In front of a packed room inside the Capitol Records building in Hollywood yesterday, the Getty announced details of the next installment of Pacific Standard Time, the popular series of art and architecture exhibitions that helped reframe Los Angeles’ position on the map of worldwide arts and culture. Sporting a new moniker, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. will be smaller in scope than the previous iteration, with eleven exhibitions and accompanying programs in and around Los Angeles scheduled for April through July 2013.
Among the offerings, anticipated favorites include Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990 at the Getty, A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California at MOCA, and A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living at the Hammer Museum. The one noticeable outlier among the offerings of PSTP’s museum partners is the name Peter Zumthor, who will be the focus of one of LACMA’s exhibits: The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA.
The kickoff event’s final speakers, Eric Owen Moss and Michael Maltzan, balked at the larger implications of lionizing the tradition of architecture in Los Angeles. Moss pointed out the “paradox of benediction” by the Getty for Los Angeles architecture scene: “What makes this a speculative endeavor is exactly the prospect that it might fail,” he noted. Maltzan echoed the idea that L.A.’s history is still in the process of revision: “It’s reasonable to argue that there is not another city in the world that has a more continuous project of modernist development than in Los Angeles.” While worrying that “the mistakes we make here are often played out again and again at even greater scale,” Maltzan pointed to experimentation as the attraction for so many architects that have come to Los Angeles: “The majority that came here and stayed here did so because Los Angeles was a hotbed of creativity and possibility. You can make things here. You’ve always been able to. While that seems like a simple idea—it should be easy anywhere—it isn’t.”
Here’s a full list of institutions taking part in Modern Architecture in L.A.:
Exhibitions
A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California (MOCA)
Quincy Jones: Building For Better Living (Hammer)
The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA (LACMA)
Stephen Prina: As He Remembered It (LACMA)
Technology and Environment: The Postwar House in Southern California (W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery, Cal Poly Pomona)
Everything Loose Will Land (MAK Center for Art and Architecture)
Windshield Perspective (A+D Architecture and Design Museum)
A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice, 1979 (SCI-Arc)
Outside In: The Architecture of Smith and Williams (Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara)
Center for Land Use Interpretation for On-Site Office Trailers: Invisible Architecture of the Urban Environment, an exhibition of original photography and related construction site tours.
Community Art Resources, Inc. for CicLAvia: Modern Architecture on Wilshire Blvd, an architectural guide and special programming as part of their June 2013 car-free/open streets event.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens for the online exhibition, Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, and public programming.
Los Angeles Conservancy for Curating the City: Modern Architecture in L.A., an interactive online resource as well as tours, public programs and print material.
Los Angeles Philharmonic for The Mozart/Da Ponte Trilogy Conversation, a discussion with Pritzker Prize-winning architects who are designing sets for this unique interdisciplinary series.
Machine Project for The Machine Project Field Guide to L.A. Architecture, a performance series at architectural sites across the city.
Pasadena Heritage for Pasadena 1940 Forward: Residential Architecture of the Recent Past, a tour of modernist homes in the Pasadena area along with a related lecture and oral history project.
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design for Extreme IDEAS: Architecture at the Intersection, a series of discussions about the dynamic and interdisciplinary future of architecture.