Fragmentation in Long Beach
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| Barbara Takenaga, Shaker Blue, 2024 (lithograph, silkscreen, and hand coloring). Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer |
Real estate developer Jordan D. Schnitzer has an eponymous museum in Portland, Ore., for his massive collection of contemporary prints and multiples. A selection will be coming to Long Beach this summer. Organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, "Positive Fragmentation: From the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family" draws on art historian Lucy Lippard's notion of a feminist collage aesthetic that "willfully takes apart what is or is supposed to be and rearranges it in ways that suggest what it could be."
About 180 prints will be shown at the Long Beach Museum of Art. The artists, all women or nonbinary, span Louise Bourgeois, Nicole Eisenman, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Wendy Red Star, Betye Saar, and Kara Walker.
"Positive Fragmentation" runs June 26 to Sep. 27, 2026 at LBMA Ocean.
Comments
The "all women or nonbinary" stipulation (or another aspect of today's gatekeeping) makes me think of the Geffen Galleries. Various people judge the building and its current installation as either good or not so good.
And, okay, this blog entry is about an exhibit in Long Beach's art museum, over 25 miles from LACMA. But both that one and the one in LA have an overly regional quality about them, regrettably less must-see and more strictly-for-locals.
LACMA's main exhibition space comes off too much like what's found in a natural-history or arts-crafts museum. Or, again, way too regional.
When LACMA's current director retires, the next one will hopefully do a better job. Then again, it has been over 60 years since Richard Brown stepped down and variations of the same pattern keep occurring..
Why This Jarring
New Museum Is a
Failure for Art
Lovers, but a Hit
for LA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH2ZiFrAEJo&t=7s
@NotSpockToo, Youtube:
Thank you for this video. I was on the fence, leaning towards not going, and your video showed me that I would never want to go here. What a mess. It's hard to believe a curator was involved.
@lbw1325, Youtube:
How on earth do they permit these paintings to have sunlight touching them? Or prevent visitors from touching them or any of the objects on display?! Its insane.
@savvysearch, Youtube:
I hope you didn't skip the Broad building. Everyone is visiting the Geffen Galleries and missing out on the actual crowd pleaser: the modern art collection. That collection has a more traditional display there. There's a grouping of 10 Giacomettis that is gorgeous and all the Picassos, Bracusi's Bird in Space and Modigliani as well.
I think it is an upgrade of the Marcel Breuer's old Whitney in New York but with so much more light and space to wander -- and the built space's connection to Los Angeles is a definite hit (I really want to see where/how they exhibit David Hockney's "Mulholland Drive" painting.) I personally love the curated space ocean concept and giving prime real estate (as you say) to ceramics as an overlooked medium of art is much appreciated.
I do agree that more information about the art works might help audiences who aren't the museum type to better appreciate the relationships the curators are trying to evoke by putting certain works in relationship to each other. I have not visited in person, but from what I've seen this is a great contribution of LA, West Coast, and American museum culture -- can't wait to visit in person. (For the commentators who want a more 19th century interior, come visit us here in New York City at the Met, the Frick, or the Morgan!)
@WaKincaid, Youtube:
EGOS & ARCHITECTURE
@emjayay, Youtube:
The American Indian Smithsonian museum in DC is also not organized by area or tribe or time period. I know enough about that culture and art that I generally knew what I was looking at but even for me I found it a somewhat disorienting jumble. For this museum it would be the same: I've also had a lot of art history education so I would generally get it, but to most people it would be like going to a yard sale. And having to search for the captions far from the art pieces would be annoying.
@realalien1, Youtube::
If you like a concrete freeway overpass and a confusing cold space with hardly any art, you’ll like this. Can’t wait for a real art museum, the George Lucas musem.
@callahanstudio, Youtube:
Yesterday I went to LACMA saw it for myself. I am agreeing with Toby a little more. The museum campus is more pulled together than at any time since LACMA opened in 1960s. (I was there, BTW.) The new building is impressive, but it is also the problem. Michael Govan gave LA a great new building, not a great new museum. The art is incidental. The floor-to-ceiling windows afford spectacular views but do not light the art and objects to advantage. The arrangement of objects feels provisional and in some corners no more than a hodgepodge. It is clear that Govan's priority was not the collection which should be the beating heart of a great museum whether the walls are silk damask or cast concrete.