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UCLA Faculty and Alumni Artists to Participate in ‘Los Angeles 1955-1985,’ a Major Art Exhibition at Centre Pompidou in Paris

“UCLA is frequently described as the power art school … Visiting the campus is like attending an opening of the Whitney Biennial.” — The New York Times Magazine

Faculty and alumni artists from UCLA will be represented in “Los Angeles 1955 1985,” a major exhibition opening at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on March 8 and running through July 17. The retrospective celebrates Los Angeles’ impact on the arts and culture in the second half of the 20th century and marks the “coming of age” of the city as a world center for the arts.

The exhibition will include a broad selection of paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, experimental films and videos dealing with such styles as assemblage art, Pop Art, California Minimalism or “Finish Fetish,” the “Light and Space” movement, Conceptual Art, performance art, and feminism. A 400-page catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Among the UCLA artists represented in the exhibition are department of art professors John Baldessari, Lari Pittman and James Welling; emeriti professors Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy and Nancy Rubins; and alumni Peter Alexander, Tony Berlant, Vija Celmins, Judy Chicago, John Divola, Judy Fiskin, Robert Heinecken, Craig Kauffman, Michael McMillen, Ed Moses, Raymond Pettibon, Betye Saar and Peter Shelton.

About the UCLA Department of Art
The department of art, part of the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA, has a faculty of internationally recognized artists and theoreticians who guide students in exploring contemporary studio practice. Emphasis is placed on autonomy, experimentation, communal discourse and artistic responsibility. Courses stress the impact of the visual arts on the history of cultural development, exposing critical, aesthetic and theoretical dialogue through the unfolding of a student’s creative work.

UCLA art faculty and alumni have earned major national and international recognition. In addition to numerous solo and group exhibitions, their work has been included in the Venice Biennale (Italy) and the Whitney Biennial (New York). John Baldessari recently was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; professor Catherine Opie was a recipient of the Aldrich Award. Recent major awards and honors received by alumni include MacArthur Foundation fellowships, Guggenheim fellowships and Fulbright awards.

Representative alumni — in addition to those whose works will appear in the Pompidou exhibition — include Amy Adler, Lita Albuquerque, Uta Barth, Jennifer Bornstein, Slater Bradley, Delia Brown, Kristin Calabrese, Liz Craft, James Doolin, Charles Garabedian, Tim Hawkinson, Evan
Holloway, Salomon Huerta, Kurt Kauper, Martin Kersels, Toba Khedoori, Monica Majoli, Sandeep Mukherjee, Jennifer Pastor, Monique Prieto, Jon Pylypchuk, Jason Rhoades, Paul Sietsema and Mungo Thomson.

New Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center
The year 2006 marks a milestone in the history of the arts at UCLA with the opening of a major new arts facility, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center. Designed by the noted architectural firm Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP, the center will support the school’s forward-looking academic visual arts programs by providing new physical facilities, including interactive multimedia technology, studio space for students, updated classrooms, galleries for student exhibitions and public presentations, and office and conference space.

The Broads donated $23.2 million toward the construction of the new complex, which will house the Department of Art (http://www.art.ucla.edu/), the Department of Design | Media Arts (http://www.design.ucla.edu/) and the New Wight Gallery. A newly commissioned sculpture — an untitled torqued ellipse by Richard Serra — will be installed on the site. Highlights of the Broad Art Center’s opening activities will include public exhibitions of works by world-renowned artists who are members of the faculty in the two departments.

The UCLA Department of Art exhibition at the Broad Art Center — curated by Michael Darling, assistant curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles — will include works by faculty members John Baldessari, Jennifer Bolande, Chris Burden (emeritus), Barbara Drucker, Roger Herman, Mary Kelly, Paul McCarthy (emeritus), Catherine Opie, Lari Pittman, Charles Ray, Nancy Rubins (emerita), Adrian Saxe, Don Suggs, James Welling and Patty Wickman.

The UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts exhibition — curated by Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of new media arts at the Whitney Museum, New York — will feature work by faculty members Rebecca Allen, Mark Hansen, Erkki Huhtamo, Robert Israel, Rebeca Méndez, Christian Moeller, C.E.B. Reas, Jennifer Steinkamp, Vasa Mihich and Victoria Vesna.

Eli Broad, one of the world’s leading collectors of contemporary art, is founder chairman of two Fortune 500 companies — SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home. The Broad family’s commitment to philanthropy and community includes ongoing leadership roles in art, education, science and civic development. A member of the board of visitors of the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA, Broad was the founding chairman and is a life trustee of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He is currently a trustee of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and vice chairman of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the Broads announced a major gift to build the Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA (http://www.arts.ucla.edu/)
Artists, architects, dancers, designers, musicians and scholars come to the School of the Arts and Architecture to draw on its unique curriculum, which interweaves work in performance, studio and research studies, providing them with a solid creative, artistic and intellectual foundation as well as a liberal arts education from one of the country’s finest research universities. Its students gain a global view of the arts while integrating contemporary practice and theory in their chosen discipline.

Providing a full range of course offerings and programs, the school comprises six degree-granting departments: Architecture and Urban Design, Art, Design | Media Arts, Ethnomusicology, Music, and World Arts and Cultures. Its three internationally acclaimed public arts institutions are the Hammer Museum, the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History and a major performing arts program, UCLA Live. The School of the Arts and Architecture also features the Center for Intercultural Performance, the Experiential Technologies Center and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

Carolyn Campbell, ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu
For Immediate Use
(310) 825-6540
March 7, 2006