Pacific Standard Time: L.A. Art History Map
After taking some time on the internet looking for different forms of maps regarding art scenes or communities, I found that most were not made with great expectation of interactivity, such as MOMA’s Abstract Expressionist Map. So I decided to go back to the map I found during my Pecha Kucha presentation, Pacific Standard Time Historic Map of L.A. art scene from 1945-1980.
As it states in the name, this map documents the L.A. artist movement after WWII. Pacific Standard Time is a decade-long, cross-institutional initiative exhibiting the modern L.A. art scene, while this map was created for one of its exhibitions at The Getty Museum in 2012.
The message of this map is to allow users to “Explore the historic art world of Los Angeles, 1945–1980”. The website’s intro video explains that Modern art in Los Angeles had a vibrant scene but its distinctive contributions are only now being fully appreciated. Thus the goal of this map is mainly educational — for prospective Getty museum visitors, art enthusiasts and students to learn about modern art in L.A. Under this purpose, the map is very much topographic.
To browse through it, users experience a very straight forward data sorting system. Each data entry of an art related location point is labeled by neighborhood, function of space, time period, style and related art style. You can choose from Beverly Hills, Hollywood, or Pasadena. There on you can choose the type of location you wish to browse, whether it’s Art Schools, Artists’ Studios, Galleries or any type of location. The time period selection divides time into 50s, 60s and 70s. By clicking through the time tag allows users to see how many art locations existed in that time period.
Each location entry has a clear, short description of why this place started in this neighborhood. I find this content very helpful to guide the importance of the space to the art scene. For instance, descriptions for Norman Zammitt studio informed audiences that it was a store front studio occupied earlier by Ed Ruscha. In Ronald Davis Studio it mentioned that he found a studio with the help of Judy Chicago, “where he shared with artist Paul Mogensen for 60 dollars a month.” However if you click on the photos and videos in the side bar, you will not be aided with any more information regarding the descriptive info you just received.
Though rich archival image and video are generously provided, those multimedia contents were not designed to relate to the map, but more for the art exhibition. Thus it might be ‘displaced’ from the location. For example a studio entry in Pasadena had an image shot at Berlin where artist once exhibited his work, and it does not explain why it’s related to the location. There are also well-edited videos accompanying the locating entries, which were written with narratives centering the legacy of the artist. This is definitely a very informative art history lesson for audiences, but it’s still lacking in providing a picture of the location audiences are looking at.
This leads to my first critique of the website: the lack of image and arguments around space. Visitors like me who have never been to L.A. have no background on the nature of the neighborhoods. I’d be more interested to know what the neighborhoods looked like when artists moved there. Did they live in an ethically diverse area, commercial area, or established artist community? Without this information regarding the bigger geographical context it will be hard to imaging how locations influence the artist’s works.
The second critique I have about this site is that it is difficult to search locations through artists. I imagine many exhibition followers are a fan or collector of a particular artist’s work. There is no function to select a certain artist beside the map. Even if one browses the people page and finds the artist, and choose to find related locations about the artist, the web link often fails by directing to a multi dotted map with other art locations on it. Perhaps the design concern is that there are too many artists to list and it’s going to clutter the page, but a search function might be a possible solution.