The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is preparing for the opening of a groundbreaking exhibition on the universal concept of home, “Home—So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas,” co-curated by Chon Noriega, director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center and an adjunct creator at LACMA. Noriega is a professor of film and television at UCLA.
Opening June 11 and running through Oct. 15, it is the first group show at a major Los Angeles museum to focus on Latino and Latin American art since the 1950s. The exhibition will explore the differences and affinities within artworks relative to immigration and political repression, dislocation and diaspora, and personal memory and utopian ideals.
“This exhibition is not a historical survey but a thematic investigation of home — a dwelling, residence or place of origin — an embodiment of one of the basic concepts for understanding an individual or group within a larger physical and social environment,” said Noriega and his co-curators Mari Carmen Ramirez and Pilar Tompkins Rivas in prepared statement. “Here, the artists speak across art history and social history in order to get at something about home that is so different, so appealing.” Ramirez is curator and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Rivas is director of the Vincent Price Art Museum.
“Home — So Different, So Appealing” features approximately 100 artworks by 40 Latino and Latin American artists. This expansive exhibition will include painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film/video and public sculpture by U.S. artists from the largest historic Latino groups — of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban origin — plus artists from Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, and Uruguay, among other countries.
“We are thrilled to present ‘Home — So Different, So Appealing,’ the first of five exhibitions at LACMA in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the ambitious regional collaboration devoted to exploring Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “The spirit of exchange is evident in the conception of this exhibition, a collaboration with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, LACMA, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Drawing from a range of artist voices, this exhibition offers a thought-provoking look into the ways in which Latino and Latin American artists have understood the idea of ‘home’ amid a changing political and socioeconomic landscape.”
