History
The Torrance Art Museum was founded in Torrance, Los Angeles County in 2005 by curator Kristine Newhouse (2005-2008) after granting museum status to the previous Joslyn Fine Arts Gallery founded by Erika Grubb in 1964. Since 2009, the museum has been headed by director Max Presneil to this day.
In 1960, entrepreneur Marcellus L. Joslyn established a charitable foundation to build facilities for the elderly, aid hospitals, and fund colleges and universities. In 1961, the city of Torrance became a major beneficiary when the Marcellus L. Joslyn Foundation provided $75,000—half of the total cost—for the construction of a new recreation center. The architectural firm Weldon Fulton Associates was hired to design the 8,760-square-foot facility, which was to include movie theater, a community and office rooms and art classes. The Joslyn Recreation Center opened on April 11, 1964. It offered adult craft and art workshops and special events for seniors and students.
Fine Arts Supervisor Erica Grubb was the first to recognize the potential of the Joslin Recreation Center. She developed accessible art classes for adults and children, organized exhibitions, tours to famous art institutions and other social events. Beginning in 1978, Erica Grubb pushed the Joslyn becomes an Arts Center as a permanent art gallery, believing that emerging artists needed to broaden their exposure to contemporary art to enhance their education. [2]
Activity
The Museum has become known worldwide as a center for free and alternative art, It features mostly paintings, with an emphasis on conceptual art. According to the famous think tank, the largest world's art database ArtFacts, over the twenty years from 2005 to 2025, it hosted at least 119 exhibitions featuring 2,296 artists (26 solo exhibitions and 93 group exhibitions), mostly in Torrance, California, and elsewhere. TAM's first verified exhibition was «It figures» in Torrance, CA in 2007. The first fair Torrance Art Museum participated in was TRYST/NOMAD Alternative Art Fair in 2023 curated by Max Presneill and Sue-Na Gay. They organized similar Art Fairs in 2024 and 2025.
"TRYST is an International Independent, Non-commercial, Art Fair for Artist-Run-Spaces and Collectives as well as an international conference addressing the needs and future of global exchange for artist-run spaces, collectives, and organizations. A Torrance Art Museum (TAM) project, TRYST addresses the need for opportunities that foster artistic exchange between grass-roots artist organizations worldwide. This art fair will introduce international artists to Los Angeles, a leading center for contemporary art. Connecting artists to the art-savvy Los Angeles audience, the LA arts scene, and to one another allows unlimited networking opportunities in which artists can engage with other participants and develop further international exchanges. Talks and performances will be included in the program, as well as social events for participants». [3] The organizers of the Art Fair invited artists who were committed to democracy and did not promote autocratic regimes. They came from various countries such as Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Albania, Turkey, Romania, Ukraine, Greece, Switzerland, Mexico, Japanese, South Korea, Australia and elsewhere.
Project NOMAD also helped to independent artist-run-spaces and collectives to take part in the famous Art Fair and demonstrate contemporary art. They were mostly artists from United States and South California exhibited together with TRYST at the neighboring place and at the same time. As statistics show, TAM's exhibitions are mostly male (53%), with female artists exhibited less (46%). The most exhibited artist is Ichiro Irie. The average age of artists shown at Torrance Art Museum - TAM is 46. The highest-ranked artists to exhibit with Torrance Art Museum are Faris McReynolds and ranked in Top 10 - Gerhard Richter and Wolfgang Tillmans. [4]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
