LACMA HOSTS A TALK WITH PAINTER CHRISTINA QUARLES
LACMA hosts a free Sept 19 talk with painter Christina Quarles about her newly acquired work Now We're There, on view at the David Geffen Galleries.
LACMA is hosting a public conversation with painter Christina Quarles on September 19, part of programming tied to the rebuilt David Geffen Galleries. The free talk, which requires an RSVP, runs from 2 to 3 p.m. on the galleries' plaza level, with Quarles speaking alongside Naima J. Keith, LACMA's senior vice president of education, and Diana Nawi, curator of special projects for contemporary art. It is one of several outdoor programs the museum has staged on that plaza since Calder's fountain returned to the rebuilt LACMA earlier this year.
The conversation centers on Now We're There (And We' Only Just Begun), a 2023 painting LACMA recently acquired and installed in the W.M. Keck Foundation Gallery. The large-scale canvas is built from Quarles' signature shape-shifting figures, which the Los Angeles-based artist uses to work through how identity and lived experience get read onto a body. Keith and Nawi jointly curated the installation, the inaugural show in a series LACMA is devoting to contemporary artists in that gallery.
A related Andell Family Sunday workshop puts Quarles in the room with visitors the next day, September 20, for a hands-on session built around mark-making rather than a lecture format. LACMA has leaned on that kind of artist-led programming across its campus this year, even as other Los Angeles institutions have taken a more cautious approach to their own contemporary holdings, including The Broad pulling Julie Mehretu's Invisible Sun from view until 2028.
Topics: Art, Christina Quarles, lacma, the-broad, the broad, Culture, LACMA