Fine Arts - Pacific Standard Time cocktail party in Claremont - Fun!

Peggy Carlson Vice President of Rembrandt Club

Ellen Litney President of Rembrandt Club

The Rembrandt Club of Pomona College hosted a cocktail reception at a beautiful home in north Claremont last Saturday afternoon where over two hundred art supporters gathered. The subject was the Getty Foundation's project "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980." Getty is supporting over 60 cultural institutions across Southern California with $10 million in grants to put on exhibitions starting next September and running through mid-2012. Joan Weinstein, the Getty director, provided an overview while Kathleen Stewrt Howe of Pomona College Museum of Art, Mary MacNaughton of Scripps College Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, and Rebecca McGrew, Pomona Museum curator spoke on exhibitions being hosted by the local college museums.

Our own Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation (where I am co-president) is hosting a luncheon May 11 where representatives of the Huntington Library will discuss their PST exhibition opening in September entitled "Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley." Scripps College was of course right in the thick of things in that Golden Age.

The overall goal of the Pacific Standard Time initiative is the truly laudable one that shows that Los Angeles and not New York was really the Big Fish in art after the Second World War. New York was, sniff, sniff, somewhat derivative of Picasso and Matisse and the Paris School while Los Angeles was more vibrant, truly original, and much more diverse. Hear, Hear!