Getty Foundation to issue $8.5 million in grants for Latino and Latin American-themed shows across SoCal

A show about the boundary-pushing art of radical Latin American women and another devoted to the science fiction of the Americas are just two of 43 exhibitions and events receiving $8.5 million in grants from the Getty Foundation as part of Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles/Latin America, scheduled to kick off in fall 2017.

The awards, to be formally announced at a Wednesday morning event in downtown Los Angeles, will help to fund Latino- and Latin America-themed shows across Southern California — an unprecedented series of exhibitions that will add to the scholarship of an under-researched area of art history, organizers said.

“Los Angeles is deeply linked to Latin America in its history and in its current demographics,� Getty Foundation Director Deborah Marrow said. “No one has ever put so many Latin American shows together at one time, especially side by side with shows by Latino artists — so people could dialogue about it.�

The grants include $425,000 for the Hammer Museum in Westwood for its show on radical women artists, $310,000 for the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego for a survey of how artists in Latin American countries reacted to political oppression during the 20th century and $225,000 to the UC Riverside Artsblock for an exhibition devoted to art and sci-fi.

Among the top recipients is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which will receive almost $500,000 for its trio of exhibitions: a retrospective of the L.A. artist Carlos Almaraz; a design show that will look at the historic connections between California and Mexico; and a survey devoted to genre-busting contemporary artists. That last show will be developed in partnership with the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, which is hosting artist residencies and which will also have a related display.

“We’ve brought educators, registrars, people responsible for programming — we’ve brought them together around intellectual issues to discuss what is Latin American art, what is Latino art, what is the relationship,� Marrow said, later adding: “When the curators get together, they develop activities together and share information.�

This will be the third wave of PST shows in Southern California. The first, in 2010, was focused on 20th century art from Los Angeles and was supported by $11.5 million in grants from the Getty Foundation. The second, staged in 2013, was devoted to Modern architecture in Southern California. That effort received $3.7 million.

Two years ago, the foundation awarded $5 million in research grants to 40 Southern California arts institutions to help them research and initiate planning on PST: LA/LA. The new grants will support a couple of exhibitions whose future was uncertain.

The foundation originally granted $170,000 to the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach for a show of Latin American kinetic art organized by curator Dan Cameron. But Cameron and other museum staffers were laid off in 2015 when a new director took over the museum. In addition, a planned construction project at OCMA threatened to make staging the show in the museum’s galleries impossible.

The exhibition, “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,� has now found a home at the Palm Springs Art Museum, with Cameron still at the helm.

“It had a happy ending,� Marrow said. “The Orange County Museum of Art graciously agreed to continue overseeing the research grant until we could find a location for the show.�

Also up in the air was a show of the work of outsider artist Martín Ramírez at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, which had received a $90,000 research grant. The institution has been without a gallery space since departing its longtime home at Bergamot Station last summer, but the Ramírez exhibition is set to go on — thanks in part to a new $175,000 exhibition grant.

The exact location of that show, however, remains a bit of a mystery.

The show will be at the museum’s to-be-announced permanent space in Los Angeles, a museum spokesperson said by email: “Details will be forthcoming soon.�

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