Edgar Arceneaux steps down as head of Watts House Project

The Watts House Project announced Saturday that Edgar Arceneaux "has graciously stepped aside" from his role as executive director. The announcement came two days after the online publication of a Los Angeles Times report on problems behind the scenes at the nonprofit. Arceneaux, an artist who founded the community redevelopment project in 2009, had served as its leader and most visible spokesperson.

The group's new leader is Will Sheffie, who was hired last year as managing director to oversee day-to-day operations. Board president Channing Henry distributed the announcement, dated April 7, by email:

The statement begins: "As of today, Watts House Project (WHP) is pleased to announce that Will Sheffie, our Managing Director, will take over the organization’s leadership, filling the role of Executive Director. Edgar Arceneaux, WHP Founder and current Board member, has graciously stepped aside as Executive Director while the organization takes measures to effectively address the challenges it has faced in its recent growth. We remain committed to working with local and internationally known artists to maintain the artistic vision of the organization, and are devising an Artistic Director role that will help lead WHP in defining a replicable, sustainable model for arts-based community redevelopment.

Watts House Project and the challenges of social practice

It's easy to understand why curators, critics and others have a soft spot for artists engaged in "social practice" -- those who roll up their sleeves and use their skills to try to bring about some sort of real-world change, whether raising awareness about domestic violence or helping to rebuild post-Katrina New Orleans. But is it possible that when it comes to social practice that the art establishment has a blind spot too?

That is one question raised by our report on the problems behind the scenes at Watts House Project, a highly lauded community redevelopment effort founded by artist Edgar Arceneaux to bring artists and architects together to renovate homes on East 107th Street, across from the Watts Towers. They called it "an ongoing, collaborative artwork in the shape of a neighborhood redevelopment."

Despite serious art-world support and funding (about $700,000 in all, from the likes of LACMA, the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and ArtPlace), the small, 3-year-old nonprofit has been struggling with resident dissatisfaction, construction delays and board defections. In October alone, seven of Arceneaux's 12 board members left, including doctor-collector Joy Simmons, LAX Art founder Lauri Firstenberg and real estate developer Eve Steele. Residents are now talking about pulling out.

It's not too late to catch many Pacific Standard Time shows

Last Saturday, several local museums offered free admission as a way to mark the end of the sprawling six-month-long exhibition festival Pacific Standard Time. But don't throw away your little red guide to the PST shows quite yet.

As could be expected from such an unwieldy event involving many different institutional schedules, several exhibitions are spilling beyond the official six-month mark, giving people a little more time to fill in gaps in their knowledge of Southern California art history.

Here's a list of shows that run beyond this week: 

LACMA, Getty among 134 museums joining Google's art site

 

Google knows something about the power in numbers, even in an art website.

Google Art Project, which launched last year with virtual tours and digitized artworks from 17 museums, has added 134 new museums to its site, including four from California.

Initially, no museums from the state were included in the project; now the Getty Museum, the L.A. County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the De Young Museum in San Francisco are participating.

Other newcomers in the U.S. include the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., the Rubin Museum in New York, and the White House.
New partners from outside the U.S. include the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art in Brazil, the Musée d’Orsay in France, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico, Islamic Museum of Qatar, and the National Museum of Indonesia, just to name a few. Altogether, 40 countries are now represented.

This expansion addresses early complaints from cultural critics that the site was too Eurocentric and Old Masters-heavy, because of offerings from such venerable institutions as the Frick Collection and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Uffizi in Florence, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the National Gallery in London.

Jeff Koons train: Destination LACMA or the High Line?

While LACMA’s plans to build a massive Jeff Koons sculpture of a train outside the museum seem to be running out of steam, the Friends of the High Line in New York have thrown another possible wrench into the works: They announced their desire to build the same unrealized sculpture by Koons in their popular city park, which overlooks Chelsea and neighboring areas in Manhattan where an elevated railway once ran.

“I think the train connection is really powerful for us,” said Robert Hammond, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, which is known for integrating art, though usually temporary, into the elevated park.

As a permanent attraction, the Koons sculpture “could point to the city’s industrial history and how freight trains used to run here,” he said, adding that one proposed site is the rail yards between 30th and 34th streets, near the West Side Highway.

The sculpture, which the Los Angeles County Museum of Art unveiled to the public with dramatic renderings five years ago, consists of a realistic-looking 70-foot replica of a 1943 Baldwin 2900 steam locomotive hanging from a real 160-foot crane. The train is meant to look and sound authentic, with wheels chugging and steam releasing on occasion. The project was estimated to cost at least $25 million, though several people close to the project say that actual costs could run much higher.

Hammer announces $100,000 prize for new biennial; 60 artists chosen

The Hammer Museum announced on Wednesday a new $100,000 award to a Los Angeles artist participating in its first biennial, “Made in L.A.” And, in a popular voting process familiar from reality TV, the winner will be chosen by people who see the exhibition, after a jury of art experts narrows the choice to five finalists.
 
Known as the Mohn Prize, the award surpasses the Turner Prize from the Tate Museum in London and matches the Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney in New York for sheer dollar value. The hope is that it also rivals them as a mechanism for bringing attention to artists.

"I strongly believe that the most creative and innovative art in the world is being made here in L.A., and it has been that way for a number of years," said Jarl Mohn, who funded the prize with his wife, Pamela, through the Mohn Family Foundation. "This prize along with the biennial is a way to let the rest of the world know it."

LACMA's Michael Govan talks about his new rock star

As long as artist Michael Heizer is not granting interviews about his 340-ton boulder, which has achieved celebrity status en route to becoming a museum piece, LACMA director Michael Govan has served as its de facto spokesman or agent.

Last year Govan first introduced the public to the rock at its quarry in Riverside (above), where he marvelled over the jagged lines and dramatic form of what seemed at first glance a perfectly generic boulder. This week he has fielded countless requests from radio and TV programs about the boulder's high-profile journey.

We caught up with him Thursday in the middle of the madness.

Did you ever expect the rock to get this degree of attention and adulation?
We thought it would be interesting to mark the city with this megalith and that it could have a power that extends beyond the [LACMA] campus. But, no. I don’t think we could imagine this--that there would be 20,000 people in Bixby Knolls. We always think of artists as challenging expectations, so I wasn’t expecting this kind of outpouring of expression and love.

PHOTOS: Giant rock rolling toward LACMA

What do you think it is about the rock that’s captured everyone’s attention?
Somebody said, I think a news cameraman, that there’s something very primal in human beings about moving rocks. I think that’s as plausible a reason as any. Why is it when you look across the globe from India and Asia to Mexico that so many ancient cultures did the same thing?

ForYourArt opens its first public space--and seeks proposals for it

It's never been easy to pigeonhole ForYourArt, which has variously functioned as an arts website, a gallery and museum guide publisher, a cultural marketing firm and an event producer. But that task is about to get even harder, as the small but influential L.A. firm founded by Bettina Korek six years ago is opening its first public space at 6020 Wilshire Blvd.

The idea is a highly flexible, hybrid space devoted to arts programming in the broadest sense--"anything from talks to installations to publication launches to performances," said Korek, 33. One thing not to expect: traditional six-week-long, gallery-style exhibitions.“It's really about temporary projects, which last 0 to 7 days,” she said. Also not in the works: any plans to scale back the company’s Web or Twitter presence.

The new space, an 1,850-square-foot storefront across the street from LACMA, will open March 24 with an event pegged to a museum screening of Christian Marclay's blockbuster video “The Clock.” While Korek declined to give specifics, she described the opening event as "a 24-hour show that reflects the way we want to encourage participation in museums."

Art world responds to death of Kenneth Price

The art world is mourning the loss of artist Kenneth Price, who died early Friday at his home in Taos, N.M. He was 77.

The Los Angeles-born artist, who had struggled with tongue and throat cancer, is to be the subject of a 50-year retrospective opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in September. In honor of the artist, LACMA, which owns 40 works by Price, plans to put his 2011 piece "Zizi" on view in the lobby of its Ahmanson Building on Monday. It has also updated its exhibition website with some of Price's photos. 

"Price was unwavering in his approach and resolute in his practice while the art world around him was intent upon other forms and directions," LACMA curator Stephanie Barron wrote in a memo to staff. "He was relentless and determined, even during his prolonged illness. Through it all he managed to make incredible, joyful work that is at once subtle and brave, serious and sly."

Barron, who is curating the upcoming retrospective, added that Price had been involved with the planning and publication of the show until two weeks ago. "He had approved the installation design, read every word of the catalogue, made suggestions about the nature of the illustrations, given us notes on the height of each sculpture we will display, and even how he would like them illuminated," she said. "At least there will be a chance to celebrate his life in six months with the show and catalogue."

Mark Grotjahn's snowmen hit the slopes in Aspen

Hard-core snowboarders and skiers in Aspen, Colo., might get surly when it rains, but Mark Grotjahn's newest sculptures, which are sharing their slopes, seem content in any weather. They are boxy, cheery, colorfully painted bronze heads with cut-out eyes that look like they were based on cardboard sculptures made by a kid. In fact, they were based on cardboard sculptures made by an acclaimed L.A. artist.

Grotjahn first showed his primitive cardboard sculptures in a group show, "Painting in Tongues," at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2006. Now his painted bronze versions have made their debut in Colorado: Snowmass, Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk each feature one sculpture, with the fifth located nearby at the Aspen Art Museum, where a survey of Grotjahn's work opened Monday.