PAST
Past Exhibitions
Beg Borrow and Steal
02/13/13 – 06/02/13 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Beg Borrow and Steal is the first exhibition to be installed simultaneously in the Palm Springs Art Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert in The Galen building. Originally organized by the Rubell family for an immense, annual installation from their permanent collection that coincides with the international art scene surrounding Art Basel in Miami, the exhibition has been refined to accommodate the museum's galleries. This selection includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, and videos by fifty-eight artists from the Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation. It surveys most of the artists included in the original installation, with an emphasis on those working on the west coast, especially Los Angeles. The Southern California focus is significant, not only for its relevance to our Palm Springs location, but also because the region has had a formidable influence on the use of appropriation in art, the subject of the exhibition.
Beg Borrow and Steal
02/02/13 – 06/02/13
Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert
Beg Borrow and Steal is the first exhibition to be installed simultaneously in the Palm Springs Art Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert in The Galen building. Originally organized by the Rubell family for an immense, annual installation from their permanent collection that coincides with the international art scene surrounding Art Basel in Miami, the exhibition has been refined to accommodate the museum's galleries. This selection includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, and videos by fifty-eight artists from the Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation. It surveys most of the artists included in the original installation, with an emphasis on those working on the west coast, especially Los Angeles. The Southern California focus is significant, not only for its relevance to our Palm Springs location, but also because the region has had a formidable influence on the use of appropriation in art, the subject of the exhibition.
Picture This: Photographic Portraits of Place
12/16/12 – 03/28/13 - Marks Graphics Center And Jorgensen Gallery
Palm Springs Art Museum
From their position as romantic travelers to social chroniclers, photographers have used the camera to capture the spirit of place whether familiar or foreign. Nineteenth-century Europeans brought back images from distant countries. Twentieth-century documentarians focused on the dislocations of modern life accompanying the social effects of industrialism and urban development. Soviet era photographers depicted the transformation of an entire society based on utopian ideals. More recently, adventurous artists have explored other cultures to examine the impact of global exchange.
Antibodies: The Works of Fernando and Humberto Campana 1989 - 2009
11/10/12 – 02/24/13 - McCallum Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Even though their aesthetic sensibility elevates their work to another plane, the Campana brothers, Fernando and Humberto, consider themselves designers rather than artists because they create functional work. Paper, wire, plastic, fabric, felt, carpet, rubber, and wood are some of the materials they use in their series. Whimsical and contemporary, yet structurally complex, their work is influenced by Brazil's unusual natural forms, the street life of the slums, as well as contemporary art, film, and music. Themes of globalization and sustainability weave through their exuberant and sensual work. Often using recycled materials, they fashion objects to create new forms. They call their process a flirt with materials since the material dictates the form and function of their work.
Make it Work: Material Matters in Art and Design
10/13/12 – 01/20/13
Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert
This exhibition in The Galen at Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert explores the relationship between materials and forms in the creative process by juxtaposing a range of dynamic art and design objects from the 1960s to the present. Gifts and promised works from Donna and Cargill MacMillan, Jr. influenced members of the American Society of Interior Designers as they created runway sensations for Fashion Week El Paseo 2010. These whimsical fashion designs are featured alongside a selection of significant modern and contemporary art works from the MacMillan gift.
Woven Together: Art and Design in Southwest Indian Textiles
10/02/12 – 12/30/12 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
This exhibition examines one hundred years of artistic developments in Southwest Native American weaving. Drawn from the museum's permanent collection, the exhibition presents sixty-four Navajo and Pueblo blankets, rugs, and pictorial weavings dating from the 1870s to 1970s. Examples from the late 19th-century Classic and Transitional Periods through the Regional Rug Period of the first half of the 20th century are featured with a selection of historic Germantown and banded blankets from the Jan and Mark Hilbert Collection. The textiles are accompanied by fine examples of basketry, pottery, jewelry, and kachinas from the museum's permanent collection.
Between Abstract and Figurative
06/23/12 – 08/26/12
Palm Springs Art Museum
During the turn of the twentieth century, two distinct currents in European art may be identified. The first were artists who upheld a fading classical tradition. They promoted representational art that was based on the academic study of the figure, landscape and still life. The other group was the forerunners of what is generally termed Modern Art. They expressed freedom and independence from established styles and explored the concept of purely abstract painting.
POP GOES THE HUMOR
05/26/12 – 10/07/12 - Various
Palm Springs Art Museum
From the Museum's Permanent Collection Pop art emerged in the mid 1950s in Great Britain and developed through the 1960s in the United States. It challenged the traditions of fine art by including images derived from popular culture such as comic books, advertising, product labeling, logos, and television. Humor in pop art is represented in a range of forms -- from caricature and cartoons to the more subtle, less obvious intellectual forms of satire and social commentary. Through humorous and popular imagery, artists addressed the human experience -- providing comic relief, amusement, and to keep us from taking things too seriously.
Michael Petry, The Touch of the Oracle
03/17/12 – 08/19/12
Palm Springs Art Museum
The Touch of the Oracle features three monumental site-specific installations Golden Rain, Joshua D's Wall, and The Dilemma. These artworks provide an opportunity for audiences to experience the work of Michael Petry, an installation-based conceptual artist that draws inspiration from art history, mythology, and contemporary culture. The distinct pieces relate and interact with each other and the visitors to the gallery creating an ambiance of sound and visual complexity. While Petry is not traditionally associated with the studio glass movement, his creative sensibilities are stimulated by the medium of glass in monumental works. Unlike studio glass artists, Petry does not actually create his individual art objects, but seeks out highly skilled crafts people with whom he collaborates to animate his conceptual ideas. For these installations, he has worked with an inspired team of glass blowers to create works that require a high level of technical expertise.
Rodin to Now: Modern Sculpture
03/01/12 – 09/30/12
Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert
The opening exhibition in this new space, Rodin to Now: Modern Sculpture showcases significant works by well known modern artists including Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Donald Judd, Edgar Degas and dozens more. The exhibition is complemented by the finest sculpture garden east of Los Angeles, set in a lushly landscaped desert oasis that houses works from modern masters such as Donald Judd, Gio Pomodoro, Barry Flanagan, Betty Gold and Fletcher Benton.
Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982
01/21/12 – 05/27/12 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
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.
Night and Day: The Paintings of Lockwood de Forest
12/17/11 – 04/08/12
Palm Springs Art Museum
Co-curated by Christine Giles and Frank Goss, this exhibition includes 60-65 oil paintings by Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) ranging in date from 1874-1918. Organized into two themes the exhibition includes 40 American and Western landscapes paintings, 20 daylight Palm Springs area desert paintings and three or four larger studio paintings. The paintings will be loaned from the artist?s estate, private collections and the Sullivan Goss Gallery. (See Lenders to the exhibition listed below) This will be the first Museum venue of a traveling exhibition of the artist?s nocturne paintings and will coincide with the publication of a major monograph entitled: Collecting Moonlight: the Night Paintings of Lockwood de Forest. A brochure and checklist will by produced by Palm Springs Art Museum to accompany this exhibition. Essays will be provided by Joseph Goldyne and Frank Goss along with contributions by museum curatorial staff.
Andrew Wyeth in Perspective
10/08/11 – 01/22/12 - McCormick Gallery
Palm Springs Art Museum
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was one of the best-known artists of the middle and later 20th century. Known for his intensely realist style, he exhibited an extraordinary technical mastery of several different media. Over his long career he explored a wide variety of themes, concentrating primarily on the land and people around his beloved homes in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine, and revealing diverse emotional levels that give his work an authentic and expressive American voice. Underlying his realist approach is a strong compositional sense of formal relationships and a prototypical use of contrasting light and shadow to help build depth of space and mood. Many of his works have become iconic, including one of the most well-known images in 20th century art, Christina's World in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Blast from the Past: 60s and 70s Geometric Abstractions
07/16/11 – 12/23/11 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
This selection from the museum's permanent collection is a broad examination of geometric abstract paintings, sculptures and prints from the 1960s and 1970s, a period known for its purity of style. Approximately 100 works represent a variety of ideas in Optical Art, Kinetic art, Minimalism, Hard-Edge and Color- Field. Many of the exhibited works, impressive in their sheer visual power, have rarely been on view or are on view for the first time.
Simply Masterful: Picasso and Artists of the Modern Era
06/23/11 – 09/04/11 - McCallum Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
During the turn of the twentieth century, two distinct currents in European art may be identified. The first were artists who upheld a fading classical tradition. They promoted representational art that was based on the academic study of the figure, landscape and still life. The other group was the forerunners of what is generally termed Modern Art. They expressed freedom and independence from established styles and explored new ways to use color and the concept of purely abstract painting.
Western and Native American Art from the Permanent Collection
06/22/11 – 10/02/11 - Denney Western American Art Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Combining traditional and contemporary artworks from the 19th-century to today, this installation presents a complex blend of cultures, landscapes, historical forces and artistic traditions that both inform and challenge our ever evolving notion of the West. The apparent intersecting and blending of influences of different cultures -Euro-American and Native American cultures- was an integral part of the expansion of the western frontier and forms an important part of our artistic heritage. Paintings by Thomas Moran, Charles Russell, Agnes Pelton, James Swinnerton and George Montgomery are featured with contemporary artworks by Alexis Smith, Fritz Scholder and Dan Namingha along with traditional forms of Native American basketry, pottery and textiles including works by Cahuilla basket artists Lupe Allberras and Dolores Saneva Patencio among others.
Comic Art Indigéne
06/16/11 – 09/18/11 - Marks Graphics Center And Jorgensen Gallery
Palm Springs Art Museum
Comic art is now mainstream. It is a source for award-winning fiction, highly-budgeted motion pictures, and endless streams of merchandising such as toys and video games. Yet comic book art remains an enigma, its most popular genre has always been directed towards a young audience hindering its growth and acceptance among artists and critics.
Ransom: An Art Installation by Lewis de Soto
06/16/11 – 12/31/11 - Various
Palm Springs Art Museum
Lewis deSoto's exhibition project, Ransom, utilizes the Mesoamerican collection at the Palm Springs Art Museum, commissioned videos, and historical sculptural elements to create a multi-nuanced environment that presents the dynamic relationship between victor and vanquished.
John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation
02/26/11 – 06/26/11 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
For more than 40 years, John Baldessari has been a mainstay of the Southern California art scene and a key contributor to national and international explorations of conceptual art in its many idioms, whether linguistic, performance-based, or photo and object-based. An underlying theme in his art has been the questioning of perceptual experience - how we see, interpret, and understand the world around us - and how this experience can dislocate preconceived notions and challenge conventional thinking.
Steel and Shade: The Architecture of Donald Wexler
01/29/11 – 05/29/11 - McCallum Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Donald Wexler practiced architecture during what he calls the ?golden age? of California architecture from the immediate postwar years through the 1970s. This was a time when architects enjoyed considerable freedom to employ new materials and technologies in their search for functionally beautiful architecture.
Contemporary Glass 2010 / 2011
11/13/10 – 11/06/11 - Denney Western American Art Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Glass as a fine art material is relatively new and used by a wide range of extraordinarily talented artists from throughout the world. Its remarkable physical properties result in a medium of astounding aesthetic expression. From the spontaneous to the methodical, artists' creative ideas range from narrative to conceptual, explore current art movements, or innovatively express personal vision. Drawn from the museum's permanent collection and private collections, this exhibition includes works by significant artists who have contributed to the notion that glass has broken through the aesthetic barrier between craft and fine art.
Richard Avedon: Fashion, Stage, and Screen
10/16/10 – 01/01/11 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Richard Avedon (1923-2004) set new precedents in fashion and portraiture for nearly seven decades. This exhibition of approximately 90 black and white photographs explores Avedon's use of the camera to create images that helped to define fashion, theater, and movies as interrelated worlds that shared a similar visual vocabulary. His interest in performance began in the 1940s and 1950s with his early photographs of leading models in designer clothing for magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Taking his models out of the studio, Avedon combined the sophistication and glamour of haute couture with the excitement of modern life he celebrated in the streets of Paris, Rome, and New York.
Modern Masters Celebrate Line and Form
10/01/10 – 12/28/10 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Modernism in art is recognized as a time of unprecedented stylistic growth and change. Artists in the first decades of the twentieth century broke away from academic traditions and embraced a new approach to sculptural form and line drawing. Drawing and working spontaneously on paper and with print-making techniques took on a new urgency as artists worked out their methods freely. In sculpture, artists sought freedom from the constrictions of the past by employing non-traditional materials and exploring bold, abstract forms.
Photographing the American West: Selections from the Permanent Collection
06/12/10 – 02/07/11 - Marks Graphics Center And Jorgensen Gallery
Palm Springs Art Museum
A comparative view of the American West from 1866 to the present, this exhibition examines the role of photography in popularizing divergent ideas and documenting changing visions of the West. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the West has stood out as a destination and center for photographic activity. Spectacular vistas combined with unique land formations and bright, clear light attracted early photographers, who recorded the natural beauty of the West for the enjoyment of local and East coast audiences. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Carleton Watkins, famous for his large format photographs, created images of the majestic views of Yosemite. This appeal for images of wonder and exploration influenced a second generation of twentieth-century landscape photographers, predisposing them to the notion of the West as a sublime and spiritual "Garden of Eden."
Colors of the West: The Paintings of Birger Sandzén
04/17/10 – 09/12/10 - McCallum Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Sven Birger Sandzén (1871-1954), a Swedish-born artist, trained in Paris and participated in its famous fin de siécle milieu. In 1894 he immigrated to the United States and settled in the center of the American prairie in Lindsborg, Kansas where he was invited to become an art professor at Bethany College. Considered a post-Impressionist for his use of color and expressionist in technique, Sandzén vibrant and dynamic paintings of prairie and western landscapes from Kansas to the California coast have been relatively unknown outside the Midwest until recently.
Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner
02/20/10 – 05/30/10 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
This exhibition of the work of one of America's most significant Modernist architects is the first comprehensive overview of John Lautner's architecture. It includes 115 original drawings and sketches; ten original models; six large-scale architectural models created for the exhibition and a documentary film.
Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor
12/12/09 – 04/04/10 - McCallum Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
Imagery and technique are intimately linked in Connor's work. The photographer has always gravitated towards images that reveal "the essence of something, the apparition of a form or idea, rather than a particular fact." A large-format view camera allows her to achieve remarkable clarity; frequently using long exposures, the images can also present time and movement. Her prints are created by direct contact of the 8x10-inch negative onto printing-out paper, the image exposed and developed in her garden using sunlight. She then tones the prints with gold chloride. The results are extremely rich in detail and have a warmth and delicacy seldom found in standard photographic printing.
Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass
09/26/09 – 12/27/09 - Annenberg Wing
Palm Springs Art Museum
This exhibition, a comprehensive forty-year retrospective of Tagliapietra's art and career, documents and celebrates his remarkable achievements as a contemporary artist. The exhibition includes 169 art works that range from a room-size installation of his impressive Endeavor boat series, to groupings of masterful goblets, to elegant and evocative sculptural forms. Tagliapietra is widely revered as the master of glassblowing, an inspiring teacher and the elder statesman who is credited with shaping the course of international Studio Glass.
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The Palm Springs Art Museum has two locations in the Coachella Valley: The flagship building is located in downtown Palm Springs and features compelling art exhibitions and a vast permanent collection, all on view in 150,000 square feet, architecturally significant building. The Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert is an 8,400 square foot, Silver LEED-certified building named The Galen that presents changing exhibitions and collections. It is surrounded by the four-acre Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden that features more than 10 significant sculpture works. Both museum locations are open to the public with free admission every Thursday evening from 4-8 p.m. and the Palm Springs facility offers free admission and programming the second Sunday of each month.