L.A. Art Show gets rewired
Major SoCal museums will have performances and installations at the event this year — a first
BY DEBORAH VANKIN >>> Every few years in January, as if on the heels of a fresh set of New Year’s resolutions, the L.A. Art Show tweaks its identity, unfurling across the Los Angeles Convention Center with renewed gusto and a slightly revised mission.
When it debuted in 1995 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium featuring just 14 U.S. galleries, the event focused on historic American and European work. As the L.A. contemporary art scene began to swell, the show, too, became decidedly more contemporary, more international and bigger. This year the show will host more than 100 galleries from 18 countries, and it expects about 70,000 visitors. But not without reinvention — again. The 2017 L.A. Art Show, which opens Wednesday night, will for the f irst time feature on-site programming from eight SoCal art institutions: the Broad, the Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach and the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center in Anaheim, as well as the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. The show will dedicate a 50,000-square-foot space for these cultural groups to stage performances and installations as well as live art talks as part of the daily “Dialogs L.A.” series.
“Los Angeles is elevating in the world of arts, and the contemporary art
Where: Los Angeles Convention Center, West Hall, 1201 S. Figueroa St., L.A.
When: Opening party 7-11 p.m. Wednesday; show 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday Tickets: See website Info: www.laartshow.com