Artist Betye Saar, 1970 THE J. PAUL GETTY TRUST dedicated resources to “recover the historical record of art in Southern California” in 2002. Nearly a decade later, the endeavor led to Pacific Standard Time, a region-wide collaboration with more than 60 institutions that resulted in a sweeping series of exhibitions, programs and publications exploring art in Los Angeles. The Getty organized four exhibitions that drew on its collections. The shows featured a few African American artists, including Betye Saar, Melvin Edwards, Fred Eversley, and Ed Bereal. Years before the first Pacific Standard Time came together, curator and art historian Kellie Jones spent a substantial amount of time at the Getty archives researching the history of African American artists in Los Angeles. Her research at the institution was critical to two projects she produced—the exhibition and accompanying catalog for “Now Dig This!: Art in Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980” (2011-13) and the book “South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s” (2017). Saar’s work was explored in both volumes and appeared in the exhibition. After training its lens on the deep heritage of art in Los Angeles, the Getty, which describes itself as “the world’s […]
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