Pacific Standard Time (PST) is an initiative of the Getty Museum and its Foundation that over the next five months will see more than 70 related exhibitions at Museums.
PST: Art & Science Collide
The PST: Art & Science Collide initiative, launched in October 2024, is a collaboration between the Getty Museum and its Foundation. This five-month event features over 70 exhibitions throughout Southern California, showcasing the intersection of art and science.
A Rewriting of Art History
Pacific Standard Time (PST) aims to redefine the art historical narrative, highlighting the significance of Los Angeles and California in the art world. The first iteration, PST: Art in LA 1945-1980, successfully established LA as a major art capital.
A Global Art Event
With nearly $20 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, PST: Art & Science is the largest art event in the United States. Over 70 cultural institutions are participating, offering a diverse range of exhibitions.
Highlights of the Exhibition
Here are some of the recommended exhibitions:
- Abstracted Light: Experimental Photography at The Getty Center
- Lumen: The Art and Science of Light at The Getty Center
- Installation by Helen Pashgian at The Getty Center
- Pure Energy and Neurotic Man, 1940-41 by Barbara Morgan at The Getty Center
These exhibitions showcase the intersection of art and science, featuring experimental photography, illuminated manuscripts, and thought-provoking installations.
At LACMA, there is an amazing show, We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art, which features treasures that have never traveled outside of Mexico; and a show on the technologies that allowed for various iterations of video art that I found thought provoking.
Mark Dion, Excavations, Installation view at La Brea Tar Pits. Courtesy of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County. Installation pics have the c One of my favorites among the shows I previewed is an installation, Mark Dion: Excavations, at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum. Dion immersed himself in all aspects of the work of the museum, and eventually produced detailed works that appear as drawings of fossils that Dion has created to detail taxonomies of Los Angeles, including of LA bands, neighborhoods, celebrities… in ways that are idiosyncratic, funny, and will no doubt provoke differences of opinion.
Breath(e) exhibition installation view Hammer Museum © 2024 Sarah M Golonka | smg-photography The Hammer has an ambitious show, Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, curated by artist Glenn Kaino and curator Mika Yoshitake and featuring artists Brandon Ballengée, Mel Chin, Tiffany Chung, Ron Finley, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ryoji Ikeda, ikkibawiKrrr, Michael Joo, Danil Krivoruchko, Xin Liu, Yoshitomo Nara, Otobong Nkanga, Roxy Paine, Garnett Puett, Rob Reynolds, Sandy Rodriguez, Sarah Rosalena, Bently Spang, Mika Tajima, Clarissa Tossin, Lan Tuazon, Yangkura, Jin-me Yoon, Zheng Mahler.
Among the PST offerings are exhibitions at The Griffith Observatory, CalTech, the Natural History Museum, The Broad, MOCA, The Autry, The Wende, the San Diego Museum of Art and the museums at UC Riverside, UC Irvine, and UCLA, the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SciArc, Art Center Pasadena, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
The Academy Museum and the Hammer each have their own film series looking at science fiction film depictions of the near future. And that, too, is not a complete list but gives you some idea of the breadth of the initiative.
Lita Albuquerque in front of one her new paintings at Michael Kohn Gallery ©McHugh. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Kohn Gallery. Among gallery shows, I will mention just two: Lita Albuquerque: Earth Skin at Michael Kohn Gallery and Thom Mayne: Shaping Accident at LA Louver. Albuquerque, who I recently profiled for Alta Journal is showing new work that is amazing, full of movement, canvases where the gestural paint swooshes seem to be dancing themselves. Thom Mayne is the award-winning architect who has recently begun to show the art he creates.
These are just two, but there are also PST-related shows at galleries all over Los Angeles including at Pace LA, Kordansky and many, many others. In addition to the exhibitions, there will be public programming over the next five months where scientists and artists will engage in conversations, reaffirming that, as Michael Govan said recently and as I have often written, Los Angeles is the creative capital of the world and an ongoing hub for innovation in both art and science.
The question hovering over all this is: Will it work? How do we measure success? We will have to wait and see. But the timing seems good: LA now has the art schools, the artists, the museums, galleries both international and local and the collectors that make for a vibrant art ecosystem.
Science, most notably, as concerns AI, is top of mind and we are all tethered to our electronic devices. Los Angeles itself is gearing up for the World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028. For PST ART: Art and Science Collide, the time is now.
As Marcel Duchamp, the father of conceptual art who had his own notable moments in LA, once said: “What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It's not what you see that is art; art is the gap.”
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Tom Teicholz
Contributor,Tom Teicholz