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Sharon Ellis, Winter, 1994. LBMA, gift of National Endowment for the Arts and 1995 Collectors Circle
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The Long Beach Museum of Art had a Collector's Circle funding acquisitions from 1994 through 2014. It worked much like LACMA's better-known Collectors Committee: Donors met once a year to vote on proposed artworks, which were purchased in order of popularity until the pledged funds ran out. Over its 20 year run the Collectors Circle acquired over 100 works. About half are now on view at LBMA in "Collective Vision: Collector's Circle Museum Acquisitions" (through May 4, 2025).
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| Charles and Ray Eames, La Chaise, designed 1948, produced 1991. Long Beach Museum of Art, gift of 1999 Collectors Circle |
The Circle's purchases were mainly of Southern California artists. Some helped fill in a history of local modernism—Mabel Alvarez, Charles and Ray Eames, Lorser Feitelsen, Karl Benjamin, and Billy Al Bengston. The more contemporary buys skewed conservative. The Circle favored easel paintings and earnest figuration when such things were considered unhip if not irrelevant.
The most interesting pieces here transcend the categories. The exhibition starts with a bang, a hallucinogenic tripscape by Sharon Ellis (top of post). LBMA gave Ellis a 2002 retrospective. In a somewhat analogous spirit is a Takako Yamguchi landscape, Repetition & Difference. Yamaguchi will be getting her first retrospective—at age 72—at MOCA.
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| Takako Yamaguchi, Repetition & Difference, 2005. LBMA, gift of 2006 Collectors Circle |
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| Roderick Briggs, Left Turn in Late Afternoon, 1974. LBMA, gift of 2007 Collectors Circle |
I'd like to know more about Roderick Briggs, a painter who seems to favor looming shadows on streets, and Peter Zokozky, Long Beach's Master of the Ambulatory Livestock.
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| Peter Zokosky, Standing Sheep, 2001. LBMA, gift of 2002 Collectors Circle |
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| Mineo Mizuno, Water Drop, about 2001. LBMA, gift of 2003 Collectors Circle with additional support from Charles and Margaret Durnin |
Mineo Mizuno rethinks the scholar's desk in glazed ceramic. The Japanese characters on his outsized water drop roughly translate
Serenity now!  |
| Danny Heller, Cul-de-sac House at Sunset, 2009. LBMA, gift of 2010 Collectors Circle |
Comments
However, a Jackson Pollock or Jean-Michel Basquiat can be appreciated because its signature is at least readily identifiable - sort of like a fingerprint -compared with the works in Long Beach. They're good, but any number of them may be from the hands of the countless thousands of skilled artists or craftsmen toiling away for generations.
As for LACMA, I wonder if they have some secret handshake deal with various commercial art galleries or collectors trying to boost the value of Obscure/Esoteric Artist A or Obscure/Esoteric Artist B?
I linked to MOCA's notice for their upcoming show of Yamaguchi's oeuvre.
That's when I saw something even better: her "Procession," of 2024. MOCA describes it as oil and metal leaf on canvas. I would never have conceived of that combination. That why artists' media choices should be specified. Like "human" is enough, without care mentioning gender.
But I guess that's not an important thing in LA. Sad.
> pause before posting your
> obscure and esoteric
> scribbles?
Hey, do you think LACMA has a sweetheart deal with commercial art galleries to give some of their clients more exposure? If so, ka-ching!
Regardless, if Govan tries to insert contemporary works into the Geffen Galleries, he needs to be slapped upside the head.