As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980 regional initiative, Backyard Oasis examines swimming pools in photographs from 1945 to 1982 as visual analogs of the ideals and expectations associated with Southern California. These images of individual water-based environs in the arid landscape are an integral part of the region’s identity, a microcosm of the hopes and disillusionments of the country’s post-World War II ethos. As a private setting, the backyard pool became a stage for sub-culture rituals and clandestine desires. As a medium, photography became the primary vehicle for embodying the polar emotions of consumer optimism and Cold War fears. Crossing the boundaries of popular and high culture, commercial merchandising, journalistic reporting, and vernacular memorabilia, photography conveyed the developing ideologies of the period. As such, its visual language forms a network of discursive topics that open onto each other, offering a rich study of physical and cultural geography. For the first time, this exhibition, its catalogue, and attendant programs trace the integrated histories of photography and the iconography of the swimming pool, bringing new light to aspects of this complex interaction. 

This exhibition includes over 70 oil paintings by Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) ranging in date from 1876-1918. Organized into two themes, the exhibition includes 40 American and Western landscapes paintings, 20 daylight Palm Springs area desert paintings along with a selection of larger “studio” paintings. The paintings will be loaned from the artist’s estate and from the collections of his heirs, private collections and the Sullivan Goss Gallery. This will be the first Museum venue of a traveling exhibition of the artist’s nocturne paintings Collecting Moonlight: the Night Paintings of Lockwood de Forest. A brochure will be produced by Palm Springs Art Museum to accompany this exhibition.

The Palm Springs Art Museum reopened the Kaplan/Ostergaard Glass Center for the 2011-2012 season and is featuring a dazzling array of contemporary glass works from a wide range of artists. The installation features works by significant artists known for their contributions to the international Studio Glass movement including Dale Chihuly, Karen LaMonte, Benjamin Moore, and Lino Tagliapietra and are displayed alongside works made by artists who are traditionally not associated with the movement, such as Jim Dine, Lynda Benglis and Larry Bell, who are inspired to use glass in ways that integrate with other aesthetic and conceptual approaches.

The museum’s contemporary galleries are installed with a set of themes that integrate significant works from the gifts and promised works from Donna and Cargill MacMillan, Jr. with recent loans. Artists in this collection include Louise Bourgeois, Ralph Goings, Mona Hatoum, Donald Judd, Anish Kapoor, Rachel Lachowicz, Morris Louis, Max Neumann, Mimmo Paladino, Neo Rauch, Robert Rauschenberg, the Starn Brothers, Andy Warhol, and Andrea Zittel.