An art exhibit curated by professor Sylvia Lavin, director of critical studies in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, opened on May 1 at the Graham Foundation in Chicago and will run through July 26, 2014. The critically acclaimed “Everything Loose Will Land” originally debuted at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood as a part of the “Pacific Standard Time” collaborative exhibition of arts institutions across Southern California to recognize the region's pivotal role in the history of art and architecture.
“Everything Loose Will Land” explores the dynamic intersection of architecture and the visual arts in Los Angeles during the 1970s. Reframing Frank Lloyd Wright's famous quip, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles,” the exhibition demonstrates that rather than merely abject disarray, the city’s characteristic “looseness” dislodged the arts from their separate habits, realigning and ultimately redefining cultural practices and their relationship to the city.
Lavin is a leading figure in contemporary architectural history, theory, and criticism. She is the recipient of a 2011 Arts and Letters Award, as well as previous awards from the Getty Center, the Kress Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. In addition to her most recent book, "Kissing Architecture" (Princeton University Press, 2011) Lavin is the author of "Quatremere de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture' (MIT Press, 1992); "Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture" (MIT Press, 2005); and the forthcoming "The Flash in the Pan and Other Forms of Architectural Contemporaneity." She initiated a series of architectural projects for UCLA's Hammer Museum and has been a guest curator for the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, and Ace Galleries.
