Esther McCoy (1904–1989) is one of the twentieth century’s foremost architecture historians, and one of the greatest chroniclers of the architecture of midcentury southern California. Her 1960 book Five California Architects has long been acknowledged as an indispensable classic, and as Reyner Banham famously observed of her, “no one can write about architecture in California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all.” Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader is the first anthology of McCoy’s writing. It features a selection of some 70 pieces--ranging from her 1945 article “Schindler, Space Architect” to “Arts &amp; Architecture: Case Study Houses,” a 1989 essay commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. From fiction for The New Yorker to seminal essays on new architectural forms, McCoy charts the progressive edge of American idealism, from the collective utopian spirit of Jazz Age Greenwich Village, through the Depression and the war years, to the optimism of the 1950s and 1960s. In preparing this volume, writer and editor Susan Morgan extensively researched the McCoy papers at the Archives of American Art. Her editorial decisions were based, in part, on McCoy’s original selections for an unrealized anthology solicited by W. W. Norton in 1968. Expanding on that project, Morgan has included essays, articles, lectures, correspondence, memoirs and short stories that illuminate the breadth and complexity of McCoy’s writing and the southern California region that inspired her groundbreaking work.

Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader

Literature & Fiction

McCoy, Esther

United States

East of Borneo Books

Allan Sekula (1951–2013), photographer, artist, filmmaker, scholar, teacher and activist, devoted much of his life to the theory and practice of social documentary. This posthumous volume presents a collaborative exploration he initiated to examine downtown Los Angeles as its redevelopment peaked with the construction of Frank Gehry's cultural icon. Designed as an exploration of the impact of Gehry's building, the book challenges civic complacency by engaging a vital counter-tradition of social documentary investigation. Including a previously unpublished essay by Sekula on the challenges of representing the city, an interview with him about the 2005 exhibition Facing the Music which he curated for the gallery at REDCAT, and an overview of the building's history and the continuing urban transformations it has catalyzed, this publication is a unique record of social and artistic engagement in a metropolis often thought to inhibit such efforts.

Allan Sekula: Facing the Music: Documenting Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Redevelopment of Downtown Los Angeles

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

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