More to MOLAA Than You Know

I hope you enjoyed my other guest on today's show, President and CEO Richard P. Townsend of the Museum of Latin American Art. It was fascinating to talk to him about how MOLAA has grown so much in about 15 years! Here is more info on the upcoming and rare David Alfaro Siqueiros exhibit. So worth booking a cheap flight on Southwest and making it a weekend trip!

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) is proud to join the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (MACG), Mexico City, in presenting Siqueiros Paisajista / Siqueiros: Landscape Painter. This exhibition reveals the renowned Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros as a major landscape painter. 
 
This exhibition, the first of its kind to be presented anywhere, includes approximately half of the 150 landscape paintings that Siqueiros produced during his lifetime. “This is the most significant exhibition of Siqueiros to be seen in the last ten years,” stated MACG Director and exhibition curator Itala Schmelz. “It is the result of more than three years of collaboration that included the precedent-setting gathering of artwork from more than 20 different museum and private collections in Mexico and the U.S., scholarly research by Christopher Fulton and additional research by a team of nine talented catalogue essayists.” 

Featuring a selection of the most important landscape paintings and drawings, the exhibition reveals Siqueiros’ dynamic vision of futuristic cities, allegorical places and the environment. Utilizing an explosive color palette and experimental techniques, the landscape imagery is charged with the emotions of creation and destruction always present in the art of Siqueiros. “Traditionally landscape paintings offer views of idyllic vistas, but these landscapes offer scenes of a troubled world,” said MOLAA Senior Curator, Cynthia Mac Mullin. “The gathered works poignantly emphasize Siqueiros’ concern for humanity’s inability to serve its fellow men.  Although several paintings are about the past, such as The End of the World from 1936 painted in response to the Spanish Civil War and The Explosion of Hiroshima of 1955, protesting the inhumane ending World War II, they are still relevant today, mirroring humanity’s constant engagement with war and destruction.” 

Siqueiros Paisajista / Siqueiros: Landscape Painter
Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach
September 12, 2010 - January 2011