LA/LA Officially Closes on 1/28 with Nearly a Quarter of the Exhibitions Due to Travel

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA will officially close on January 28, 2018, after the presentation throughout Southern California of hundreds of concurrent exhibitions, programs, and events about Latin American and Latino art. With the support of $16.3 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, and five years of research and planning, more than 70 cultural institutions ranging from small community-based centers to the region's largest museums participated in this unprecedented, four-month-long exploration of the rich past and vital present of Latin American and Latino art.

Now, audiences in cities across the US and around the world will have the opportunity to experience 18 of the critically acclaimed exhibitions presented as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. Cities where the traveling exhibitions will be shown include Albuquerque, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Houston, Lima, Madrid, Mexico City, Miami, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, and São Paulo.

Jim Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, said, "Although Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA will officially close at the end of January, in many ways this is just the beginning. Over the last four months, our many partners reexamined and realigned narratives of art history through their exhibitions and events, bringing together the many connections between Latin American and Latino art without regard to borders or categories. Their discoveries will live on in the many exhibitions that will travel far beyond Los Angeles, and in the major permanent legacy of this initiative: the remarkable body of publications and curricula the collaborators have produced. This scholarship is the permanent contribution of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA to the history of art."

Cuno continued, "PST: LA/LA was an unqualified success for Los Angeles, Southern California, and the world, and very much strengthened the reputation and reach of the Pacific Standard Time initiative."

Among the exhibitions that will tour are broad thematic and historical surveys such as Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, organized by the Hammer Museum, traveling to the Brooklyn Museum in New York and Pinacoteca de São Paulo in Brazil; Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas, organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will travel in February; and Memories of Underdevelopment, co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museo Jumex in Mexico City and Museo de Arte de Lima in Peru, the two venues where the exhibition will also travel.

Several of the touring exhibitions focus on the work of single artists, including Valeska Soares: Any Moment Now, organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art with the Phoenix Art Museum, where it will travel in March; Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum, traveling to the Frost Art Museum; and David Lamelas: A Life of Their Own, organized by the CSU Long Beach University Art Museum, traveling to Fundación Costantini, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires in Argentina. More information on Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions scheduled to tour is available here.

In Los Angeles and throughout Southern California, more than 20 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions will remain on view at partner museums beyond the official close of the initiative. For more information, please visit pacificstandardtime.org.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA has produced a permanent legacy of ground-breaking scholarship on Latin American and Latino art through the more than 60 catalogues that have been published, documenting the research for and celebrating the vibrant diversity of the PST: LA/LA exhibitions. In addition, some Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA partners are creating projects that will allow their exhibitions to take new forms. The Hammer Museum is creating a digital archive from its Radical Women exhibition, which will become available to the public in 2019. The Autry Museum of the American West, whose exhibition LA RAZA examines how the eponymous, LA.-based activist newspaper-turned-magazine provided a forum for Chicano political and cultural expression from 1967 to 1977, has launched a Citizen Journalism Project to further engage the Los Angeles community. The project was inspired by the many visitors who have recognized the events and people portrayed in the exhibition's photographs. Students and faculty from Chapman University have built a new app, called "My Barrio Murals," inspired by the exhibition My Barrio: Emigdio Vasquez and Chicana/o Identity in Orange County, enabling users to locate Vasquez's extant murals around Orange County, learn more about their subjects, and find information on murals that were destroyed.

To document and assess the benefits of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA beyond the realm of art history, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), the Getty, and Bank of America have commissioned an economic impact report, which will be published in spring 2018.

The Making of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
The Getty began working on Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA in response to the success of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980, which took place in 2011 and focused on the birth of the LA art scene. The Getty and its planning partners, including representatives from LACMA, the Hammer, MOCA, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and other experts selected Latin American and Latino art as the topic for a new collaboration to explore.

According to Deborah Marrow, Director of the Getty Foundation, "The relationships and artistic connections between Latin America and Los Angeles are long-standing and deep, which is why we knew Southern California would be the ideal vantage point to view this rich, varied, and complex body of work. Los Angeles was founded in 1781 as part of New Spain, and more than half the current population of Los Angeles traces its roots to Latin America. This was also an opportunity to rewrite art history, and create a legacy of scholarship through the publications that would accompany the exhibitions."

Over the course of five years of planning, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA grew in size and scope. The project launched publicly in May 2014 with an initial round of research grants from the Getty Foundation, followed by a second round of grants in March 2016 for implementing the exhibitions, film series, publications, and programs. In total, the Getty Foundation awarded $16.3 million to 50 organizations, including grants for the Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, an 11-day celebration of performance art organized by the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT); performing arts programs organized by The Music Center, LA Phil, and USC Annenberg; and a robust K-12 education program in partnership with the LA Promise Fund and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). In addition to the grant recipients, more than two dozen other institutions joined the initiative, bringing the total number of participants to more than 70.

Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of LACMA, one of the planning partners of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, said, "LACMA is proud to have presented five exhibitions as part of this great initiative. While there have been significant individual exhibitions of Latin American art elsewhere in the US, there has never been a chance to compare Latin American and Latino art on such a large scale and in relation to one another, and from the singularly illuminating perspective of Los Angeles and Southern California."

Pilar Tompkins Rivas, Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum, said, "One of the hallmarks of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA was that each museum chose the story it wanted to tell and had the opportunity to conduct original research. We have been proud to present the first comprehensive retrospective of the photographer Laura Aguilar, an exhibition spanning more than three decades of her career, highlighting themes of race, class, gender, literacy, and the body and demonstrating how the artist's consideration of these issues challenges prevailing notions of beauty, sexuality, and cultural or ethnic identities."

Chon Noriega, Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, another planning partner for the initiative, said, "Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA came at the perfect time to explore cultural commonalities across the Western hemisphere through a deeply collaborative initiative. For our part, we've partnered with Vincent Price on Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell and the Autry on LA RAZA, and also lent materials from our extensive archive to four other exhibitions. Our most ambitious effort teamed up with LACMA and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Home-So Different, So Appealing for a very different kind of exhibition-one that featured Latino and Latin American artists side by side, and that also examined fundamental changes in the universal concept of 'home' taking place around the world since the 1950s."

Tim Whalen, John E. and Louise Bryson Director of the Getty Conservation Institute, said, "Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA was rooted in research from its inception and shared the discoveries that resulted from several years of scholarship undertaken by scientists, conservators, and curators who worked with us from throughout the Americas. For Making Art Concrete we collaborated with the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros to examine the strategies and material choices of avant-garde painters associated with the Concrete art movement in Argentina and Brazil. These paintings were displayed alongside information on the artists' pioneering new techniques and materials."

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA By the Numbers
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA featured an extraordinary number of artists and artworks and hundreds of exhibitions, events, and programs. Below are some key facts and figures of the project.

More than 1,100 artists from more than 45 countries in Latin America, North America, and Europe were featured.

More than 70 museums and cultural partners across Southern California participated, from San Diego to Santa Barbara and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs.

The initiative yielded more than 60 exhibition catalogues, with newly unearthed documentation and comprehensive illustrations.

More than 75 commercial galleries throughout Los Angeles presented exhibitions, performances, and public programs featuring Latin American and Latino artists.

Grants totaling $16.3 million were awarded by the Getty Foundation to 50 organizations.

Support for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

"The bank invests in projects like the first Pacific Standard Time project in 2011 and Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA because we recognize the arts as an important economic driver for the region as well as a vital cultural bridge for the Southland and beyond. Clearly, more than ever, the arts matter," said Raul A. Anaya, Greater Los Angeles Market President for Bank of America.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA Leadership Council
The Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA Leadership Council includes The Broad Art Foundation, John and Louise Bryson, Megan and Peter Chernin, Robert Day, Cástulo de la Rocha and Zoila Escobar, Stephen English and Molly Munger, David Fisher and Marianna Fisher, Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, Rob Lovelace and Alicia Miñana, Ron and Jane Olson, Anne Rothenberg, Elizabeth Segerstrom, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle, Walter Ulloa and Alexandra Seros, Dr. Richard and Rebecca Zapanta.

Lead Sponsors
Lead sponsors are the California Community Foundation, Design Miami, The James Irvine Foundation, Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, Montage Beverly Hills, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., South Coast Plaza, and Terra Foundation for American Art.

Debra Gunn Downing, Executive Director, Marketing for South Coast Plaza, said, "South Coast Plaza was pleased to take part once again in Pacific Standard Time by providing branded shuttle buses to transport journalists and special guests from venue to venue throughout the opening week. Support for arts events such as Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is and will continue to be a significant element of South Coast Plaza's heritage."

Additional support was provided by Accenture, GRoW @ Annenberg, The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Rose Hills Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. James Ukropina, and Weingart Foundation. The media partners for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA were Jezebel/Fusion and Los Angeles Magazine.

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