The opening of “Made in L.A.,” the biennial survey of art from Los Angeles, is a red-letter day on the Southern Californian art calendar. On preview night at the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles, lines regularly form around the block.
As its title promises, artists must work (or have worked) in Los Angeles, and it has built a reputation for introducing audiences to exciting new names, often young or overlooked, and bracing fresh work. If the winds align, “Made in L.A.” will also offer some form of curatorial argument: a vision of the city, or, say, a proposal for what it is lacking.
This year, I got almost none of that.
“Made in L.A. 2025” is organized by Essence Harden, an independent curator formerly with the California African American Museum, and Paulina Pobocha, until last year the senior curator at the Hammer and now the chair and curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Unusually, the pair chose not to title their edition, and made clear in the biennial’s catalog that their personal viewpoints were secondary to those of their artists. “We have no ideas. And I think that’s good,” Pobocha declared.
I respect their humility. And I share their sense of this city as often maddeningly dissonant. But at this time of uncertainty in the art world (and in the world at large), of a deepening culture war and disagreements over art’s role in resisting an administration bent on cutting funding for projects deemed “woke,” we need something inspiring. Something to rally around.
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