UCLA Arts Announces Spring 2019 Public Events Calendar

The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture will present more than 150 public events this spring. Featured in exhibitions, lectures, screenings, and performances are emerging and established artists, designers, architects, dancers, writers, musicians, policymakers, and cultural critics whose diverse work and perspectives will enliven the campus - and Los Angeles - and will offer insight and context for our current cultural climate. Many of the events are free, thanks to the support of donors, and all are open to the public.

A selection of UCLA Arts spring events follows. For more details and a complete listing of events, see the UCLA Arts calendar.

Exhibitions

Through May 10: The top-ranked UCLA Department of Art continues its series of four final exhibitions of work in various media by graduating M.F.A. candidates.

April 7-Oct. 6: Guatemalan Masks: Selections from the Jim and Jeanne Pieper Collection features 80 masks depicting animals, folk personae, and historical figures that are deeply rooted in Guatemalan religiosity and popular culture. On April 6, the Fowler Museum at UCLA presents the exhibition's opening program, featuring a curator lecture, exhibition preview, a Guatemalan marimba ensemble, and a traditional dance troupe.

April 16-30: The UCLA Department of Design Media Arts presents the DMA M.F.A. final exhibition featuring new work from the 2019 graduating M.F.A. class. Works span the genres of interactive installation, performance, sculpture, software, sound, print, and video.

May 18-Sept. 15: Hammer Projects: Andrea Fraser presents the work of Andrea Fraser, chair of the UCLA art department. Since the 1980s, Fraser has achieved renown for performances that interrogate social structures with humor and pathos, aligning herself with feminism and institutional critique. During the exhibition, "Andrea Fraser: Collected Interviews, 1990-2018," a publication coedited by the art historian Rhea Anastas and the artist Alejandro Cesarco will be published by A.R.T. Press, and Fraser will premiere a new performance work in the Billy Wilder Theater.

June 9-Sept. 1: The Hammer Museum at UCLA will present Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel, the first American survey of one of the United Kingdom's most influential artists. During the past 30 years, Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. On opening day, Lucas is joined in conversation by Maggie Nelson, critic, author, poet, and 2016 MacArthur Fellow.

June 10 and 11: The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design's RUMBLE is an end-of-year exhibition between its two venues: Perloff Hall on the UCLA campus and the IDEAS campus in Culver City. The exhibition engages students, faculty, and the international design community with 20,000 square feet of studio and program installations, 240 projects on view, and 90 leading critics and practitioners.

Performances

April 5: UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) in association with Center Theatre Group presents The White Album By Joan Didion, a performance created by Lars Jan/Early Morning Opera. This multimedia performance uses Didion's seminal essay to apply a uniquely inventive approach to the intersection between observation, storytelling, audience participation, choreography, and architecture. The set was designed by Georgian Huljich, UCLA assistant adjunct professor of architecture and urban design, and her firm, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S.

April 12: An Irish musical group, The Gloaming, dwells at a crossroads, enhancing traditional Irish music's rich, melancholic tones with modern hues of jazz, contemporary classical, and experimental music. Presented by CAP UCLA at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel.

April 16: To commemorate the centennial of Merce Cunningham, the Merce Cunningham Trust is co-producing Night of 100 Solos, the largest Cunningham event ever created. A total of 100 dancers from around the world will be divided over four stages in Paris, London, New York City and Los Angeles for one night only on Merce's 100th birthday, which is April 16. On each of these stages, the dancers will perform 100 different Cunningham solos composed into an event with live music and a special set design. Presented by CAP UCLA.

April 24: The UCLA Art and Global Health Center and UCLA Prison Education Program present performances from the Center for Theater of the Oppresed, Rio de Janeiro for a night of activist forum theater. The audience will be invited on stage to participate in the dramatic action to stimulate dialogue about gender, race, and violence.

Jun. 6 and 7: The UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance presents First Hand: In-progress Choreography from WAC/Dance Faculty featuring new work by faculty artists Kyle Abraham, Ros Warby, Jackie Lopez, and André Zachary.

Lectures

April 9: Los Angeles-based artist Gelare Khoshgozaran will give a lecture as the design media arts department's arts council speaker this spring. Her work, which was featured in the Hammer Museum's Made in L.A. 2018 biennial, explores the personal and political effects of displacement and the potential for transnational intimacy through video, performance, installation, and writing.

April 15: The architecture and urban design department will present a lecture by Emanuel Christ, co-founder of Christ & Gantenbein, a leading architectural practice in Basel, Switzerland. Interested in the sustainability of form, Christ & Gantenbein's landmark projects mix the ancient and modern in beguiling ways.

April 25: The art department presents an artist lecture by Stan Douglas at the Hammer Museum. Since 1990, Douglas's films, videos, and photographs have appeared in exhibitions internationally, including four Venice Biennales and Documentas IX, X, and XI.

May 15: The Fowler Museum presents Brokering the Sacred: A Panel on the Ethics of Collecting Native Art. The repatriation of Native arts during the last 30 years has demonstrated the sustainability of indigenous knowledge and survivance strategies. How might this moment speak to the viability of the arts as cultural transmitters rather than solely objects of capital worth?

May 23: The art department presents an artist lecture by Carmen Winant at the Hammer Museum. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Winant is an artist and writer; assistant professor of visual studies and contemporary art history at Columbus College of Art and Design; dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a co-editor of The Highlights Journal.

May 29: Artist Porfirio Gutiérrez, a specialist in Zapotec dyeing and weaving, will discuss his artistic practice, informed by the traditions of his village, Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca, famous for weaving and one of the few towns where the Zapotec dialect is still spoken and many ancient traditions are still maintained. Presented by the Fowler Museum.

One of the twelve prestigious professional schools at UCLA, the School of the Arts and Architecture offers leading programs in four degree-granting departments: Architecture and Urban Design, Art, Design | Media Arts and World Arts and Cultures/Dance, and one school-wide minor, the Visual and Performing Arts Education program (VAPAE). Our commitment to innovative education, pioneering research, dynamic public service, and community engagement is fueled by our unwavering belief in the fundamental value of creativity and the artist's unique ability to change the world and shape the future.

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