DCA Arts and Cultural Calendar
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January 2019
Gary Simmons: Fade to Black
Artist Gary Simmons references film, architecture, and American popular culture in paintings and drawings that address race, class, and memory. Much of Simmons’s work centers on his signature erasure techniques. Hours: Tuesdays – Saturdays 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Sundays 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
February 2019
Life Model: Charles White and his Students
Presented at the original Otis Art Institute campus where Charles White was the first African American faculty member, this exhibition illuminates the artist’s impact as a teacher. The show features artwork in diverse media and modes of expression, alongside sketchbooks, photographs, and archival footage that illuminate his pedagogy. The gallery is open to the public every Saturday afternoon from 1–4 pm
March 2019
Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary
A prolific painter, printmaker, muralist, draftsman, and photographer whose career spanned more than half a century, Charles White’s artistic portrayals of black subjects, life, and history were extensive and far-reaching. Plumb Line features contemporary artists whose work in the realm of black individual and collective life resonates with White’s profound and continuing influence. Tuesdays – Saturdays 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Sundays 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Liberator: Chronicling Black Los Angeles, 1900–1914
The Liberator: Chronicling Black Los Angeles, 1900–1914 sheds light on the expansion of the city’s African American community, its challenges in a post-Reconstruction era, and its hopes and accomplishments, as captured in the newspaper’s pages. More than a century since The Liberator’s final issue, this exhibition includes rare ephemera, photographs, and artifacts that offer a unique study of the narrative of black Los Angeles. Tuesdays – Saturdays 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Sundays 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983
Soul of a Nation celebrates the work of Black artists made over two decades beginning in 1963, at the height of the civil rights movement. The exhibition devotes individual galleries either to groups of artists working in a particular city — with three galleries dedicated to artists living and working in Los Angeles – or to a different kind of art production. The exhibition showcases communities engaged in robust artistic dialogues, while also revealing disagreements about what it meant to…
Indian Country: The Art of David Bradley Opens to the Public
For the past three decades, David Bradley (Minnesota Chippewa, born 1954) has been a recognized voice from Indian Country, confronting through his art questions of identity, self-determination, and self-representation, as well as definitions of “traditional” Indian art. Drawing influence from diverse sources such as Santa Fe–style painting of the 1930s–40s, Renaissance art, pop culture, advertising, and film, Bradley’s work is at once serious and fun, historical and contemporary.
April 2019
Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop
Celebrating the photographers who have played a critical role in bringing hip-hop’s visual culture to the global stage, Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is an inside look at the work of hip-hop photographers, as told through their most intimate diaries: their unedited contact sheets. Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
May 2019
Patrick Angus: Voyeur
This May, the Long Beach Museum of Art presents a large-scale retrospective of the work of American painter Patrick Angus. The expansive exhibition of paintings and works on paper allows intimate insights into the development of Angus’s body of work, revealing a window to his personal life and the New York City gay scene. In 1992, the artist died from complications related to AIDS. Since the first presentation of his work at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany, Angus’s artistic achievements have…
Bob Mizer: Vintage Physique
During the span of a nearly 50-year career, American photographer and filmmaker Robert Henry Mizer (b.1922 – d. 1992), universally known as Bob, has been pushing boundaries in both subject matter and medium. Famed for his groundbreaking publication, Physique Pictorial, which launched its first issue in 1951, Mizer’s unique portrayals of male figures are not only instilled with his passion but also reflect and challenge societal notions of masculinity of post-war America. Thursdays 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. Fridays…
Coyote Leaves the Res: The Art of Harry Fonseca
Featuring paintings, sketches, and lithographs, Coyote Leaves the Res: The Art of Harry Fonseca focuses on the recurring figure of Coyote, a trickster, shape shifter, and storyteller capable of moving undetected between different worlds. This exhibition explores the complexity of Harry Fonseca’s (Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian, Portuguese, 1946–2006) art within the context of a contemporary world, in which new freedoms and old biases often exist side-by-side. As both a gay man and a person of mixed heritage, Fonseca used his work…