The Getty Foundation announced on May 6 that $5 million in grants to fund an initiative involving numerous Southern California institutions that will showcase Latino and Latin American art.
The initiative – called “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA” – marks the first time locally that Latino and Latin American art will be researched and displayed on a large scale.
“Los Angeles probably has more museums than any city in American right now, and probably has more creative artists living here than even New York and other places,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who attended an event announcing the effort. “‘Pacific Standard Time’ is bringing them all together and celebrating our Latin American roots and our Latino present.”
The exhibit is scheduled to open in September 2017, and will feature 46 exhibitions and events from San Diego to Santa Barbara, according to the foundation.
“With its historic roots in Latin America and its diverse population, Los Angeles embraces a global culture,” said Jim Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “In a way that is possible only in Los Angeles, `Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’ raises complex and provocative issues about present-day relations between north and south and the rapidly changing social and cultural fabric of Southern California.”
Most of the exhibitions will focus on modern and contemporary Latino and Latin American art, but there will also be an emphasis on the ancient world and the pre-modern era.
The grants encourage research on topics from luxury objects in the pre-Columbian Americas to 20th Century Afro-Brazilian art.
Institutions that received research and planning grants include:
– Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA);
– Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles;
– Hammer Museum;
– Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA;
– The Huntington Library;
– Laguna Art Museum;
– Autry National Center for the American West;
– MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House;
– Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego;
– Museum of Latin American Art;
– Orange County Museum of Art; and
– Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Three of the exhibits will be on display at the Getty Center. Garcetti said he believes the exhibitions will bring more visitors to Los Angeles.
“It’s going to be great for people who live here, to see this stuff,” Garcetti said, “but 42 million people visited Los Angeles last year, and I want to bring that up to 50 million. That means jobs, that means revenues spent here.”
The “Pacific Standard Time” initiative began in 1945 as an unprecedented collaboration of 60 cultural institutions across Southern California to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene, and continued in recent years to show post-World War II art in and modern architecture in Los Angeles.
