PUBLIC WORKS: A COMMUNITY LABORATORY
October 9–December 20, 1998
This collaborative presentation featured installations and performances by fellowship recipients Carl Cheng, William Leavitt, Michael C. McMillen, and Jennifer Steinkamp in celebration of the ten-year anniversary of grantmaking by the California Community Foundation J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts. Friday Evening Salons featuring other artist fellowship recipients were open to the public throughout the exhibition, and the Trust Fund produced a commemorative catalog for the occasion. See below.
CARL CHENG: ORGANIC LABORATORY MUSEUM, JOHN DOE CO.
The Organic Laboratory, created by Santa Monica artist Carl Cheng (John Doe Co.), is an experimental museum of research into organic materials, natural phenomena, and human nature. Its meditative, sanctuary-like environments rely upon the site's natural character to encourage the viewer's subjective experience of elemental forces—sound, light, space, gravity, and physics. For his installation at the Santa Monica Museum, Cheng created a controlled greenhouse environment that displayed his long-term investigations, working models, and processes.
MICHAEL C. MCMILLEN: I DREAM OF YOUR EYE (DIAMOND RIO)
In this site-specific installation, Santa Monica artist Michael C. McMillen used found materials and flowing water in a labyrinthine construction that suggested the search for refuge from the chaos of the contemporary nomadic lifestyle. His installation touched upon the primal forces of memory, physical states of location, and vulnerability.
JENNIFER STEINKAMP IN COLLABORATION WITH ANDREW BUCKSBARG: THE TV ROOM
Jennifer Steinkamp employs existing architectural features in her interactive video installations. In The TV Room, three narrow wall screens were hung horizontally to suggest television scanlines, and an abstract animation was projected on the screens and the walls behind. Steinkamp's images worked in tandem with the audio, composed by Andrew Bucksbarg, to alter viewers' experiences according to their location within the space. The work called forth a spatial meeting place between the subjective, singular camera of cinema and the multiplicitous perspectives of abstract painting.
AN EVENING OF SOUND MUSIC COMBOS
September 18, 1998
As part of Public Works—A Community Laboratory, Los Angeles artist William Leavitt collaborated with the Santa Monica Museum to present a series of performances by groups that developed in Los Angeles's alternative underground club network and classical circuit. Included in the program were Non Credo, Solid Eye, and Some Over History.
AMY DREZNER—REVENGE EFFECTS: BLIGHT RESISTANCE
Artist Project Series
October 9–December 20, 1998
Revenge Effects: Blight was a meditation on ecology and the aesthetics of control—it explored the human impulse to manipulate nature for design purposes. Drezner's multimedia installation, a constructed formal allée, triggered viewer associations through an unabashedly synthetic (albeit elegant) form while making reference to nature's backlash—the catastrophic blights and diseases that have afflicted numerous tree species over the past century. Drezner unveiled a chilling, yet practical alternative to our historical preoccupation with governing nature, one that acknowledges the extent to which our perceptions of nature are shaped by style.
LEE CARUSO: THROUGH
July 25–September 20, 1998
Lee Caruso's video installation through incorporated highly saturated color and sound, creating a feeling of vertigo and the subtle pull of gravity. Images seemed not to be contained within the frame but rather to extend outside it, giving viewers the sensation of no longer being outside of the object but within it. This installation was made possible, in part, by support from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. The presentation of through was part of All Over the Map, a citywide festival of independent video and new media sponsored by L.A. Freewaves.
ANDREA BOWERS: SPECTACULAR APPEARANCES
Artist Project Series
July 25–September 20, 1998
This installation of drawings and videos documented Andrea Bowers's inquiry into the nature of crowds and an individual's role and identity within them. The face in the crowd, the individual interacting within society, the process of socialization—these are some of the ideas explored in Bowers's multimedia installations. Bowers's videos of people at spectator events gave fans in the crowd the opportunity to become performers in their own right. The presentation of Spectacular Appearances was also part of the citywide festival of independent video and new media, All Over the Map.
PIERRE MOLINIER
July 25–September 20, 1998
French artist Pierre Molinier (1900–1976) left behind an extensive collection of photographs, paintings, fetish items, and correspondence that illuminates his two-decade artistic pursuit: the conceptual and pictorial transformation of his own recognizably male body into that of a hermaphrodite. This exhibition of eighty photographs traced Molinier's obsessive investigation of fetishism and transvestitism. The small and darkly seductive photographs revealed the unique vision that has inspired many body/performance artists and photographers since the early 1970s, when his work first received critical recognition. This exhibition was organized by Wayne Baerwaldt of Plug In Inc., a nonprofit center for contemporary art in Winnipeg, Canada, and was accompanied by an illustrated catalog.
WORLD ARTISTS FOR TIBET: HUMAN RIGHTS MONTH
Community Focus Gallery
July 24–August 31, 1998
This exhibition, organized by Bruria Finkel, called attention to the civil rights struggle in Tibet. It included artworks by John Baldessari, Wallace Berman, Carl Chew, Bruria Finkel, Leon Golub, Noah Purifoy, and Nancy Spero—artists concerned with human rights issues. The Drepung Losling Monks, from one of Tibet's most artistically prestigious monasteries, created a sand mandala at the Museum from July 28 to August 3. The gallery was open for meditation from noon to 1 p.m. each Saturday during the exhibition.
LIZA LOU: BACK YARD AND KITCHEN
Artist Project Series
May 9–July 5, 1998
Commenting on the "perfect" domestic lifestyle strived for in Southern California's sprawling suburban neighborhoods, Back Yard, an installation by artist Liza Lou, transformed the Museum into the quintessential back yard. Remarkably, everything in the setting—from the one million blades of grass to the barbecue grill and the picnic table laden with food—was constructed from tiny beads. In conjunction with this momentous unveiling of Lou's new work, the Museum also presented Kitchen, a 1995 installation from the collection of Eileen and Peter Norton. This exhibition was the most comprehensive presentation of this Los Angeles artist's work to date. Smart Art Press published an accompanying catalog.

catalog
BECK AND AL HANSEN: PLAYING WITH MATCHES
Community Focus Gallery
May 9–July 5, 1998
This exhibition examined for the first time a mixed-media collage book created by Beck Hansen along with selected, lesser-known works by Al Hansen. Beck's collages suggest a hybrid form of process art devoid of the slick packaging of high conceptual art or the pop music for which he's best known. Included in the show were examples of Al Hansen's signature Goddess Venus figures composed of cigarette butts, Hershey bar wrapper text collages, photographic compositions, and handcrafted city maps. Playing with Matches was organized by Wayne Baerwaldt of Plug In Inc., a nonprofit center for contemporary art in Winnipeg, Canada; the accompanying illustrated catalog was copublished by Smart Art Press and Plug In Editions.
INTERIM EXHIBITIONS AT ALTERNATIVE SITES:

BUILD-OUT
Neighborhood Outreach Gallery at Santa Monica Place
May 1–June 26, 1998
This exhibition featured photographs and architectural renderings of SMMoA's new facility at Bergamot Station, designed by Narduli Grinstein.
THE NEW AMERICANS: PUREPECHA PEOPLE WHO TRAVEL
March 1–May 31, 1998
Author Ruben Martinez and photographer Joseph Rodriquez, in collaboration with Zone Zero, a bilingual Spanish/English website dedicated to photography (www.zonezero.com), followed the migratory trail of the Purepecha Indians from Michoacán, Mexico, to Watsonville, California. The exhibition was funded by the California Council for the Humanities and Fideicomiso para la culturala in Mexico.
SCHEMA
Neighborhood Outreach Gallery at Santa Monica Place
March 6–April 24, 1998
Curated by Nico Maestu, this exhibition presented schematic drawings by artists featured in upcoming Museum exhibitions.
GROUND-BREAKING EXORCISM AND BEYOND THE PINK
February 14, 1998
The Museum hosted this event in conjunction with Out of Actions, an exhibition curated by Paul Schimmel at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had opened February 8. Although Out of Actions took the Actionists and their influence on contemporary performance as its subject, it included no performance or film components. beyond the pink, an independent performance and film festival organized off-site by Gary Todd, offered the antidote. The Santa Monica Museum of Art hosted the festival finale, which included AIRWAY, the Terry Riley "In C" marching band (composed of high school and CalArts students and Kraig Grady), who marched through Bergamot Station in parade fashion, and "performances" by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Mike Kelley.


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