Wednesday, October 26, 2011
7:00 p.m.
Harold M. Williams Auditorium
The Getty Center

In the 1960s and 1970s, a generation of women curators emerged as leading voices in the rapidly growing Southern California art scene. This conversation brings together three pioneering curators—Barbara Haskell, Jane Livingston, and Helene Winer—to discuss their crucial role in defining West Coast art as well as the paths they followed as gallerists, curators, and art historians.

Barbara Haskell joined the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1969, initially serving as assistant registrar and then curator. There, she curated a number of important exhibitions of California art including 15 Los Angeles Artists, West Coast Art, and Southern California: Attitudes 1972. Haskell is currently curator of painting and sculpture at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she has worked since 1975.

Jane Livingston was curator of 20th-century art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1967 to 1975. There, she worked with Maurice Tuchman on the exhibitions 11 Los Angeles Artists and Art and Technology; organized the first major museum exhibition of the artist Bruce Nauman, co-curated with Marcia Tucker; and mounted the first museum exhibition devoted to Chicano art. In 1975, Livingston became associate director and chief curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She now works as an independent curator, and editor of the Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné.

In 1970, Helene Winer was appointed director of the Pomona College Museum of Art and assistant professor of art. There, she organized a number of exhibitions that defined California conceptualism in the 1970s, showcasing the work of Jack Goldstein, Bas Jan Ader, Ger Van Elk, William Leavitt, and Al Ruppersberg. Her art criticism appeared regularly in the Los Angeles Times. Winer is founder and co-owner of the New York gallery, Metro Pictures.

The conversation will be moderated by Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of the Getty Research Institute.