Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951-1969

Decades before today s major Los Angeles museums realized the potential of contemporary art, the pioneering institutions Pasadena Art Museum and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art under curator directors Thomas Leavitt and Walter Hopps championed talented local and internationally recognized painters. Part of the Getty Research Institute s Pacific Standard Time initiative, this crisp exhibition catalog reconstructs the partially forgotten history through photos and reproductions. Storied moments such as Kienholz s first solo show(1961), Duchamp s chess game with a naked Eve Babitz(1963) and Diebenkorn s first major exhibition(1963) reenter the annals of 20th century American art history.