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Getty Research Institute Opens Greetings from L.A. Artists and Publics 1950-1980

The Getty Research Institute presents Greetings from L.A. Artists and Publics, 1950-1980 a new exhibition on view February 5, 2012, surveys the emergence of a community of artists who developed innovative strategies for reaching out to, and even creating, diverse and varied publics.

Drawn from the Getty Research Institute’s extensive archives of Los Angeles art, this exhibition features over 200 objects including photographs, ephemera, correspondence, and artwork—many on view for the first time. Part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945–1980, a Getty-led initiative designed to spotlight the dynamic postwar art scene in Southern California, Greetings from L.A. reveals how these artists, by engaging a wide range of different viewers and audiences, rethought ways art could intervene in the public sphere.

“The Getty Research Institute has pioneered research in this area, and has assembled one of the world’s foremost archives related to postwar art in Southern California,” says Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute. “Pacific Standard Time gives us the opportunity to share this remarkable collection and demonstrate the depth and breadth of our scholarship in this fascinating era. The exhibition also demonstrates the originality of L.A. art as well as its international connections.”

The exhibition draws on the recently acquired archives of Betty Asher, Hal Glicksman, George Herms, Wolfgang Stoerchle, High Performance magazine, and the Rolf Nelson, Mizuno, and Jan Baum galleries, as well as the papers of Charles Brittin and Edmund Teske. They are supplemented by material from archives not typically associated with Southern California, such as the papers of New York-based art critics Irving Sandler and Barbara Rose and Lawrence Alloway, New Museum founder and curator Marcia Tucker; and the Kasmin Gallery in London.

Greetings from L.A. is currently scheduled to travel to Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau from March 15 through June 10, 2012, together with the Getty Museum’s exhibition, Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970.

Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics, 1950–1980 is curated by John Tain, assistant curator of modern and contemporary collections at the GRI, with the assistance of Linde Brady, GRI research assistant.

Additional information is available at www.getty.edu

Image: Charles Brittin (American, 1928–2011) Peace Tower installation, 1966 Silver-dye bleach print The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles © J. Paul Getty Trust

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