuit of must-have interviews relating to the Vernons, a few years after LACMA acquired the Vernon Collection in 2008 through the generosity of the Wallis Annenberg Foundation and Carol Vernon and Bob Turbin. The collection brought an amazing spotlight to the museum. It, essentially, raised the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department’s national and international profile, resulting in an increase in scholar visits and the securing of subsequent loans. We were initially kept busy with transporting, accessioning, storing, upgrading storage, digitally documenting, and reviewing over 3,500 works. After the flurry of activity, it was time to step beyond the process and to get to know the people behind this amazing collection.

Left to right: Maggi Weston, Leonard Vernon, Marjorie Vernon, photo by Rod Dresser, © Estate of Rod Dresser

Oral histories strive to gather a wide range of information in the most neutral manner in order to capture in full a subject or an event. Our singular event was thirty-plus years of collecting. I was around for some of those years, so it was hard for me to remain neutral on the subject. Nevertheless, we conducted our interviews following oral-history protocol: a standardized set of questions, building from basic to more in depth. After the first few sessions, we noticed some interesting intersections and images that came up—along with far too many chances to go off script!

Our interview list was culled from a cross-section of artists, curators, gallerists, independent dealers, appraisers, conservators, and collections managers who knew the Vernons, at the time, in a singular dimension. Many of these individuals now play important roles in the realm of contemporary art in Los Angeles. Furthermore, the Vernons’ relationship with these individuals have long since evolved as time passed—by the time the oral-history project was mounted, these same people were citing the Vernons not merely as professional acquaintances, but as close friends. The line between objective history and the personal became blurred.

Contrary to what springs to mind with an oral history (audio quotes), we found ourselves amassing a list of images. These were photographs that consistently resonated with interviewees, some of whom were able to see them on display during repeat visits to the Vernon home, which functioned as a veritable salon for photography from the late 1970s until Leonard’s passing in 2008. Others sought out the Vernons, in many cases a Vernon visit was more integral to researchers than any local institution’s collection. Ryan and I waited with anticipation during each interview to find out which images might be added and which ones would grow another nuanced layer, building off the spiral of stories surrounding one image.

By the close of our project, it was clear that this fact-gathering exercise had grown to symbolize much more. This oral history will serve to make the family story as visible now as the photographs selected for display in See the Light. And from here on, I refer to the Vernon Collection as an acquisition of a family’s history with photography . . . and, oh yes, also 3,500 works.

Ryan Linkof, Ralph M. Parsons Curatorial Fellow in the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography, shares his experience working with the Vernon Collection in part two of this series, which will be published next week.

Eve Schillo, curatorial assistant, Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography

An exciting thing happened today: we launched our new Art + Technology Lab at LACMA. The Lab is an experiment in bringing artists and technologists together to develop projects that we plan to share with the public here at the museum. We also issued our first call for proposals. Artists and collectives interested in pursuing projects that engage emerging technology are invited to apply by January 27, 2014, for grants up to $50,000, plus in-kind support from our advisory board and participating technology companies.

We plan to fund a small number of projects in the first year of the program. Several technology companies have joined the effort: Accenture, NVIDIA, DAQRI, SpaceX, and Google are helping to make this project possible. Our advisory board also includes independent artists and academics, such as Dan Goods (visual strategist at Jet Propulsion Labs) and Ken Goldberg (professor of industrial engineering and operations research at the University of California, Berkeley).

Robert Irwin and James Turrell in the anechoic chamber at the University of California, Los Angeles. The artists explored the concept for an unrealized project with the Gannet Corporation as part of the original Art and Technology program at LACMA. Photograph © Malcolm Lubliner

This isn’t the first time LACMA has embarked on a program to bring artists and technologists together. The Art and Technology program at LACMA that ran from 1967 to 1971 is legendary, and included Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and others. When we launched our online Reading Room a few years ago, the Report on the Art and Technology Program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967–1971 quickly jumped to the top of the list of popular out of print publications. The publication includes some amazing documentation of the collaborations between artists and industry, including several projects that failed to lead to a completed work of art, but gave rise to innovations many years or even decades later.

The Lab is inspired by the history at LACMA, but the program we’re launching now differs in some respects. Today, compared to the late 1960s, the boundary between art and technology is much more fluid. We fully expect to see participants in the program that move easily between both disciplines. That makes aligning artists and technology developers all the more exciting and fruitful. We also plan to reveal projects in progress through regular presentations at LACMA, including talks with artists and demonstrations of prototypes. Our commitment to exploring the nexus of art and technology is long-term, and we look forward to building on the program over time.

The exterior entrance to the new Art + Technology Lab at LACMA via the Director’s Round Table Garden at the east end of the museum campus.

The Lab is housed in our newly remodeled Balch Research Library. The County of Los Angeles supported the renovation, which wraps up this month, with a grant from their Productivity Investment Fund. Those of you familiar with the research library will, we hope, be surprised and pleased by the transformation. We opened up a wall of windows looking out on the park and gave the space an overhaul that enables us to accommodate not only the new Lab program, but also more books and space for our librarians to work with researchers.

For questions about the Art + Technology Lab, or to find out about upcoming programs at LACMA, join our mailing list: lab@lacma.org.

Amy Heibel, Vice President, Technology, Web and Digital Media 

The Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival returns to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on December 14 and 15, 2013. For the past several years, LACMA has hosted this film festival dedicated to children and their families. This year the festival will present more than 100 films from around the world—full-length and short animation, live action and documentary films—clustered for different age groups, toddlers through teens. Producers and actors will be present after select screenings for pre- and post-film discussions. We hope that  these live opportunities will allow our audience to leave with a greater understanding of the films they love. Don’t miss the chance to pose your burning questions!

Still from Clara and the Secret of Bears, courtesy of Tobias Ineichen

Still from A Film by Abigail, courtesy of Paul Vernon

Still from Yarn, Paper, Scissors, ccourtesy of Rebecca Olson

Plan your visit and see the full line-up here.

Stay up-to-date on festival news here.

This event produced in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival.

Angela Hall, education coordinator, education and public programs

For almost all of my adult life, I have studied and examined and thought about the work of Walter De Maria. The sense of personal, physical involvement required by his sculpture, its elemental vocabulary, and the ineffable presence of carefulness, intellect, and authority that reside within it enabled me to look at the world in a calm and subjective way, and to pay attention to detail. The simplicity of De Maria’s work allowed me to empty my mind and to see things in a larger light, without imposing preconceived ideas. De Maria’s belief that “the invisible is real” greatly influenced my thinking.

I had never had the kind of artistic experience with architecture that I have experienced with the traditional visual arts, although I have paid a great deal of attention to architects and their structures, making pilgrimages to many of the great buildings around the world. Things changed for me several years ago, when I traveled to Naoshima, Japan, to see De Maria’s piece, Time/Timeless/No Time (2004), and encountered Tadao Ando’s exquisite Chichu Art Museum. It was here that the merging of architecture and art became apparent, and the distinction between them was no longer visible or relevant.

Chichu Art Museum, photo by Iwan Baan

De Maria first traveled to Naoshima in 1997, at the invitation of Soichiro Fukutake, president of the Benesse Corporation, to create a new work for the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum. He visited the site several times, finally choosing a rectangular concrete gallery with an expansive view of the ocean, designed by Tadao Ando.

Ando’s transcendently beautiful, spare, narrow, space, brightly lit by the sun for a while, then darkening like a cave as the sun goes down, clearly inspired one of De Maria’s most mysterious and important pieces. The physical constraints of Ando’s narrow gallery, and the impossibility of seeing the De Maria sculpture all at once, cause the viewer to slow down, empty his mind of expectations, and have the essential pleasure of a profound and personal artistic experience.

Walter De Maria, Time/Timeless/No Time, 2004, in situ at the Chichu Art Museum. Photo courtesy of 準建築人手札網站 Forgemind ArchiMedia

Later, Time/Timeless/No Time was created for the Chichu Art Museum that opened nearby in 2004. The museum was conceived as a space where art and architecture would exist as a single entity, and Tadao Ando, who was the architect, worked very much in the capacity of an artist, creating spaces together with De Maria and James Turrell that worked with their particular and difficult artistic requirements. At Chichu, De Maria’s great and impressive work is palpably activated by the clarity and deliberation of what Ando had created in the gallery. The two artists share a passionate apprehension of details that combine and flow into large ideas. They both emphasize nothingness and the beauty of simplicity, and they both insist on the physical experience of their work. There is a forceful and delicate presence and compositional virtuosity that gives order and clarity to both the installation and the architecture—sort of spiritual but free of mysticism. As De Maria has said, “In my life and work I seek . . . the right place, the right action, the right time.”

Tomorrow evening, Tadao Ando will speak about architecture and art at Art Catalogues at LACMA. Kulapat Yantrasast, architect and cofounder of the L.A.-based firm why design, will conduct conversations with Ando comprised of questions posed by artists, architects, curators, clients, and the curious. I’m honored to have the opportunity to host Mr. Ando at Art Catalogues and to hear him discuss his ideas and work. It’s a rare pleasure to meet one of the world’s finest architects, and to have a book signed by him!

Dagny Corcoran, Art Catalogues at LACMA

There’s a full schedule in store for you at LACMA this weekend. It beings with the end of The Cinema According to Agnès Varda, the Agnès Varda in Californialand exhibition film series, on Friday and Saturday. See Vagabond and Documenteur on Friday night beginning at 7:30 pm. This double-feature pairs the stark tale of an aimless drifter seeking true freedom with the introspective story of a single mother finding her way. Next, on Saturday starting at 5 pm, Kung Fu Master looks at a single mother falling for one of her daughter’s schoolmates in a novel coming-of-age tale. To wrap it all up, Varda pays tribute to cinema and her former husband and filmmaker, Jacques Demy, in Jacquot de Nantes at 7:30 pm.

Still from Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi), directed by Agnès Varda, 1985, © Pacific Arts Video

Artist Liz Glynn returns to LACMA for the fourth installment of her five-part performance series,  [de]-lusions of Grandeur. In The Myth of Pure Form, Glynn focuses her attention on Tony Smith’s Smoke, which fills the atrium of the Ahmanson Building. Specifically, the artist and her performers will consider the relationship between geometry and organic form and, through choreographed actions, will reconstruct different versions of Smith’s sculpture. The event begins at 1 pm and is free and open to the public.

And the free events just keep on coming. Tonight, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, Art Catalogues hosts architect Tadao Ando in conversation on architecture and art. Following the talk, Tadao Ando will be available for a book signing. On Saturday and Sunday LACMA presents the ninth-annual Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival. Kids and parents of all sorts will find something new to like in this two-day free event, featuring over 100 films from around the world. The fun begins at 10:30 am on both days. Then, join L.A.-based Capitol Ensemble at Sundays Live on Sunday at 6 pm for an evening of free, live classical music.

Thomas Hill, Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, 1864, William Randolph Hearst Collection

Throughout the museum see fantastic exhibitions, including two installations that close on Sunday: Newsha Tavakolian and Lingering Dreams: Japanese Painting of the Seventeenth Century. Of course, there are blockbusters like Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film and James Turrell: A Retrospective that you should not miss, but delve deeper into the collection and you won’t be disappointed—the sleeper hit of the year Compass for Surveyors: 19th Century American Landscapes dazzles and the elegant David Hockney: Seven Yorkshire Landscape Videos, 2011 breathes with life. Pencil us in!

Roberto Ayala

This is the second of a two-part series focusing on the Vernon Oral History Project. (Read part one here.) Ryan Linkof, Ralph M. Parsons Fellow in the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography, discusses his experience working on the project.

I came to this project without preexisting personal and professional links to the Vernons, so, for me, this really was a history. It was, from the start, something I could think about in historical terms. This distance afforded me certain advantages, in the sense that I could approach the material objectively, but it also meant that I wasn’t always attuned to some of the personal histories that bound the Vernons to the Los Angeles photo world.

This is where Eve came in. She provided an essential element of personal affinity and connection, and she was able to tease out anecdotes and ask questions about personal details that I wouldn’t have known to ask. As time passed, I have had the distinct pleasure to learn much more about the Vernons and those who knew them. Given this, my objective distance began to wane. It has been a great honor to meet the participants and to get to know the Vernons, if only through their collection. The Vernon Oral History is comprised of a series of overlapping histories. It is, primarily, a history of a collection, but it is also a document of the last quarter of the 20th century in the history of art, arts institutions in Los Angeles, and the global market in art photography. It is, more intimately, a collection of personal histories about two people and those they touched.

Frederick H. Evans, A Sea Of Steps—Wells Cathedral, 1903, the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, gift of the Annenberg Foundation, acquired from Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin, © Frederick H. Evans, courtesy Janet B. Stenner

I initially approached the project as I had been trained to do in graduate school: I viewed it, rather impassively, as set of intellectual problems. I dug into my academic grab bag, used the set of tools I had honed, and made a list of intellectual “deliverables.” The project, I told myself, would illustrate the role of collecting in a variety of crucial aspects of art history: canon formation, the development of art markets, the symbiosis between collectors and museums, the forging of social and artistic networks, the nature of the connoisseurial “eye,” as well as narrating a particular story about the interactions of artists, curators, dealers, and gallerists.

Gertrude Käsebier, Blessed Art Thou among Women, 1899, the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, gift of the Annenberg Foundation, acquired from Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin, © Estate of Gertrude Käsebier

I quickly learned, however, that the academic’s typical arsenal wasn’t enough for a project such as this. This exploration required a personal dimension in order to tell a complete and satisfactory story. This wasn’t simply a question of art history: it is also a narrative about a family and people’s lives. First and foremost, the Vernon Collection is a family collection—a collection built by a family (in a limited and an expansive sense of that term), as well as a collection built for a family. It reflects an aesthetic interest in interpersonal dynamics and sentimental connections between mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, friends, and acquaintances. It was always intended to be shared between a group of people with similar values and aesthetic interests.

Although this project tells a story about people, it also tells a story about objects: works that emerge in the oral histories as common touchstones. In learning about the growth of the collection, it quickly became clear that particular works held pride of place in the Vernons’ holdings and in their home.

Frederick Evans’s Sea of Steps—mentioned in every oral history that we conducted—was a piece that was close to Leonard’s heart. It was one of the final works he purchased, after much patience. Gertrude Käsebier’s Blessed Art Thou among Women, purchased for Marjorie by her husband, had significant personal value and long held a privileged place in the Vernons’ home. In many ways, the work represents something essential about their collection and the type of photography that lived in their home. In the words of close friends Mike Weaver and Anne Hammond, “Marjorie experienced the work as a human subject that transcends all sectarian beliefs. It embodies the great value Marjorie attached to all tender relations between people, especially between young and old.”

The collection has surprising strengths that express the broad collecting and intellectual interests of the Vernons, as many of the participants of the oral history project noted. For example, the Vernons collected Central and Eastern European modernist photography long before it had significant market value or prominence in major museums. Just when it seemed that we had the Vernons figured out, their collection would tell a different story.

Alma Lavenson, Untitled (Child with Doll), 1932, the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, gift of the Annenberg Foundation, acquired from Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin, © Alma Lavenson Archives. All Rights Reserved.

The oral history provides a very palpable sense of how these artworks were a vital part of the fabric of their daily lives and social events. The collection encouraged people to come together around photography through discussions in their home and regular gallery and studio visits. The Vernons championed the works of some of the artists whose studios they frequented, such as Robbert Flick and Anthony Hernandez, long before they became fixtures in museum collections. During our many interviews, we uncovered remarkable revelations about the Vernons’ personal relationships to artists. Perhaps the most compelling story involved the artist Alma Lavenson, who was revealed to have had a fascinating biographical link to Marjorie. I will coyly refrain from divulging the details in this article, but the story will appear in full when the oral history is completed, after which it will be publicly accessible on lacma.org. What I will say, however, is that this personal story underscored the fact that oral history is essential in incorporating this collection into LACMA’s photography department. The works of art might speak for themselves, but the oral history provides a nuanced perspective about what this collection was and the intimate relationships embedded in the practice of collecting.

Ryan Linkof, Ralph M. Parsons Fellow, Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography

Installing a sculpture exhibition—particularly one in which works are bound to walls, sit on pedestals, hang in the air, hover close to the ground, and vary significantly in scale—can be tricky. In developing this exhibition, I reviewed historical photos of Calder’s studio and presentations he designed and compared them with exhibition design from the past 40 years. During Calder’s lifetime, displays seemed to mimic those found in his studio: crowded together, overlapping, presenting a riotous cacophony of competing forms far removed from contemporary concerns of conservation and visitor-circulation paths. In the past few decades, museum exhibitions have had to grapple with these real concerns, which are exacerbated by increasingly large museum crowds. Extensive plinths, protective barriers, and pedestals mitigate intentional or inadvertent touching, but can hinder the viewer’s ability to relate intimately with the works. Clearly, decisions about density, space, light, and color would need to be weighed against concerns for the safety and protection of the art.

We were fortunate that architect Frank O. Gehry shared an enthusiasm for Calder’s work; his experience of seeing the artist’s 1964–65 exhibition in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York had made an indelible impression.

The gently curved walls that frame many of the sculptures in LACMA’s exhibition emphasize the organic nature of Calder’s works, recalling the harmony between art and architecture found in the Guggenheim’s presentation. Furthermore, Gehry’s own method of developing architectural forms is inherently tactile, sharing some of the same hands-on techniques of a sculptor. I too remember the Calder show at the Guggenheim—it is the first show I recall seeing there—and when I worked at the museum in the early 1970s, colleagues still spoke fondly of it being the most perfect example of an exhibition combining art and architecture.

Gehry Partners, LLP, model photographs for Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013

Working through successive models—in paper, Gator board, basswood, and Plexiglas, and in a variety of scales—Gehry’s models are conceptual drafts, or three-dimensional sketches, integral to the final design of a project. It was fascinating to see how Gehry’s office prepared actual small-scale sculptures so that we could figure out how they would rotate in space and how to best protect them. From my early discussions with Gehry about Calder, it became clear that he could produce a remarkable and unique installation that could create a memorable experience for visitors. Although Calder was known to work with architects and luminaries from other fields during his lifetime, no exhibition of Calder’s work has engaged a major architect in three decades.

Another aspect of planning the show that was critical to me was the desire to slow down people’s looking at the works of art. We purposely limited the selection to feature 50 objects—giving the art ample space to breathe. Gehry’s design underscores how to look at the works. We also wanted to encourage people to spend more time with individual objects so that the gentle movement can be observed. If you take the time in the show, you can easily understand the observation that Jean-Paul Sartre made in the 1940s after visiting Calder’s studio: “But suddenly, when the agitation had left [the mobile] and it seemed lifeless again, its long majestic tail, which until then had not moved, came to life indolently and almost regretfully, spun in the air, and swept past my nose.”

For the complete set of photographs of the installation, click here.

Stephanie Barron, Senior Curator, Department Head of Modern Art

Watching while an artist uses a slingshot to catapult a paint-coated tennis ball onto a wall is a unique experience—but working directly with the artist, and being the one to actually launch the ball, is even more memorable. This was the realization a group of elementary school students arrived at recently when they worked with Los Angeles–based artist Kaz Oshiro in preparation for his LACMA-organized exhibition Kaz Oshiro: Chasing Ghosts.

Opening January 24, 2014, at LACMA’s satellite gallery within Charles White Elementary School near MacArthur Park, the show will feature new work from Oshiro, artworks he selected from LACMA’s collection, and collaborative paintings he made with the students. To create the collective artwork, Oshiro first met the children through grade-level assemblies, where he discussed ways that unconventional tools and processes could be employed to create paintings. To a score of involuntary gasps from the children, Oshiro demonstrated both invented and established techniques for making art, including blowing paint through a tube and sweeping pigment with a broom.

Artist Kaz Oshiro works with a student on a collaborative painting project.

The third-, fourth-, and fifth- grade students experimented with these devices, working directly with Oshiro to create paintings. In addition to using conventional art-making tools, the students swept paint over a canvas with cleaning brushes, poured acrylic from teapots, and, of course, operated the makeshift slingshot. As they worked, they compared the range of effects. Scraping a squeegee across a surface, for example, created thick, bold strokes, while squeezing paint from a bottle formed thin, organic arcs that dripped from gravity.

Students use brushes and squeeze-bottles to contribute to Oshiro’s collaborative wall painting.

By far the most popular tool was the stationary bicycle, which required four people to operate: one to pedal, two to deflect splatters with umbrellas, and one to hold a trough of paint next to the wheel. Students suited up in plastic aprons, ponchos, and shoe covers, and took turns in each position. The children pedaled feverishly while Oshiro held shallow vessels filled with different colors just barely against the tire, spraying paint in compelling patterns.

The surprising marks the students generated through these devices defy the humble nature of the tools that created them. Drips, splashes, and smears serve as documents of the students’ experiments and the physical nature of their process. Inadvertently, the resulting artworks are also an expression of the children’s expanded mindset regarding the limitless possibilities for creating art and what constitutes a painting.

Students operate a stationary bicycle to create paint splatters on the wall.

View this project, and more of Oshiro’s work, at the opening-night celebration of the exhibition Kaz Oshiro: Chasing Ghosts on January 24 from 6 to 8 pm. Discover more of Kaz Oshiro’s work here.

Sarah Jesse, Associate Vice President, Education

Visit LACMA this weekend and you’ll find two new exhibitions, Four Abstract Classicists and Hassan Hajjaj: My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume 1, 2012. Four Abstract Classicists is centered on the works of Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin, a quartet of artists that lead the evolution of Abstract Expressionism to the harder-edged sensibilities of Pop Art and Minimalism during the 1950s and 60s. Then, in Hassan Hajjaj photographer and video artist Hassan Hajjaj presents nine filmed performances of musicians from around the globe in sets and costumes that emphasize globalization and the blurring of cultural identities.

Hassan Hajjaj, still from My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume 1, Helen Venus Bushfire, 2012, 
purchased with funds provided by Art of the Middle East: CONTEMPORARY, courtesy Rose Issa PRojects

To learn more about our collections and exhibitions join in on any of the free, docent-lead tours. On Saturday at noon, walk through See the Light—Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection and learn about photography and its close ties to vision science over the years. On Sunday afternoon witness the beauties of Japanese netsuke or gain a broader understanding of the African Luba culture as demonstrated in Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Tours range from 15 minutes to an hour and are included with each general admission. What will you uncover?

Roberto Ayala

One of the interesting trends in recent curatorial practice is to restage or revisit important historical exhibitions. These shows typically take one of two approaches: faithfully reconstructing an exhibition from the past (such as New York gallery Zwirner & Wirth’s 2008 redo of Dan Flavin’s 1964 exhibition at Green Gallery), or conceiving of a new project that uses a past exhibition as a conceptual jumping-off point (for example, When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes at San Francisco’s CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in 2012, a contemporary riff on the famous Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969).

Four Abstract Classicists, which opened this past Saturday, organized by curator of modern art Carol S. Eliel, falls somewhere between these two tactics. Taking its title from an exhibition of the same name mounted in 1959 at the Los Angeles County Museum in Exposition Park (the institutional predecessor of modern-day LACMA), the show brings together works by the same four Southern California painters who were in the 1959 exhibition: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin. Despite the two exhibitions’ shared title and artists, however, the new show is not a reconstruction; in fact, only one painting from the original grouping—Frederick Hammersley’s Around a round (1959)—appears in the upcoming presentation.

Frederick Hammersley, Around a round, 1959, bequest of Fannie and Alan Leslie, © Frederick Hammersley Foundation

Following the 1959 show, the term “abstract classicism” (a designation meant to signal these painters’ differences from the abstract expressionism of artists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline) continued to be used in reference to Benjamin, Feitelson, Hammersley, and McLaughlin. Interestingly, however, the question of who actually conceived of the 1959 show and its title has been a subject of some contention.

Lorser Feitelson, Hard Edge Line Painting, 1963, Anonymous gift through the Contemporary Art Council, © The Feitelson/Lundeberg Art Foundation

In 1975, an innocuous essay by Paul Karlstrom (who was then the West Coast–area director of the Archives of American Art) for LAICA Journal, a magazine published by the now-defunct Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, mentioned in passing the archives’ acquisition of papers belonging to Jules Langsner, the Los Angeles critic who served as curator of the original Four Abstract Classicists. In response, art historian Peter Selz wrote a letter to Karlstrom asserting it was he, and not Langsner, who initiated the show and suggested its title. Selz’s letter was published in the following issue of LAICA Journal, along with a response by June Harwood, Langsner’s widow (in which she refuted Selz’s claim), and a reprint of a 1959 letter from Benjamin to art critic Sidney Tillim crediting Langsner with forming the idea for the “abstract classicists” group.

Cover of the April­–May 1975 issue of LAICA Journal

Weighing the various claims and counterclaims about who should get credit, art critic Peter Plagens, writing in the same issue of LAICA Journal, offered his assessment—and, it would seem, a final word on the subject:

“Although no one can say for sure who first put the bug in whose ear, especially (and perhaps deliberately) so long after Langsner’s death, it seems “abstract classicism” is nobody’s baby, dating from 1951 or earlier. As to the conception/organization, my understanding is that Karl Benjamin brought Jules Langsner to meet Peter Selz, then teaching at Pomona, and Selz offered the college as a site for the show; Feitelson countered that it ought to be done in a first-class museum in Los Angeles or San Francisco or not at all, the artists agreed, and Selz’s ‘participation’ ended there. As to his conceiving the show, I managed to contact two of the participants, and their answers were, in a word, ‘bullshit!’”

Jennifer King, Wallis Annenberg Curatorial Fellow, Modern Art

LACMA’s Rita Gonzalez and Erin Wright recently invited artist Brian Bress to show his work at LACMA’s Stark Bar, which features a rotating program of video and time-based media. The piece, titled Idiom (Brian, Raffi, Britt), is a high-definition three-channel video. Three different “characters” are depicted, which show Bress’s interest in the ambiguous zone between figurative representation and abstraction. The characters fill the screen, slowly emerging and revealing themselves to the viewer.

Installation image of Brian Bress’s Idiom (Brian, Raffi, Britt) at the Stark Bar at LACMA

Bress plays against the expectations of moving-image work by offering his inventive portraits on flat- screen monitors encased in frames. The slow-motion actions on the screen make his work appear as conventional photographs, or even paintings. Through the use of masks and costumes, Bress’s images depict one or more figures in the abstract. They have been described as inventive, humorous, and “discomfortingly complex.”

Erin Wright and Rita Gonzalez: Let’s start by talking about your studio. You work in a dense, active space in which you’re surrounded by an emporium of the costumes, sculptures, and props that have populated your work over the past almost 10 years of your practice. How has that workspace influenced the choices you’ve made in your videos and installations?

Artist Brian Bress creating Idiom in his studio.

Brian Bress: I’m wrapping up four years in my current studio, and I’m about to move into a larger one, so the idea of how the space I work in changes the work I make has been on my mind. In my current studio, I’ve been mostly restricted to small sets that can contain the upper body of a costumed performer— though like many constraints that artists face, it’s turned out to be a helpful one, as it’s forced me to consider and focus on portraiture and smaller, more intimate performances.

And keeping the props and costumes around the studio is a way of having a sort of physical timeline of past works sitting on the shelves as a reminder of how things have evolved. That timeline is simultaneously a challenge to try different things and a reminder of solutions and ideas that might be worthy of further exploration.

Wright and Gonzalez: Has knowing that your work would be in such a publicly accessible space had an impact on your approach for this commissioned project?

Bress: The type of broad access that a piece gets in the Stark Bar is different from the type of access it would get only a few feet away inside the walls of the museum. But knowing that the work would be in such a publicly accessible space didn’t change the kind of work I was going to make. There are physical qualities of the space that I took into consideration, however.

Wright and Gonzalez: How did the idea for Idiom evolve as you went through various scenarios for using the three monitors in the Stark Bar?

Bress: As ideas for the work developed, I began to think about the advantages the three monitors in the bar/cafe setting offered. Initially, I wanted to make a very different triptych that used masks based on collages, with performers wearing the masks while acting out synchronized movements. But the masks for that piece were all a monochromatic grey, and I was afraid the subtlety of the forms and qualities of the masks might be lost in the given context. And the more I noticed the far distance from which you could see the monitors, the more I considered a more graphic approach to the image. I decided I wanted to work with broad shapes that were readable from afar and that revealed the method of their construction not only through the time a viewer spent looking at them, but through the space leading up to the bar as the viewer came closer to the monitors.

Wright and Gonzalez: You mentioned that your recent residency in Rome [at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Roma (MARCO), in the spring of 2013] and the work that came out of it were on your mind as you developed this project. Can you tell us a bit about that body of work?

Bress: That residency was another opportunity for me to make work specifically for a museum context and to know exactly where the work would be seen. It wasn’t quite site specific, but it was in conversation with the space. [At LACMA], I took that attitude about being in conversation with the space of the museum and the existing architecture, and decided to consider elements around the bar and the museum—from the bar’s red and white chairs to the shows that would be up at the museum at the same time.

Wright and Gonzalez: What’s intriguing about Idiom is how the video uses a reverse form of green screen. Rather than keying in a background using green screen technology, you produce a flattened foreground with the reveal being a backdrop that suggests an animated setting. What is your interest in animation and special effects? Can you talk about the process of making these videos and your use of real-time action with costumed performers?

Bress: My background is in animation. I have a love of drawing and watching drawings move on screen, and this piece follows other pieces in which the viewer gets to watch drawings evolve and “animate.”

And it’s really interesting that you mention green screen. That’s a technology to which I’m not a stranger, and that I’ve used a lot in other types of videos. But I’m always trying to figure out how to avoid it—or, more to the point, how to replace it with practical, in-camera effects that could, in the end, be more special and unique to the process than an effect whose “magic” is tethered to a technology that we all know, and whose mystery is, in my opinion, therefore lessened. The other benefit to using practical effects instead of VFX done with a computer is that, for me, there’s a sense that nothing is filtering the experience of the performance, therefore maybe just generating enough trust or interest to keep a viewer invested in watching what feels like an authentic document.

Wright and Gonzalez: Idiom is up during our Turrell and Calder exhibitions [James Turrell: A Retrospective, through April 6, 2014, and Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, through July 27, 2014]. Did the presence of these exhibitions influence your approach?

Bress: When I shifted to the cutting/more graphic approach to this piece, connections to the work in those shows became obvious. However, I think the approach I took was more allowing those shows to have a passive influence on what I was doing, rather than consciously going through the shows and the works of Turrell and Calder and picking out moments to parrot. And in hindsight, the connections are even clearer than I had imagined they would be when I started.

See Brian Bress’s Idiom (Brian, Raffi, Britt), on view now at the Stark Bar.

Rita Gonzalez, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art
Erin Wright, Director of Artists Initiatives

Have you ever pulled your favorite wool coat out of the closet, only to find that some hungry moths had been busily at work during the summer? Given that today is Christmas, and surely the weather is chilly (in other parts of the country, at least), you may have encountered this problem as you’re searching for warm sweaters. And believe it or not, many of the woolen textile objects in LACMA’s collection have suffered the same fate at some point in their history. In fact, there is one such object currently residing in the textile conservation lab: a bright-red military uniform coat from England.

England, Man’s Military Uniform Coat, 1799–1800, purchased with funds provided by Michael and Ellen Michelson

This handsome coat has suffered insect damage in the form of scattered holes and grazing.

Above: Moth larvae damage woolen objects via two main modes of action: 1) by “grazing” across the fluffy top layer of fibers (which often results in a color shift when the underlying fabric is exposed), 2), by concentrating in a single location, which results in a hole as they chew down through the entire depth of the fabric. As the larvae eat, they extrude a casing, which often can be found stuck to the textile near damaged areas.

As a textile conservator, it is my job to stabilize these areas of damage structurally, while also visually compensating for the losses. Recently, the fiber-arts technique of needle felting has been adapted into the conservator’s repertoire, as a way to achieve both of these objectives simultaneously.

Above: The working set up: to the left are coils of wool roving, which are unspun wool fibers that have been dyed red. By blending the two shades of red, an exact match to the coat can be found. On the right are samples of red wool fabric. This is the substrate onto which the wool plug is felted: the fabric is attached on the inside of the coat and holds the fill in place while simultaneously providing support by spanning the damaged areas. In front is a block of gray foam: this is the working surface onto which the felting is performed using barbed needles, below (two can be seen stuck into the foam block).

Close-up view of the barbed needles—along the tips you can see a series of small upward- facing notches: these grab the fibers and facilitate felting as the needles are moved up and down.

Using sharp, barbed needles and wool roving (unspun wool fibers) in the same red as the jacket, I was able to create small felted woolen plugs, each one tailored to fit the exact shape of every hole.

The video above shows felting in action. By repeatedly piercing the fibers with a barbed needle, they enmesh and become entangled, eventually forming a dense felt. The felting is performed onto a fabric substrate, which supports the plug and provides structural support when attached to the inside of the garment. By trimming along the top surface of each plug with a pair of small scissors, any loose fibers are leveled off, allowing the texture of the plug to more closely mimic the dense texture of the fulled wool.

This technique offers many advantages. For one, the fills are reversible and can be easily removed (this is an important tenet of conservation, and allows one to distinguish between the original materials and the work of the conservator). For another, it allows structural support and visual compensation to be achieved at the same time. Needle felting is both satisfying and successful: by imitating the color, texture, and depth of the surrounding fabric, the hole becomes essentially invisible to the naked eye.

Above, top to bottom: 1) an area of loss; 2) visual compensation using a similarly colored fabric underlay—note the depth of the hole is still visible; 3) the same area of loss filled with a felted plug—note that the plug is able to match the color, depth, and texture of the loss to blend almost invisibly into the surrounding fabric.

You will be able to see the finished product in person when this jacket goes on display for an exciting exhibition about men’s fashion!

Above: Here I am, maneuvering the fiber fill into position. One hole down, just a few more to go!

Anne Getts, Mellon Fellow, Textiles Conservation Center

Think about it: where do you find your inspiration?

If you’ve ever participated in an art class at LACMA, you know that spending time in the galleries before retreating to the studio is par for the course. Students of all ages at LACMA spend quality time looking at works from the permanent collection or temporary exhibitions to inspire their own studio projects, develop ideas, and spark creativity. They examine the thousands of ways that artists before them have used color and materials, solved problems, and conveyed a message, just as artists and designers have always looked to examples from the past.

Earlier this month, we highlighted Closet to Collection, the first of three videos we created with middle-school students from Santa Monica Alternative School House (SMASH) and curators from LACMA’s department of costume and textiles. We hope the videos, made possible by a generous grant from the John B. and Nelly Llanos Kilroy Foundation, will help reveal LACMA’s extensive costume and textiles collection to a wider audience.

The second video in this three-part series explores the idea of inspiration. The same students who participated in our Closet to Collection experiment visited the galleries to investigate costumes by Rodarte and textile designs by Elza Sunderland, as we set out to understand what inspires artists working in the world of textiles.

Students discuss the Rodarte gowns, making connections to the adjacent Italian Renaissance paintings.

The video’s footage was shot last year, when the students visited an installation of gowns designed by Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the two sisters that make up Rodarte. On a recent trip to Italy, the sisters had encountered art that they had only seen before in books, and were struck by the vibrant but chalky colors in the frescoes that Fra Angelico, a monk who was also an artist, painted on the walls of San Marco, a complex of monasteries in Florence. This experience prompted the sisters to design the Fra Angelico collection, a set of gowns that capture the color palette of the Renaissance period and the drape and flow of the fabric depicted in the paintings.

The dresses were appropriately hung in the Italian Renaissance galleries, on the third floor of the Ahmanson Building, alongside artwork from the period that had inspired them. When the SMASH students met with costume and textiles department curator Sharon Takeda, they were able to compare the paintings and gowns for themselves, and see the Rodarte sisters’ direct source of inspiration. This self-constructed discovery was akin to a playful match-up game supporting hands-on learning.

Takeda also revealed the inspiration for the way the gowns were installed in the gallery: the composition of an Italian painting, Christ on the Cross with Saints Vincent Ferrer, John the Baptist, Mark and Antoninus. In the painting, a group clusters around a central figure, just as in the gallery, a group of dresses surrounded a single dress—a painter from 500 years ago inspiring fashion houses and museum installations today!

Master of the Fiesole Epiphany, Christ on the Cross with Saints Vincent Ferrer, John the Baptist, Mark and Antoninus, c. 1491–95, gift of the Ahmanson Foundation

The SMASH students also looked to textile designer Elza Sunderland to discover her muse. Curator Kaye Spilker explained that Sunderland was inspired by the climate in California and her childhood in New York, where as a young girl she would visit museums with her mother. Those museum visits stuck with her: the colors and geometry as seen in her textile design “Pampas—Inca” indicates that she most likely had an impressionable visit to New York’s American Museum of Natural History! Other patterns show her interest in cubism, animals, flowers, and even Sunset Boulevard. Sunderland turned nearly everything she saw or experienced into a whimsical pattern, as evidenced by her prolific career, in which she churned out thousands of textile designs.

Elza Sunderland, Pampas—Inca, 1948, © Henry Sunderland

Man’s Tunic (Uncu) with Tocapu and Stylized Jaguar Pelt Design (double-sided), Bolivia, Lake Titicaca, mid- to late 16th century, American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, New York, © American Museum of Natural History Library, New York

Elza Sunderland, Textile Design, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ from ‘Hollywood’ Series, 1946, Elza Sunderland Textile Design Collections, © Henry Sunderland

Design Inspiration documents this encounter between students and these inspiring—and inspired—artists, and encourages kids, teachers, and families to reflect on their muses.

Stay tuned for our post about the third video in this series, in which the SMASH and other students focus on the idea of collaborative art making.

Karen Satzman, Director, Youth and Family Programs

Say goodbye to 2013 this final weekend of the year at LACMA. On Friday and Saturday take advantage of extended holiday hours as the west side of campus (Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Pavilion) stays open late until 10 pm. That means more time to see favorites like James Turrell: A Retrospective and Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic (both require special tickets) and others you may have not gotten around to yet, like Agnès Varda in Californialand and David Hockney: Seven Yorkshire Landscapes Videos, 2011. Keep in mind, on Fridays L.A. County residents receive free general admission after 3 pm.

Andrew Young, Plane at Aberdour. In Old Avenue, c. 1850, printed c. 1850, the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, gift of The Annenberg Foundation, acquired from Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin

Throughout the weekend guests are invited to free, docent-lead tours of our permanent collection and select exhibitions. Friday at 1 pm, take a stroll in the sculpture garden to learn about French sculptor Auguste Rodin and his works and, later at 3 pm, tour the American art galleries, one of LACMA’s strongest collections. On Saturday at noon take a 50-minute tour of the exhibition See the Light—Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, featuring photos from the inception of the medium and highlighting hundreds of works from hundreds of artists. Lastly, Sunday offers even more tours, with focused 20 minute tours of urban landscapes at 1:30 pm and an overview of the lush Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Here’s to a great new year.

Roberto Ayala

This fall we shared thoughts from college students who spent the summer conversing with visitors to James Turrell: A Retrospective. (Read part one here, and part two here.) Here is the final part of their conversation:

What tips do you have to offer people who haven’t yet visited James Turrell: A Retrospective at LACMA?

Jackeline Acosta (recent graduate, UCLA): It is a very popular show, and it may be slightly overwhelming. But I urge anyone who hasn’t visited yet to do so, because the works are striking and beautiful.

James Turrell, Breathing Light, 2013, LED light into space, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Kayne Griffin Corcoran and the Kayne Foundation, M.2013.1, © James Turrell, Photo © Florian Holzherr

Kristen Laciste (senior, UCLA): I would advise visitors to take their time and not rush through the exhibition, to ask any questions about the works they are viewing, and to stay in line and wait to see the remarkable Ganzfeld (an installation designed to eliminate the viewer’s depth perception), Breathing Light.

Jackeline: Patience is key. From the various conversations I was lucky enough to have with exhibition visitors, I found that they all appreciated how the artworks allowed them to slow down and take, for example, those eight to 10 minutes inside the Ganzfeld to really make an experience of it. After all, James Turrell wants viewers to genuinely draw observations from the art and take time to contemplate light and all its possibilities. If you do, the experience you will have at this exhibition will truly be fantastic.

James Turrell, Afrum (White), 1966, Cross Corner Projection, LACMA, partial gift of Marc and Andrea Glimcher in honor of the appointment of Michael Govan as CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director and purchased with funds provided by David Bohnett and Tom Gregory through the 2008 Collectors Committee, © James Turrell, photo © 2013 Museum Associates LACMA

Marissa Clifford (senior, UCLA): Yes, I would encourage those who haven’t visited the retrospective to hurry to LACMA to catch it, and I would encourage those who have already done so to visit again. Multiple viewings simply reveal new aspects of the work as readily as Light Reignfall (Turrell’s Perceptual Cell installation at the Resnick Pavilion) changes color.

Aida Lugo (recent graduate, Otis College of Art and Design): To those who have yet to see the exhibit I would recommend doing some research, spending some time in nature, and meditating. The exhibition requires a clear mind, a fresh perspective, and a release of expectations. Turrell does a magnificent job illuminating the overlooked and everyday miracles of light, perception and space, leaving us virtually alone to explore the magic of sight, thought, and reflection. We live on a planet with a complicated observation system in us to analyze the sky, nature, ourselves, and each other. Turrell: A Retrospective is like the Olympics of perception.

Jackeline: The benefits of visiting this exhibit when you really have the time to sit down and look at each piece and contemplate, for example, the tiniest color shifts in lights that occur throughout the exhibit, are wonderful.

Elizabeth Gerber, Education and Public Programs