Michael Max Asher was a conceptual artist, described by The New York Times as "among the patron saints of the Conceptual Art phylum known as Institutional Critique, an often esoteric dissection of the assumptions that govern how we perceive art." Rather than designing new art objects, Asher typically altered the existing environment, by repositioning or removing artworks, walls, facades, etc.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's original space, initially intended as a temporary exhibit space while the main facility was built, is now known as the Geffen Contemporary, in the Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles. Between 2000 and 2019, it operated a satellite facility at the Pacific Design Center facility in West Hollywood.
The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur-industrialist Armand Hammer to house his personal art collection, the museum has since expanded its scope to become "the hippest and most culturally relevant institution in town." Particularly important among the museum's critically acclaimed exhibitions are presentations of both historically overlooked and emerging contemporary artists. The Hammer Museum also hosts over 300 programs throughout the year, from lectures, symposia, and readings to concerts and film screenings. As of February 2014, the museum's collections, exhibitions, and programs are completely free to all visitors.
Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts center for innovative visual, performing and media arts in downtown Los Angeles, California, located inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Named for Roy O. Disney and his wife, it was opened in November 2003 as an extension of the California Institute of the Arts' mission into downtown Los Angeles.
Judith Hoffberg was a librarian, archivist, lecturer, a curator and art writer, and editor and publisher of Umbrella, a newsletter on artist's books, mail art, and Fluxus art.
Maxwell Hendler is an American painter. In 1975, he became the first contemporary artist to have pictures in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Rosamund Felsen Gallery is one of the longest-running art galleries in Los Angeles, California, involved in and influencing the broader American art community since its establishment in 1978. The gallery has operated four locations since its inception: first on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, then on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, later at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, and finally in the Arts District, Los Angeles in Downtown Los Angeles.
Meg Linton is an American curator of contemporary art and a writer. Her curatorial efforts have ranged from historical investigations such as "Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building", "The Los Angeles School: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, June Harwood, Helen Lundeberg, John McLaughlin", and "In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor" to showcasing the work of single artists who are stylistically different such as "Alison Saar: STILL.. .", "Robert Williams: Through Prehensile Eye," and "Joan Tanner: On Tenderhook" to group exhibitions such as "Mexicali Biennial 2010," "Do It Now: Live Green!" and "Tapping the Third Realm."
Randi Malkin Steinberger is an American photographer, documentary filmmaker, and author.
Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945–1980 was a scholarly initiative funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust to historicize the contributions to contemporary art history of artists, curators, critics, and others based in Los Angeles. Planned for nearly a decade, PST, as it was called, granted nearly 60 organizations throughout Southern California a total of $10 million to produce exhibitions that explored the years between 1945 and 1980. Underscoring the significance of this project, art critic Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times:
Before [PST], we knew a lot [about the history of contemporary art], and that lot tended to greatly favor New York. A few Los Angeles artists were highly visible and unanimously revered, namely Ed Ruscha and other denizens of the Ferus Gallery, that supercool locus of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s, plus Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden, but that was about it. After, we know a whole lot more, and the balance is much more even. One of the many messages delivered by this profusion of what will eventually be nearly 70 museum exhibitions is that New York did not act alone in the postwar era. And neither did those fabulous Ferus boys.
Helen Anne Molesworth is an American curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.
Edgemar, located at 2415–2449 Main Street in Santa Monica, California, is a mixed-use shopping center designed by architect Frank Gehry that combines early 19th century warehouses, a 1940s Art Deco office building and new construction.
Merion Estes is a Los Angeles-based painter. She earned a B.F.A. at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, and an M.F.A. at the University of Colorado, in Boulder. Estes was raised in San Diego from the age of four. She moved to Los Angeles in 1972 and first showed her work at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. As a founding member of Grandview 1 & 2, she was involved in the beginnings of Los Angeles feminist art organizations including Womanspace, and the feminist arts group "Double X," along with artists Judy Chicago, Nancy Buchanan, Faith Wilding, and Nancy Youdelman. In 2014, Un-Natural, which was shown at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Los Angeles and included Estes' work, was named one of the best shows in a non-profit institution in the United States by the International Association of Art Critics.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San José (ICA) is a nonprofit art center and gallery founded in 1980, and located in the SoFA District of Downtown San Jose, California, U.S. It supports contemporary artists working in painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, new media works and site-specific installations. ICA San José is member and community supported. The art center offers rotating art exhibitions with free admission, along with public programs, education programs, and community events.
Megan Williams is a contemporary artist who creates wall drawings, three-dimensional drawings, and traditional sculpture.
Erin Christovale is a Los Angeles–based curator and programmer who currently works as a curator at the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Together with Hammer Museum Senior Curator Anne Ellegood, Christovale curated the museum's fourth Made in L.A. biennial in June 2018. She also leads Black Radical Imagination, an experimental film program she co-founded with Amir George. Black Radical Imagination tours internationally and has screened at MoMA PS1; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museo Taller Jose Clemente Orozco, among other spaces. Christovale is best known for her work on identity, race and historical legacy. Prior to her appointment at the Hammer Museum, Christovale worked as a curator at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
Elsa Longhauser is the founding executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, United States, formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), where Longhauser served as director from 2000 until the museum ended operations in Bergamot Station in 2015. From 1983 until 2000, Longhauser served as director of the gallery at the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Ron Linden is a California abstract painter, independent curator, and associate professor of art at Los Angeles Harbor College, Wilmington. He lives and works in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles.
Carole Ann Klonarides is an American curator, video artist, writer and art consultant that has been based in New York and Los Angeles. She has worked in curatorial positions at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (1997–2000) and Long Beach Museum of Art (1991–95), curated exhibitions and projects for PS1 and Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Laforet Museum (Tokyo), and Video Data Bank, among others, and been a consultant at the Getty Research Institute. Klonarides emerged as an artist among the loosely defined Pictures Generation group circa 1980; her video work has been presented in numerous museum exhibitions, including "Video and Language: Video As Language", "documenta 8," "New Works for New Spaces: Into the Nineties,", and "The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984", and at institutions such as MoMA, the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, Contemporary Arts Center, the New Museum, The Kitchen, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). Her work belongs to the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Getty Museum, Centre Pompidou, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Museu-Fundacão Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), and National Gallery of Canada, and is distributed by the Video Data Bank and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).
Asuka Hisa is a Los Angeles–based artist, educator and curator. She currently serves as the Director of Learning and Engagement at the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, formerly known as the Santa Monica Museum of Art. In 2015 she served on the Bergamot Station Arts Center Advisory Committee. Her work has been shown at physical galleries and digital art spaces including Curatorial Hub and advocates for biking as a sustainable mode of transportation.
