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| Tavares Strachan, Six Thousand Years, 2018 |
| This fall and winter LACMA will present the first L.A. museum survey of Tavares Strachan and an exhibition on the museum's history of collecting Impressionism. |
"Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began" will bring together the Encyclopedia of Invisibility and a series of immersive environments by the Bahamian conceptualist. It runs Oct. 12, 2025–Mar. 29, 2026, in BCAM.
"Collecting Impressionism at LACMA" will be a history of taste, spanning "early acquisitions of American and California Impressionism," "donations of paintings by Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro from major Hollywood collectors," and last year's purchase of a Parisian Street Scene by the bush-league Jean Béraud. (I'm not sure that Degas to Béraud is the arc of taste they'd want to emphasize.) "Collecting Impressionism" will be in the Resnick Pavilion starting Dec. 21, 2025, with closing date to be announced.
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| Jean Béraud, A Parisian Street Scene: Boulevard des Capucines, 1897-98. LACMA, gift of 2024 Collectors Committee with additional funds provided by Rob Levine and Larry Ginsberg |
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| Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Sisters, 1865–66. LACMA, Mr. and Mrs. George Gard De Sylva collection |
Comments
However, since both technical and creative skill are evident in various people, to hang with the big names raises the bar quite high. Nonetheless, a lot of that is still affected by the money, power and politics of the gatekeepers of culture.
As for Tavares Strachan: "[His] artistic practice activates the intersections of art, science, and politics, offering uniquely synthesized points of view on the cultural dynamics of scientific knowledge."
I don't know if he's necessarily so unique and talented to change the general direction of LACMA being "a de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly...not a very good one." But at least his works will be displayed in the Broad versus the Resnick or, eventually, the Geffen.
If Strachan were Japanese, I wonder if a show featuring his art would be clumsily, inappropriately mounted in the Joe Price/Japanese building?