Fall Preview 2024

Olafur Eliasson: Kaleidoscope for plural perspectives, 2024. Photo: Henri Lacoste / Studio Olafur Eliasson. (c) 2024 Olafur Eliasson

"Art & Science Collide," the third and largest Getty-sponsored PST ART collaboration, launches this fall with over 70 exhibitions throughout Southern California. Also on the schedule are ancient Thrace, the legacy of Photorealism, Christina Ramberg, and a new wing for the Natural History Museum. Below, a selective list of shows both under and outside the PST umbrella.

Abd al-Karim al-Misri, Astrolabe with Lunar Mansions, 1227-28. History of Science Museum, University of Oxford. Image (c) History of Science Museum, University of Oxford

September 2024

The Getty Center's "Lumen: The Art and Science of Light" explores the concept of light in the Long Middle Ages (800 to 1600 AD) of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim culture. Installations by Helen Pashgian (already on view) and Charles Ross provide a more contemporary perspective. "Lumen" runs Sep. 10-Dec. 8, 2024.

In all there are nine PST ART exhibitions on the Getty Center campus, including thematically related installations of photography, manuscripts, and drawings. The Getty Research Institute revisits an earlier art-science crossover in "Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)" Established in 1967, E.A.T. sponsored collaboration between Bell Labs scientists and such cultural thought leaders as John Cage, Yvonne Rainer, and Robert Rauschenberg. (Sep. 10, 2024- Feb. 23, 2025) 

Ryoji Ikeda, point of no return, 2018. (c) Ryoji Ikeda, courtesy of Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art

The Hammer Museum's "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice" was conceived in the epoch of COVID and George Floyd, and is now being realized by guest curators Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake. 20+ artists confront the pivotal issue of our time. (Sep. 14, 2024-Jan. 5, 2025)

Frederick Edwin Church, Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford

The Huntington's "Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis" (Sep. 14, 2024-Jan. 6, 2025) juxtaposes scientific texts and art to trace the stirrings of environmental awareness/dread, from the Industrial Revolution to 1930. Works by British Romantics, the Hudson River School, and the Arts and Crafts movement will be on view, as well as documents of Los Angeles' fraught history with oil and water.

The Palm Springs Art Museum's "Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945-1990" (Sep. 14, 2024-Feb. 24, 2025) connects West Coast physics (Caltech, JPL, Mount Wilson) to modernism (Man Ray, Helen Lundeberg, James Turrell). 

Olafur Eliasson will create an optical wonderland in MOCA Geffen, "playfully engag[ing] with material and immaterial qualities of the museum's architecture." "Olafur Eliasson: OPEN" runs Sep. 15, 2024-July 6, 2025.

Elephant diorama, Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its wildlife dioramas by reopening a diorama hall that's been closed for decades and publishing a book on the displays' history. "Reframing Dioramas: The Art of Preserving Wilderness" offers a walk-through view of the subject via the lenses of art, nature, colonialism, and museology.  (Sep. 15, 2024-Sep. 14, 2025)

At LACMA, "We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art" (Sep. 15, 2024-Sep. 1, 2025) synthesizes new technical analyses with contemporary Indigenous perspectives. 

George Washington Carver with painting

George Washington Carver studied art before he switched to agricultural science. He painted floral still lifes throughout his career, earning praise from Time magazine (1941) as a "Black Leonardo." The California African American Museum plumbs the scientist's artistic achievement in "World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project" (Sep. 18, 2024-Mar. 2, 2025).

The Museum of Jurassic Technology's "A Veiled Gazelle—Intimations of the Infinite and Eternal" (Sep 24, 2024-ongoing) will foreground the math behind medieval Islamic ornament. The exhibition will include a stereoscopic film on Al-Andalus and a newly created latticed wood ceiling that will remain in place. Reservations are required.

October 2024

"Scientia Sexualis" is a Foucault-inspired group show riffing on the science, such as it is, of sex, gender, and pleasure. Artists span Louise Bourgeois, Nicole Eisenman, Wangechi Mutu, Joey Terrill, and Jess Fan. A catalog promises to be equally ambitious. (ICA/LA, Oct. 5, 2024-Mar. 2, 2025)  

Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures has two PST exhibitions opening Oct. 6. "Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema" (through July 13, 2025) examines the use of color in films and the technologies that made it possible. "Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema" (through Apr. 12, 2026) features props, costumes and concept art from Blade Runner, Tron, The Matrix, etc. 

Christina Ramberg, Untitled (Hand), 1971. Private collection, New York

The Hammer's latest reappraisal of an under-appreciated artist is "Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective." In the late 1960s Ramberg evolved a feminist/fetish pop, painting cropped details of women's bodies that veer into erotic abstraction. Debuting at the Art Institute of Chicago, it arrives at the Hammer Oct. 12, 2024 to Jan. 5, 2025, and travels to Philadelphia. 

"Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency" uncovers the Cold War roots of today's all-seeing algorithms.  On view is spy tradecraft East and West, along with artistic reactions to surveillance by Sadie Barnette, Ken Gonzales-Day, Xu Bing, and others. It's at the Wende Museum Oct. 13, 2024-Apr. 6, 2025.

"Mapping the Infinite: Cosmologies Across Cultures" is a curatorial collaboration between LACMA, the Griffith Observatory, and the Carnegie Observatories (i.e., Mt. Wilson). It brings together artistic conceptions of the universe from Neolithic Europe, Mesopotamia, East Asia, the Islamic world, Indigenous America, and the U.S. (LACMA, Oct. 20, 2024-Mar. 2, 2025)

November 2024

At the Getty Villa, "Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece" is a loan exhibition of gold, silver, and bronze objects by the Thracians, frenemies of the Greeks. (Nov. 4, 2024–Mar. 3, 2025)

John Ruskin, The Mont Blanc range from near Chamonix, 1843. Getty Museum

"Exploring the Alps" considers the mountain range as subject and muse for 19th-century European artists. It's a focus show built around Giovanni Segantini's large pastel Study for "La Vita," acquired by the Getty in 2018. (Getty Center, Nov. 12, 2024-Apr. 27, 2025)

Joseph Beuys, 7000-Eichen-Tüte, 1982. The Broad

The Broad's "Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature" (Nov. 16, 2024-Apr. 6, 2025) will show over 400 Beuys multiples from its comprehensive holdings. Related is "Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar," an L.A. tree-planting project inspired by Beuys' 7000 Oaks.

Frederick Fisher and Partners, NHM Commons rendering

The Natural History Museum debuts its Frederick Fisher and Partners-designed NHM Commons expansion (75,000-sf. & a new dinosaur) with a free block party on Nov. 17, 2024. The wing's Welcome Center will be admission-free.

Vija Celmins, Night Sky #4, 1992. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

MOCA Grand Ave. has a major historical survey of Photorealism and its legacy. "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" assembles work by 40-some artists including Robert Bechtel, Vija Celmins, Richard Estes, Idelle Weber, Barkley Hendricks, Amy Sherald, Kehinde Wiley, Sayre Gomez, and Vincent Valdez. It sounds like the group show to watch.

Ana Segovia, I've been meaning to tell you #3, 2023. Courtesy of Jumex Collection

Opening the same day is a MOCA focus show on Mexico City artist Ana Segovia. It's not part of PST, but Segovia's film-inspired paintings of queer masculinity are no less about light and color. (MOCA Grand Ave., Nov. 24, 2024-May 4, 2025)

"Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film" (LACMA, Nov. 24, 2024-July 13, 2025) offers 100+ artworks tracing the influence of PhotoShop and generative AI, among other technologies, on image making.

December 2024

Construction of Peter Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries at LACMA is due to be complete circa year's end. Don't expect a quick opening, but do expect renewed chatter on Zumthor's late-career mega-commission. Blob, black dahlia, or white whale?

David Geffen Galleries, LACMA, construction view