Explore the Intersection of Art and Science in LA This Fall 2024
Published September 21, 2024 08:39 AM
Sharon Jung
E.A.T. (Experiments in Art & Technology)’s 1970 performance inside the Pepsi-Cola Pavilio. Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Trust
This fall, Getty's expansive PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative will unfold across museums and galleries throughout Southern California. Officially launching on September 15 and running until February 16, 2025, this initiative will feature exhibitions at over 70 cultural institutions and nearly 50 galleries, exploring the intersection of aesthetics and technology. The focus will span from historical to contemporary works, scholarly to speculative themes, and astronomical to fantastical ideas.
Originally named Pacific Standard Time, Getty’s PST Art initiative debuted in 2011 with Art in LA 1945–1980, followed by LA/LA in 2017, which highlighted connections between Los Angeles and Latin American artists. A smaller edition in 2013 focused on modern architecture in LA. Unlike its predecessors, this year’s series encompasses a wider range of topics, including historical exhibitions on color in Mesoamerican art and medieval studies of light, as well as solo showcases of work by Olafur Eliasson and The Harrisons. It also reflects on 20th-century collaborative initiatives like Experiments in Art and Technology and Arteonica and addresses themes of government surveillance and invisibility as forms of resistance.
With renowned scientific institutions like the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory—both hosting PST exhibitions—Southern California serves as a fitting backdrop for this year’s thematic exploration.
“Southern California has a distinctive, perpetually innovative art scene,” said Joan Weinstein, Director of the Getty Foundation. “It also boasts one of the most significant scientific communities in the world.”
Beyond high-tech collaborations that have been integral to LA’s art scene since the mid-20th century, the region's diverse physical landscape—lush, polluted, contested, and endangered—serves as a common thread throughout the initiative.
“For some artists in our exhibitions, the landscape of Los Angeles acts as both a studio and a laboratory,” Weinstein explained. “This includes exploring the complex sites where freshwater and ocean waters converge and restoring soil contaminated by industrial waste.”
Beatriz da Costa with Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. PigeonBlog. 2006–88. Courtesy of the Beatriz da Costa Estate)
One notable project is Beatriz da Costa’s PigeonBlog (2006–2008), an interdisciplinary grassroots research initiative aimed at gathering and disseminating climate data. This project is featured in the exhibition Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, which revives several of the late artist’s hybrid works that empower citizen-scientists free from corporate influence.
“We wanted to activate the work rather than present it as something obsolete,” curator Daniela Lieja Quintanar said. The exhibition will include two pigeon releases at Crenshaw Dairy Mart on October 19 and Barnsdall Art Park on November 16, involving the same pigeon fancier who collaborated with da Costa.
Indigenous knowledge is also a significant element in several PST Art exhibitions, particularly relevant in Southern California. The Fowler Museum’s Sangre de Nopal showcases a collaboration between textile artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez, tracing the origins of cochineal, a red dye developed by Zapotec scientists from an insect that thrives on cacti. “Los Angeles is home to the largest Oaxacan community outside of Mexico, and we also have the borderless cochineal, which flourishes on the opuntia cactus across the American West,” Aguiñiga noted.
While farming cochineal requires expertise in agriculture, biology, and chemistry, Gutiérrez emphasized that Western and Indigenous scientific perspectives often conflict. “In the Indigenous world, there is no separation between art and science,” he stated. “Color doesn’t originate in the artist’s studio; it starts in nature. Understanding these processes is crucial for transforming materials into color.”
Another highlight, World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project at the California African American Museum, reevaluates the life and legacy of this pioneering artist and scientist. Best known for his groundbreaking research on peanuts, Carver began his career as a landscape painter and was dubbed “the Black Leonardo” for his dual commitment to art and science. The exhibition features contemporary artists engaging with Carver’s legacy, including Sam Shoemaker, whose mycological sculptures resonate with Carver’s work on mushrooms; Abigail DeVille, who reinterprets Carver’s mobile classroom, the “Jesup wagon”; and Henry Taylor and Karon Davis, who collaborated on an installation depicting Carver at his easel.
While some PST exhibitions emphasize the “collisions” of art and science, many others blur the boundaries, representing intertwined threads of unified creative strategies, as Gutiérrez pointed out. Channing Hansen’s fiber works will be showcased in a solo exhibition at Marc Selwyn Fine Art and in Energy Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific Rim at Chapman University, which focuses on artists working with sound, vibration, and kinetics. Hansen merges analog and digital techniques, twisting wool into yarn, dyeing it, and employing computer algorithms based on natural phenomena to create patterns.
Hansen remarked that he does not view art and science as separate realms. “Some might say science provides a conceptual foundation for my work, but that overlooks the fact that science is integral to every aspect of its creation,” he explained, citing the genetic material of his wool, his use of spectrometry for color, and the algorithms that inform his knitting patterns.
Channing Hansen. CF35.B4. 2024. Courtesy the artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art
Sayart / Sharon Jung guhuijeong784@gmail.com
E.A.T. (Experiments in Art & Technology)’s 1970 performance inside the Pepsi-Cola Pavilio. Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Trust
This fall, Getty's expansive PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative will unfold across museums and galleries throughout Southern California. Officially launching on September 15 and running until February 16, 2025, this initiative will feature exhibitions at over 70 cultural institutions and nearly 50 galleries, exploring the intersection of aesthetics and technology. The focus will span from historical to contemporary works, scholarly to speculative themes, and astronomical to fantastical ideas.
Originally named Pacific Standard Time, Getty’s PST Art initiative debuted in 2011 with Art in LA 1945–1980, followed by LA/LA in 2017, which highlighted connections between Los Angeles and Latin American artists. A smaller edition in 2013 focused on modern architecture in LA. Unlike its predecessors, this year’s series encompasses a wider range of topics, including historical exhibitions on color in Mesoamerican art and medieval studies of light, as well as solo showcases of work by Olafur Eliasson and The Harrisons. It also reflects on 20th-century collaborative initiatives like Experiments in Art and Technology and Arteonica and addresses themes of government surveillance and invisibility as forms of resistance.
With renowned scientific institutions like the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory—both hosting PST exhibitions—Southern California serves as a fitting backdrop for this year’s thematic exploration.
“Southern California has a distinctive, perpetually innovative art scene,” said Joan Weinstein, Director of the Getty Foundation. “It also boasts one of the most significant scientific communities in the world.”
Beyond high-tech collaborations that have been integral to LA’s art scene since the mid-20th century, the region's diverse physical landscape—lush, polluted, contested, and endangered—serves as a common thread throughout the initiative.
“For some artists in our exhibitions, the landscape of Los Angeles acts as both a studio and a laboratory,” Weinstein explained. “This includes exploring the complex sites where freshwater and ocean waters converge and restoring soil contaminated by industrial waste.”
Beatriz da Costa with Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. PigeonBlog. 2006–88. Courtesy of the Beatriz da Costa Estate)
One notable project is Beatriz da Costa’s PigeonBlog (2006–2008), an interdisciplinary grassroots research initiative aimed at gathering and disseminating climate data. This project is featured in the exhibition Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, which revives several of the late artist’s hybrid works that empower citizen-scientists free from corporate influence.
“We wanted to activate the work rather than present it as something obsolete,” curator Daniela Lieja Quintanar said. The exhibition will include two pigeon releases at Crenshaw Dairy Mart on October 19 and Barnsdall Art Park on November 16, involving the same pigeon fancier who collaborated with da Costa.
Indigenous knowledge is also a significant element in several PST Art exhibitions, particularly relevant in Southern California. The Fowler Museum’s Sangre de Nopal showcases a collaboration between textile artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez, tracing the origins of cochineal, a red dye developed by Zapotec scientists from an insect that thrives on cacti. “Los Angeles is home to the largest Oaxacan community outside of Mexico, and we also have the borderless cochineal, which flourishes on the opuntia cactus across the American West,” Aguiñiga noted.
While farming cochineal requires expertise in agriculture, biology, and chemistry, Gutiérrez emphasized that Western and Indigenous scientific perspectives often conflict. “In the Indigenous world, there is no separation between art and science,” he stated. “Color doesn’t originate in the artist’s studio; it starts in nature. Understanding these processes is crucial for transforming materials into color.”
Another highlight, World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project at the California African American Museum, reevaluates the life and legacy of this pioneering artist and scientist. Best known for his groundbreaking research on peanuts, Carver began his career as a landscape painter and was dubbed “the Black Leonardo” for his dual commitment to art and science. The exhibition features contemporary artists engaging with Carver’s legacy, including Sam Shoemaker, whose mycological sculptures resonate with Carver’s work on mushrooms; Abigail DeVille, who reinterprets Carver’s mobile classroom, the “Jesup wagon”; and Henry Taylor and Karon Davis, who collaborated on an installation depicting Carver at his easel.
While some PST exhibitions emphasize the “collisions” of art and science, many others blur the boundaries, representing intertwined threads of unified creative strategies, as Gutiérrez pointed out. Channing Hansen’s fiber works will be showcased in a solo exhibition at Marc Selwyn Fine Art and in Energy Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific Rim at Chapman University, which focuses on artists working with sound, vibration, and kinetics. Hansen merges analog and digital techniques, twisting wool into yarn, dyeing it, and employing computer algorithms based on natural phenomena to create patterns.
Hansen remarked that he does not view art and science as separate realms. “Some might say science provides a conceptual foundation for my work, but that overlooks the fact that science is integral to every aspect of its creation,” he explained, citing the genetic material of his wool, his use of spectrometry for color, and the algorithms that inform his knitting patterns.
Channing Hansen. CF35.B4. 2024. Courtesy the artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art
