KUSC 91.5 FM Highlights SMMoA!

Arts Alive, an in-depth arts news program on Classical KUSC 91.5 FM, features a discussion of
The Puppet Show with Executive Director Elsa Longhauser and Deputy Director Lisa Melandri.
Listen to the archived podcast.

Rescheduled Fall Date for
Fleet of Foot:
Lynne Cooke, Curator, Dia Art Foundation & Chief Curator, Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid, and Ivo Mesquita, Curator, 2008 São Paulo Bienal

Monday, September 22nd, 7 p.m., 2008, is the new date and time for Fleet of Foot, the third and final talk in the acclaimed A Collection of Ideas… series SMMoA's remarkable three-part exploration of unique models for the presentation of contemporary art. Since the closing of Dia's space in Chelsea, Lynne Cooke has begun to program Dia exhibitions at the Hispanic Society of America on West 155th Street. Ivo Mesquita has organized his 2008 São Paulo Bienal without art. This discussion examines the radical and unexpected gestures that add new perspectives on exhibition content and context. Free admission; seating is limited; RSVP required.

RSVP to Rachel Monas by Monday, September 15; 310 586-6488 x 119.

You can now listen to the podcast of the first talk in the series, Whales and Minnows: Filling all the Niches in Art's Ecosystem, with Michael Govan, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Blake Gopnik, Chief Art Critic, The Washington Post.

This series has been funded by David Teiger and The Annenberg Foundation.

The Puppet Shows: Part I and Part II

Los Angeles is home to an extraordinary community of artists at the forefront of avant-garde puppetry. SMMoA offers you the rare opportunity to see two evenings of cutting-edge live performances exploring a wide range of vibrant stories. Each evening features three acts.

The cost per person for each evening is $10 for SMMoA members; $15 for non-members. Seating is limited; first come, first seated. Click on the Brown Paper Tickets logos below to obtain your tickets.

Note that some performances contain adult content; please use your discretion if bringing children to the event.

The Puppet Shows: Part I
Introduced by playwright Erik Ehn
Two Performances on Saturday, July 26, 6 p.m.
and 8:30 p.m.

• Concrete Folk Variations, Chapter 1.75
  Created by Susan Simpson
  A serial noir story set in the lesbian bars, cop shops, and streetcars of McCarthy-era Los Angeles.
  
  
• Cold Morning Light
  Created by Kyle McBain Leeser; Music by Jack Berglund
  This first chapter of a puppet epic tells the story of an airship company's apprenticeships and one man who breaks the cycle.
  
  
• His Hands Make an Army, His Hands Make a Hospital
  Created by Eric Lindley and Katie Shook
  Puppetry, performance, text, and live music tell the story of siblings from a New Mexican farm encountering rapid industrialization and foreign conflict
  

The Puppet Shows: Part II
Two Performances on Saturday, August 2, 6 p.m.
and 8:30 p.m.

• The Reptile Under the Flowers
  Created by Janie Geiser; Music by Valerie Opielski
  A multimedia peepshow/diorama/performance with miniature puppetry and live video.
  
  
• The Matchbox Shows
  Created by Laura Heit
  Raconteur and sometimes pyromaniac Laura Heit performs miniature puppet shows within matchboxes.
  
  
• Le Petit Macabre
  Created by Caitlin Lainoff; Music by Daniel Corral
  A surreal puppet opera using shadow, light, animation, and live kazoo to reveal the imminent threat of a comet wrecking-ball hurtling through space to make way for a brighter century.
  

Emerging Artists Family Workshop:
Plastic Hunks and Chunks
Saturday, August 9, 10 a.m. to noon

Plastic is ubiquitous, colorful, practical, and way too disposable. Work with artist Alison Joy Goldberg to construct unique shapes and forms entirely out of recycled plastic.

The cost per participant is $10 for SMMoA members; $15 for non-members. Ages 6 and up are welcome. RSVP required.

RSVP to Asuka Hisa, SMMoA's Director of Education; asuka.hisa@smmoa.org; 310 586-6488 x 118.

Exclusively at GRACIE

Drop by SMMoA’s unique shop/storage/installation to see all the newly arrived only at GRACIE clothes, books, bags, puppets, jewelry, and other extraordinary objects inspired by the exhibitions on view.

The Ransom+Scout line of irresistible Italian leather handbags and accessories brings to life an unusual collection of whimsical characters, including Ransom, Scout, Apollo and Truman. Each character has their own clever backstory developed by a noted Hollywood screenwriter.

Another GRACIE exclusive is the dramatic black and white wearable pendant art of the Carol Frederick Collection. Each striking design is framed in polished aluminum and strung on a black leather cord. They come in a variety of geometrical shapes and sizes. A unique blend of art and technology, these lightweight necklaces can be worn individually or in layered multiples.

SMMoA’s Twentieth Anniversary Artist Plate Project is perfect for serving outdoor summer meals. Highlighted in the Los Angeles Times and Juxtapoz Magazine's Style Sheet, this limited edition is available as a set of twelve porcelain plates, each 14 inches in diameter. Each plate is signed and numbered. Original artwork for the Plate Project was contributed by Mark Bradford, Kota Ezawa, Gajin Fujita, Charles Gaines, Joe Goode, Salomón Huerta, Kerry James Marshall, Kim McCarty, Raymond Pettibon, Allen Ruppersberg, Alison Saar, and Álvaro Siza. There are just a few sets left; call 310 586-6488 to secure your set now.

The Puppet Show
May 24 to August 9

The Puppet Show is a provocative group exhibition that explores puppet imagery in contemporary art. International in scope, the work of the 27 participating artists is presented in a variety of media, with a particular focus on sculpture, video, and photography. Some pieces involve puppets as figures—marionettes, shadow puppets, and ventriloquist dummies—others involve artists as puppeteers. The exhibition also explores manipulation, miniaturization, and control, topics often associated with puppetry. The participating artists are: Guy Ben-Ner, Nayland Blake, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, Anne Chu, Nathalie Djurberg, Terence Gower, Dan Graham, Christian Jankowski, Mike Kelley, William Kentridge, Cindy Loehr, Annette Messager, Paul McCarthy, Matt Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Thomas Schütte, Doug Skinner and Michael Smith, Laurie Simmons, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and Charlie White.

Southern California is home to an abundance of artists at the forefront of experimental and avant-garde puppetry. The extraordinary site-specific programming offered during The Puppet Show breaks the exhibition “fourth wall,” revealing the vitality and variety of contemporary puppet-inspired art in the immediate community.

Read more about The Puppet Show and related special programs.

Programs for The Puppet Show are funded, in part, by the City of Santa Monica’s Community Arts Grant Program.

The Puppet Show is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. It is co-curated by Ingrid Schaffner, ICA Senior curator, and Carin Kuoni, Director, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. ICA thanks the following funders: Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson; Etant donnes: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; Susquehanna Foundation; The Bandier Family Foundation; Goldberg Foundation; Sotheby’s; Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation; The Chodorow Exhibition Initiative Fund; and the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by University of the Arts.

Project Room 1: Bruce Busby: Super Faulty Reconfiguration
May 24 to August 9

Bruce Busby creates safe-havens from the impurities and “inhibitants” in the environment that cause creative blockage, frustration, inefficiency, and confusion. His hand-sewn nylon multicolor Creativity Enhancement Shelters range from bifurcated and curvilinear structures to what appear to be cutting-edge teepees. These shelters are also completely collapsible and transportable, so that one’s “oasis” can be taken along and erected anywhere. In his museum exhibition debut, Busby creates a new large-scale shelter that is modular and can be attached to any number of other like structures through a system of quick-release buckles and zippers. The exhibition also includes three new large scale drawings of Creativity Amplification Quakes (CRAQUE), intricate, billowing clouds of contamination rising from actual fault lines of the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas.

Read more about Super Faulty Reconfiguration.

Park Studio: Shadows and Gags
May 24 to August 9

The exhibition features three shadow puppet shows, prints, and animations by 17 students mentored by artists Lynn Jeffries, Artemio Rodriguez, and Paul Zaloom. Park Studio is a free outreach program offered to neighborhood middle and high school students during spring break. The program is developed and organized by Asuka Hisa, SMMoA's Director of Education.

Wall Works: blik and Me
On View through July 25 in Bergamot Station’s G Gallery Hallway

In the latest Wall Works project, Los Angeles-based wall graphics company blik collaborated with students from all over Southern California to create a site-specific installation made with color vinyl adhesives. All the adhesive images were made from drawings that answered the question: What would you be if you were not human?

Wall Works is an ongoing, free program that involves hundreds of Southern California schoolchildren, artists, and community partners in the creation of large-scale public artworks.

To participate in a future Wall Works, please contact Asuka Hisa, SMMoA’s Director of Education, 310 586-6488 x118, asuka.hisa@smmoa.org.

Wall Works is funded, in part, by the The Annenberg Foundation.

Exciting New Privileges for SMMoA Members!

SMMoA has just been invited to join the select Modern and Contemporary Reciprocal Museum Association. Advanced level SMMoA members will now enjoy reciprocal privileges in an additional tier of participating national institutions, including the Hammer Museum, the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. SMMoA members continue to enjoy the exceptional reciprocal privileges of the North American Reciprocal Museums (NARM) program that includes museums such as SITE Santa Fe, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. To find out more about the benefits of supporting SMMoA, a vibrant small museum that fosters diversity, innovation, and discovery in contemporary art, please contact Anna Nickila, 310 586-6488, ext. 116; anna.nickila@smmoa.org; or visit our membership pages.

Join the team that brings extraordinary contemporary art experiences to Southern California. SMMoA is looking for people who are interested in volunteering at exhibition openings and special events, and working in SMMoA's museum store GRACIE: Shop/Storage/Installation. Please contact Elizabeth at 310 586-6488, ext. 112 to find out more about an exciting range of involvement opportunities.