► CANCELED: Visual Culture Seminar

"The Art Worlds of Los Angeles: Artists, power brokers, collectors, impresarios and publics, from Duchamp to Broad"

This talk is built around 4 case studies. The first, examining the Getty foundation, investigates how institutional power (and money) have been used to create art worlds through curatorship, exhibitions and scholarship. The second, seen through the lens of the Pasadena Art Museum, looks at how creating an art world in Los Angeles depends on building a public, and how fragile such a construction can be. The third, focusing on Watts Towers in South Central LA, asks how the meaning of a work of art can change as the dynamics of the art world change. My final case study contrasts the different careers of two major Los Angeles power brokers, Franklin Murphy and Eli Broad, to assess their impact on how the art worlds of LA are configured.