Common threads connect the design-related Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, with many designers making appearances in more than one show. “Golden State of Craft: California 1960-1985,” a small but focused show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in L.A. (it is presented by Craft in America and the museum) Coach Bags, highlights the work of Southern California designers and artists like Gere Kavanaugh, Laura Andreson, Claire Falkenstein, Maloof, Stocksdale, Ruth Asawa, Jim Bassler and Evelyn and Jerry Ackerman, among others. They were championed by two trailblazing women: Eudorah M. Moore, the director of the renowned series of “California Design” exhibitions at the now-defunct Pasadena Art Museum from the 1950s to the 1970s, and Edith Wyle, the founder of the Craft and Folk Art Museum. And, while not officially part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative, Gerard O’Brien’s Reform, a vintage design gallery in L.A., is also worth a visit since, as his storefront window cheekily proclaims, he has featured many of these artists and designers since 2003.
At museums and galleries across Southern California, the Getty Foundation’s groundbreaking “Pacific Standard Time” initiative has yielded an amazing array of exhibitions that tell the story of the birth of L.A.’s art scene from 1945 to 1980. But design also came of age in Southern California during these fruitful years, and it is the subject of a surprising number of the more than 60 PST exhibitions this fall.
The design icons Charles and Ray Eames are featured in several exhibitions in Los Angeles. Joel Chen’s impressive collective of more than 400 examples of Eames furniture and prototypes is on view at his Highland Avenue showroom while the A+D Museum presents “Eames Words,” which features quotations from the couple (and which will be the subject of Steven Heller’s Graphic Content column for The Moment next week).
In Pasadena, the Huntington Library’s “The House That Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley 1945-1985” brings together furniture by the master craftsman Sam Maloof and work by his friends and colleagues. The beautifully designed exhibition paints a vivid picture of the period, highlighting both the Alta Loma, Calif., home of Maloof and his wife, Alfreda, and the emergence of that region’s artists and designers. The Maloof residence itself — now home to the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation — is the site of a complementary exhibition, “In Words and Wood: Sam Maloof, Bob Stocksdale and Ed Moulthrop.” Both exhibitions can be seen through January 2012.
The big design story is told by the Los Angeles County Museum’s “California Design” exhibition (the subject of my last column), while other shows focus on particular aspects of the state’s rich design heritage. At the Santa Monica Museum of Art, “Beatrice Wood: Career Woman—Drawings Coach Bags, Paintings, Vessels and Objects” is on view through March 3, 2012. Although Wood was best known as a ceramist, she didn’t begin working in that area until she was 40, and the exhibition includes examples of her drawings, paintings and sculptures along with her ceramics. An added bonus: the potter Adam Silverman designed the installation.
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