In Golden Hour, over 50 artists and one photography collective offer an aesthetic approach to understanding the complexities and histories of California. These images, gathered from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), have come to define the myths, iconographies, and realities of this unique state. Pairing masters of photography with experimental practitioners in a range of lens-based media that includes photo sculpture, vernacular, and video work, the selection blurs the boundaries of the tropes that formed a California identity. With works ranging from the early 1900s to present day, Golden Hour is neither a didactic history of the state nor an inclusive tale of photographic history, but rather artists’ impressions of the state of being in, and being influenced by, California.
Introducing Local Access
RAM is proud to be part of Local Access, a dynamic, multi-year exhibition partnership between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and four Southern California institutions (including RAM), made possible by a grant from Art Bridges. Established in 2018, the Art Bridges Initiative expands access to American art across the United States. LACMA is the first institution in the Western United States to receive a grant through the Art Bridges Initiative.
Local Access will bring special exhibitions drawn from LACMA’s collection to the Lancaster Museum of Art and History; the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; the California State University, Northridge, Art Galleries; and RAM. Over the next several years, each partner will present up to three exhibitions that reframe and broaden traditional ideas about American art. This unprecedented partnership is centered on sharing collections and museum resources to establish a new model for accessible and inclusive community engagement. The exhibitions are the result of a years-long exchange and collaboration among the staffs of the institutions.
Local Access joins other multi-year, multi-institutional partnerships supported by the initiative across the nation, including those organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Detroit Institute of Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Golden Hour’s Local Focus
Many of the photographers in Golden Hour will not be unfamiliar to Inland Southern California audiences. Photographers Judy Fiskin and Robbert Flick have used the region as subject and were part of RAM’s 2019 exhibition In the Sunshine of Neglect, our collaboration with the California Museum of Photography. Works by Darryl Curran are part of RAM’s collection through a generous gift by The Museum Project. Sant Khalsa, John Divola, and Amir Zaki live or work in the region. Golden Hour‘s photographic impressions of “the state of being in, and being influenced by, California” should make you feel right at home. We can’t wait for you to see it!
Poly High School Photography Club Responds to Golden Hour
Poly High’s Photography Club will showcase the student-photographers’ engagement and responses to the Golden Hour exhibition this summer! Matthew Schiller, the Poly High teacher in charge of the Photography Club, is excited about the continued partnership between RAM and the club, which began in 2013.
We are excited to see what the students come up with!
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Riverside Art Museum; Lancaster Museum of Art and History; Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; and California State University, Northridge, Art Galleries.
Local Access is a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by LACMA as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.
Additionally sponsored by: City of Riverside, Betty & Walter Parks
Image credit: Rafael Cardenas, Dos De Asada, 2010, inkjet print, 12 x 18 1/6 in., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ralph M. Parsons Fund, © Rafael Cardenas, digital image courtesy of the artist
Curating California
Monday, September 13, 5 p.m.–6 p.m. | Click here to register.
Join Douglas McCulloh, Senior Curator at UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography and RAM Trustee, in conversation with Golden Hour curator Eve Schillo, Assistant Curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at LACMA.
Join us for a lively Zoom discussion on the rich and varied world of California photography.
Golden Hour Special Events
TALK
Wednesday, September 15, 6 p.m. | No Cost | Limit 25
Join Bruce Hall, a legally blind SoCal-based photographer, in conversation with Douglas McCulloh, Senior Curator at UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography and RAM Trustee.
About Bruce Hall:
Bruce Hall’s night sky was devoid of stars, a vast sheet of darkness. Hall was born with a word salad of eye conditions: nystagmus, myopia, astigmatism, amblyopia, macular degeneration and exotropia. “I grew up hearing about stars, but I’d never seen them. When I was nine or ten, a neighbor kid down the street let me look through his telescope. We pointed it at the North Star. It was like an opening into another world.” Hall saw not just stars, but possibilities. The childhood glimpse became a turning point, directing Hall into a lifelong engagement with seeing devices: cameras, lenses, magnifiers, telescopes, computer screens.
Since then, Bruce Hall has constructed his world from photographs. When he looks into your eyes, it’ll be on his forty-inch Sony high definition monitor. Most photographers see in order to photograph. Bruce Hall photographs in order to see.
“I think all photographers take pictures in order to see, but for me it’s a necessity. I can’t see without optical devices, cameras. Therefore, it’s become an obsession. It’s beyond being in love with cameras; I need cameras.” Susan Sontag called photographs objects “that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern.” By this logic, Hall leads a hypermodern life, employing an ever-present camera to build his visual world one photograph at a time.
Hall calls his device-enabled interface with the world “intensified seeing.” The devices are extensions, amplifications of his body. “Without cameras, my life would be bleak. With cameras, I can see.” The result is a strange form of double vision. “I always see things twice. First, I see an impression. I take what I think I see, later I can see what I saw. I have certain aims, guesses, impressions, but the photographs are always a surprise.”
by Douglas McCulloh, Curator, sight unseen, International Photography by Blind Artists.
TOUR
Thursday, September 9, 6 p.m.; Friday, September 10, 4 p.m.; Saturday, September 11, 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. | No Cost | Limit 15/tour
Join the Riverside Art Museum for a guided descriptive tour of four select works from Golden Hour. These tours will provide extensive verbal descriptions, including information on artist processes, photographic compositions, and historical context. Individuals that are blind or have low vision are encouraged to attend these tours, but all individuals are welcome to participate.
RSVPs are required for the TALK and/or TOUR. Please email cmarsella@riversideartmuseum.org or claraedawson@gmail.com.
Generous support for this project provided by:
