Hammer to Survey Huguette Caland, Mavis Pusey
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| Huguette Caland, Appleton I, 2009. Private collection. (c) Estate of Huguette Caland |
The Hammer Museum has announced retrospectives of trending women abstractionists Huguette Caland (1931–2019) and Mavis Pusey (1928–2019). Both are traveling shows accompanied by a catalog.
Born in Lebanon and long resident in Los Angeles, Caland was featured in the Hammer's 2016 biennial. "Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines," an exhibition of some 200 objects, appeared in Madrid and Hamburg. The Hammer will be its only U.S. venue (Sep. 27, 2026, to Feb. 28, 2027).
Pusey was born in Jamaica and active internationally. "Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images" debuted at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia. It runs Oct. 11, 2026, to Feb. 28, 2027, at the Hammer and will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem.
UPDATE: Mavis Pusey is having a moment. Pomona College's Benton Museum of Art has just announced its own Pusey show, opening this August. Though "Mavis Pusey, Restless: From the Collection of Ian White" (Aug. 22, 2026, to Jan. 3, 2027) draws from a single private holding, it has more objects than the Hammer exhibition ("approximately 100" v. "over 60"). It too will have a catalog.
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| Mavis Pusey, Dancers, no date. Private collection. (c) Estate of Mavis Pusey |
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| Mavis Pusey, Broken Construction, about mid 1970/late 1980s. Collection of Ian White. To appear at the Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College |
Comments
> announced retrospectives of
> trending women
> abstractionists
Calls to mind the category of so-called elite compared with so-called populist. Or the Hammer's upcoming temporary show versus what will be in the Lucas Museum.
There's a lot of skill and talent out there - past and present - so gatekeepers of culture and museums have a lot of influence in what (or who) is put in the to-do pile, who's put in the rejection pile.
Art museums in LA, including the Getty, have long had annual attendance figures that are surprisingly anything but SRO. In comparison, the Louvre in Paris generates crowds reminiscent of those in Orlando, Florida. In turn, the Hammer and MOCA are more like just the opposite.
I recall a writer in Northern Calif years ago saying that people in the LA area (including presumably tourists too) were not as much into the visual arts as they could be or were elsewhere.
As for Caland and Pusey (or Yoko Ono), etc, they're not necessarily must-see. And I don't see any upcoming shows for the Broad, MOCA, LACMA and the Getty (of course, soon going down for renovation) that are all that different.
The Simon lists an upcoming loan of a Manet, but that's not exactly like the Met's show on Raphael---which involves *several* canvases. The nearby Huntington has temp shows that make me think of, "a de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly...not a very good one."
The Lucas Museum - whether treacle or not - is going to have to do all the heavy lifting.
... I prefer what Bacon does with bodies/paint.
Down the line, Caland turns into Loie Hollowell. (I do not like Hallowell's work.)
--- J. Garcin.
There are plenty of artists whose phases I love and then a phase of theirs disappoints...de Kooning and Jasper Johns, for examples.
In 1987...my younger brother suggested she visit Los Angeles and she ended up living there. I moved there in 1996. The LA years were wonderful years, and sometimes difficult. In the beginning, she wanted to be integrated in the artistic scene; she was part of it but still an outsider, and that hurt her for a while.
She worked prolifically, had open houses and parties and welcomed many, but she would be a little sad that people would come over and eat and drink and no one would visit her studio, or make the effort to walk from the dining room to her workspace. The recognition is happening now unfortunately. [End quote]
Her "a little sad" got to me, which I wasn't aware of until now. Makes me think of Van Gogh being appreciated when it was too late.
However, museums in LA doing too many municipal-type shows or tapping into obscure themes (as determined by decades of influencers, taste makers and gatekeepers), also got to me.
But the huge fires last year slammed the local economy, its signature industry (eg, AMPAS museum) is doing poorly, and LACMA 2026 is imperfect as LACMA 1965 was. So the trend of "de facto museum of contemporary art...but not very good" irritated me more right now than it otherwise would. Mea culpa.
“We designed each display piece for the art it was meant to hold,” [Bernard Brucha] explains. A motto the team constantly repeated was that each piece of furniture had to be able to lift an elephant. “Some artworks weigh thousands of pounds,” explains Buchar, who utilized solid steel to balance the walnut wood and glass.
Goop, Apple, Uber, Yelp, and Chanel are only a handful of former clients that have tapped the studio to craft their spaces with high-quality, long-lasting materials. But when it came to the LACMA expansion, “I’ve been training for this project my entire career,” he admits. [End quote]
^ I hope they're building more display cases and platforms for the Geffen because it currently has too much open concrete floor space.
But Jasper Johns? ... You have to push past the disappointment and look for the precursors.
For example, when I first saw his flagstone paintings/drawings, I thought WTF?
Later, I came upon an article detailing the influence of Duchamp on Johns's work. From that article, I also learned that the rock motif may come from a Magritte painting that juxtaposes hands and rocks.
John's advances the slippage in objectivity by drawing an equivalence between the rocks and the hands. For Johns, remember, hands also take the form of cross-hatching: rocks/hands becomes rocks as hands (cross-hatching).
His paintings are intellectual riddles. Even the most "disappointing" often lead elsewhere and back.
--- J. Garcin
jonathan_maghen:
I’ve visited the new LACMA several times and ‘my take’ is that it’s an interesting building but not a great museum. That said, it would definitely be a world-class exhibition space in an airport concourse (which is what the interior spaces mostly look and feel like) [End quote]
86-65 versus 2026.
Oh, well. Govan and Zumthor did give it an ol' college try. And so did Brown and Pereira.
Hey, Michael, at least try to fill up some of the gray walls and "airport concourse" floors. Maybe tint a few more of the walls too.
Unlike 86-65, there's still some hope and potential left.
> be losing sleep after
> witnessing these conditions
> I wonder.
I dislike the history of LACMA being full of moments when it has to be second guessed. There are skilled, talented, professional people in their fields (from the visual arts to music, from medicine to science, from entertainment to sports, etc) who make it easy to ask, how did they do that??! How did they get so good?!! Are they mostly nature instead of nurture?
Issues of lighting, windows and temperatures, however, don't stand out to me (although maybe they should) as much as too many areas in the Geffen giving the sense the museum has more space than it knows to do with. Or where objects are spaced too far apart or, even worse, artworks that seem to be missing from blank gray concrete walls or from otherwise wide-open concrete floors.
When did people get so stupid? Some rando says something on the internet and another person quotes what they say as if it has some authority?
Absurd.
--- J. Garcin
And the monotonously minor variations in word choice infer it's a bot, and not a very good one.
> have any credibility?
Hi, rube! How are the hix in the stix doing?
Laura Horan, The Manual:
The [Geffen] is massive, visually striking, and took nearly two decades to plan. But once you step inside, you may find yourself asking a simple question: what exactly am I looking at, and how am I supposed to experience it? That question gets to the heart of what makes the new galleries both interesting and, at times, frustrating.
…it’s worth noting that this perspective comes from someone who holds a PhD in Art History from UCLA and subsequently has spent a lot of time in museums—studying them, working in them, and yes, occasionally getting lost in them. So if parts of the Geffen Galleries feel confusing, it’s not just you.
The idea is to break down old hierarchies and encourage visitors to make their own connections… On paper, this sounds exciting. In reality, it can feel a bit like walking into a movie halfway through…. You may find yourself wandering from room to room without a clear sense of how things relate or why they’re grouped together.
You move from bright, airy exteriors into darker, more controlled environments. The result is a bit of a contradiction: a building that looks open and transparent from the outside can feel surprisingly closed-in once you’re inside.
Increasingly, museums aren’t just places to look at art—they’re also designed to be *experienced* and photographed. The Geffen Galleries excel at this…. But that raises an important question: is the building helping you focus on the art, or is it competing with it?
At times, it can feel like the architecture is the main attraction…. Some artworks lose a bit of their vibrancy in this environment, and your attention may drift back to the building itself.
For comparison, LACMA’s older buildings…offer a more straightforward experience. They’re easier to navigate, with clearer layouts and better lighting. You can spend time with a single artwork without feeling overwhelmed by the space around it. The Geffen Galleries, by contrast, lean more toward immersion than clarity…. they invite you to explore—but without always giving you the tools to make sense of what you find.
If you’re looking for a traditional museum experience, where everything is clearly organized and easy to follow, this might not be your favorite place… In the end, the David Geffen Galleries succeed as a destination. Whether they succeed as a museum in the traditional sense is still up for debate.
Right now all the gray concrete walls, reflections from windows, heat from glass facades, wrong-color metal brackets, wrong-color wall labels and donor walls that list the dollars given come in second.
65-86-26: If history is repeating itself, that's just the way things are.
> itself.
Thanks, rube!