Category: Museums
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Artist a Day: Gary Simmons
I first saw Gary Simmons’s work in the magnificent lobby of CAAM last year. The mural titled, Fade to Black is an homage to classic silent films that featured all-black casts. These films were necessary representations that were created to counter the racist depictions of African-Americans in propaganda films like Birth of a…
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Artist a Day 2018: Mapping Midpoints
It’s February and the Culture Shock Art Artist a Day challenge is back for its 4th year! I’m excited to bring you some incredible artists whose work I will share every day this month. Some posts will include narrative bios of the artists, while in other posts I will let the art speak for itself.…
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The Art that Helped Me Survive 2017
Look, I know it’s dramatic, but 2017 was tough and I’m not even going to try to sugar coat it. Despite this, I saw some incredible work that helped me make some sense of the world we find ourselves in today. Here are 9 highlights: 1. Kenyatta Hinkle, The Evanesced @ CAAM The Evanesced at CAAM…
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Radical Women Take Center Stage in Two Important L.A. Exhibitions
Two exhibitions at the Hammer Museum and CAAM in Los Angeles have taught me one important thing: radical women get things done. If you silence them, they find a way to speak, if you hide them, they will be seen, and if you ignore their work, they will make their presence known. History has an…
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A Word on Mentors
The artists in this photo inspire what I write. Writers like Holland Cotter inspire how I write. This year I have been blessed with the good fortune of having Holland Cotter, the co-chief art critic for the New York Times, as my mentor. During this time he has been both a sage and a sounding…
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Yayoi Kusama Comes to the Broad in October
On September 1 the Broad will place 50,000 tickets on sale online for its highly anticipated fall show and anxious Angelenos hitting refresh on their browsers might end up feeling like they’re in an endless infinity loop. Consider it visual dexterity training for Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors opening in October. The traveling exhibition’s L.A. layover will feature 6…
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Kerry James Marshall’s Mastry Examines the Power of the Image
In 2008, artist Kerry James Marshall was the subject of an oral history interview with the Smithsonian Institute where he recalled his childhood memory of the Watts riots of 1965. He remembered hearing sirens and seeing smoke, miles away coming from where he used to live in Nickerson Gardens. Over the course of the afternoon…
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Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories
When artists leave us too soon we are reminded of their greatness in the items they left behind. Musicians have libraries of unreleased tracks or compositions, photographers leave behind negatives, contact sheets and undeveloped film, painters have hidden canvases or incomplete work and writers leave behind their words—ideas that weren’t fully developed, concepts that never came to…
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Kevin Beasley at the Hammer
Last month Daily Serving featured my shotgun review of Kevin Beasley’s current installation at the Hammer Museum. Check it out! The installation will be on view at the Hammer through April 23, 2017. Daily Serving: Hammer Projects: Kevin Beasley at the Hammer Museum For more on Kevin Beasley click here.
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Artist of the Day Challenge (26): Henry Taylor
Upon graduating from Cal Arts in the mid 90’s, Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor has cultivated a career as a portrait artist who uses his medium to connect with his subjects. That familiarity shows through in his work as most of his portraits come from impromptu encounters with the people who find themselves in his orbit: family, friends andhomeless people in…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 