The works in University Art Museum’s ‘Pieces of 9: Reframing the Collection’ might be old, but the dialogue isn’t

WALTON FORD’S ‘SIGHTS’
University Art Museum’s “Pieces of 9: Reframing the Collection” is not so much one exhibition as it is nine individual curatorial efforts, mini-exhibitions making up a larger, more complete showcase of favorite works from the [...]

University Art Museum Director Chris Scoates keeps looking ahead

PHOTO by JEFFREY R. GOULD
We’re midway through an interview, when University Art Museum Director Chris Scoates makes the sort of keen pronouncement that reporters yearn to hear.
“What we’re doing now won’t be interesting in five years,” Scoates says. “We have to keep pace with what’s happening. I [...]

Brian Eno’s ‘77 Million Paintings’: The next best thing to infinity

We wonder now about what we call the singularity—the point when a human creation out-humans the humans who created it. Generally, it’s imagined as the invention of an artificial intelligence smarter than us that goes on to build even smarter and smarter artificial intelligences and, [...]

UAM sweeps the art department in ‘Insights’

‘THE DELUGE’ by ROBERT POKORNY
CSULB’s University Art Museum has transformed itself—for the remainder of this month—into something like a catchall gallery, a storage room filled to capacity with student work, and lots of it. The annual show features pieces from both Cal State Long Beach undergraduate and graduate students [...]

Paul Shambroom’s ‘Picturing Power’ at CSULB

‘SUIT BOMB’ by PAUL SHAMBROOM
The work in Paul Shambroom’s career-spanning “Picturing Power” exhibit at University Art Museum points to his start as a commercial photographer, snapping pics for corporate brochures. It maintains the cool, professional sheen of top-drawer stock photography, but there is a probing intelligence and dark wit here, [...]

Long Beach museums receive grant money from the Getty for video art exhibitions. Wait. Huh?

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY
Sometimes people really do tell it like it is—even here, in Long Beach.
And so while there was, understandably, a certain amount of speechifying on Dec. 2, when officials from Long Beach Museum of Art and Cal State Long [...]

Long Beach Museum of Art and University Art Museum collaborate on retrospective exhibitions
In a historic first-ever teaming, officials from Long Beach Museum of Art and Cal State Long Beach’s University Art Museum announced Tuesday morning that they’ll partner on two simultaneous exhibitions funded with a $175,000 grant from the Getty Foundation, to “research and develop [...]

Maya Schindler has something to tell you

Forget that all the letters—save for the “V”—are inverted. The massive and spotless white styrene words—pinned up against a brilliant and vivid red-and-hot-pink wall—can be read clearly: “I HAVE A DREAM.” Originally displayed in a 2004 exhibition in Antwerp, Belgium, Maya Schindler’s reconfigured piece—also entitled I Have a Dream—makes [...]

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
BEST MISSING LINK: 2ND CITY COUNCIL GALLERY Some shows play off the actual 2nd City Council Gallery space better than others, but at its best this place is hard to equal—for its link to antiquity and to old Long Beach. You’ll remember: This place used to be Wille’s Tin Shop. It was [...]

Take your time with ‘art/tapes/22′

JOHN BALDESSARI’S ‘THE ITALIAN TAPE’
Thirty minutes with the University Art Museum’s “art/tapes/22” isn’t enough. Two hours, even, is too short. For those who worry about the appropriate amount of time to spend appreciating a painting or photograph—fearing, somehow, that a message can be lost if we don’t wait around long enough [...]