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| Ken Gonzales-Day, Urban Excavation: Ancestors, Avatars, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, Casts, Copies, Deities, Figures, Funerary Objects, Gods, Guardians, Mermaids, Metaphors, Mothers, Possessions, Sages, Spirits, Symbols, and Other Objects (detail), 2026 |
Los Angeles has its share of mortifyingly bad public transit art. But maybe that's changing. Opening May 8th in Museum Row, the Wilshire/Fairfax Metro station will feature commissions by Ken Gonzales-Day, Karl Haendel, and Susan Silton. All are serious L.A. artists with the ability to speak outside the art world bubble.
The subway stop opens four days after the Geffen Galleries did, and Gonzalez-Day's
Urban Excavation… will offer a sampler of LACMA's post-colonial encyclopedia. The piece is glass tile, a medium now capable of rendering durable photographic images at civic scale.
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| Karl Haendel, Hands and Things, 2026 |
Handel likewise uses glass tile to picture hands holding items representative of the Academy Museum, the tar pits, and other landmarks.
Executed in enameled steel and English, Spanish, and Korean pronouns, Silton's WE, OUR, US evokes the intertwined interests of urban life.
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| Susan Silton, WE, OUR, US, 2026 |
Comments
https://annadarrow.substack.com/p/loving-on-la
Eve Babitz, Substack:
“LA is over” “LA is dead” — I’ve seen this sentiment bouncing around the Substack echo chamber for about a year, and as a mean-spirited Bostonian, it made me giddy... Then, I actually went to LA. It’s not “dead” and anyone who says as much is boring and needs to deploy some nuance. To struggle is not to die.
The amount of times I’ve caught myself participating in LA slander... — “it’s too big, you have to drive everywhere, the smog, the Kardashians, the earthquakes” — .... So yeah, when I heard people saying “LA is over” it made me a little happy. But then I finally got out to LA a few weeks ago and had the time of my life...
Signing up for memberships to LACMA...so we could attend the previews of the David Geffen Galleries... Our lovely “art friends” (one curator, one UCLA PhD) were speaking in hushed tones about how the space doesn’t work for the art — but as a layperson who responds strongly to ~aesthetics~ and ~vibes~ I was in heaven — the space is like nothing I’ve seen before and so fun to wander through, a surprise around every corner. Allegedly, the new galleries haven’t been well-received in the art world — the issue seems to be the curation, not the architecture (which is spectacular)... [End quote]
The look of gray concrete is excessive, but now the biggest "oops!" to me is all the wall and floor spaces that seem just the opposite of cluttered. That's even more of a goof if there are objects in the museum's collection that deserve to be (or should be) on display.
And, yea, okay, more artworks in the next several months are supposed to be brought out of storage. However, when LACMA can't even get the right color of certain wall labels or metal wall clamps, giving them the benefit of the doubt doesn't necessarily make sense.
> Norton Simon, and
> use the trains to get to
> Braod and LACMA?
If a person is located in downtown LA, there's now a fairly direct transit link between the Broad and LACMA. There's also a link between downtown LA and Pasadena, but it's not walking distance, unless you consider 3/4 to 1 mile walking distance----from the Simon to the 2 nearest train stations.
An intellectual artist. He makes you think.
Happy to see the recognition he's getting from the Metro installation and Guggenheim Fellowship.
--- J. Garcin
Great thanks.
> fond of walking.
When I was in Manhattan, I realized the weather of the Northeast helps with walking. The human body heats up a lot when doing any type of exertion, so strolling around is easier when it's cooler instead of warmer.
Overheating in LA's weather is less likely to occur when in the shade and stationary. Which is why participants in a marathon always hope for cooler or even cold weather, and clouds instead of sunlight.