The Huntington Gets Hip
“Made in L.A.” represents an effort by the Huntington to expand its contemporary art programming and present more artists of color.
Monica Majoli’s installation for the Huntington Art Museum’s “Made in L.A. 2020: a version.” Her series “Study for Blueboy,” named after an early gay magazine, focuses on centerfolds from 1976 to 1979, the halcyon years of gay liberation.Credit.The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; Joshua White
April 20, 2021Updated 1:49 p.m. ET
SAN MARINO, Calif. The juxtaposition is striking. In one gallery, Thomas Gainsborough’s classic 18th-century oil painting, “The Blue Boy,” gazes out from the ornate walls, having just undergone an extensive restoration. In another gallery, an installation by the Los Angeles artist Monica Majoli explores Blueboy magazine, one of the earliest gay publications in the U.S., through sultry images of scantily dressed young men.
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Welcome to the Ooops I Forgot to Write the Newsletter edition of Essential Arts. I’m L.A. Times arts editor
Craig Nakano filling in for columnist
Carolina A. Miranda, who as you’ll see has been immersing herself in architectural solutions for people who are unhoused. This week has been bizzz-eee as California kicked its reopening into a higher gear, so there’s much to share. I’m sitting down to write at an hour when I’m usually in a seismic snore. My 2-year-old is asleep, the coffee is hot, the contact lenses are out and the glasses are on. Let’s do this.
“There’s the isolation and then also the dual terror of how this disease has just torn through nursing homes,” [said] Manuel Eskildsen, a clinical associate professor at the [David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA] who treats older patients. “I think everybody’s scared right now. But it’s even scarier to know you’re in the absolute most vulnerable group and you can’t get away from it.”
“I think that the early action taken by L.A. County as cases began to rise has blunted the magnitude of this tsunami that we experienced. It would have been even worse had some of these measures not been taken early on,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, medical epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and a former health official with L.A. County. (Kim-Farley was also quoted by Fox News.)
Featured in In the Chilling Shadows of a Biennial Yet to Be Seen
‘Made in L.A. 2020: a version’, slated to open in 2021, exposes the horrors of American life pre-pandemic
Before entering the long-delayed (and now revised) ‘Made in L.A. 2020: a version’, I pitied its poor curators, whose exhibition has been kyboshed by a succession of lockdowns. Originally scheduled to open in June, the biennial – split this year between the Hammer Museum and the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino – has lain partly dormant, partly unfinished. With (almost) all works installed, museum leaders allowed in a few members of the press, who, they hoped, might grant ‘Made in L.A. 2020’ a little exposure to daylight. (The biennial is currently expected to open to the public next year.)
Juxtapoz Magazine - Mario Ayala Works to Appear in Made in L A 2020, the Fifth Iteration of the Hammer s Biennial juxtapoz.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from juxtapoz.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.