The Palm Springs Art Museum is celebrating its 80th anniversary with an exhibition of 80 works of art recently added to its permanent collection. The exhibit showcases the wide-ranging collections the museum has acquired over the years since its founding as the one-room Palm Springs Desert Museum in La Plaza in 1938.
Back in those days, the museum focused on Native American artifacts, natural science and the local environment. After moving among several downtown locations, the museum opened a 10,000-square-foot location in 1958—with galleries to display art, marking its transition into an art museum.
Today, the natural science and environment section of the museum has evolved into a separate public entity, The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. The museum now has a satellite location in Palm Desert, and also operates the Architecture and Design Center, located in a classic mid-century building originally designed by E. Stewart Williams in 1961, on Palm Canyon Drive a few blocks from the museum and performance center.
I recently visited the main museum to view the Eighty @ Eighty exhibit—and I found it well worth a trip out in triple-digit temperatures. The 80 works on display, all either donated to or purchased by the museum within the last five years, offer a great overview of the museum’s diverse collections.
In the central court, a playful standing mobile by Alexander Calder, “The Lizard,” 1968, is interestingly juxtaposed, with a contemporary assemblage of a shopping cart containing a hydraulic lift: “Shopper Hopper,” 2016, by Rubin Ortiz-Torres. The shopping cart symbolizes the working-class Latino, as well as the homeless, while the hydraulic lift is a common feature in upgraded lowrider cars.
Around the corner, a large abstract painting, “Untitled (P1304),” 2013, by Penelope Krebs, uses wide vertical stripes in different shades of blue to create a work that is both soothing and cooling—like stepping out of the hot sun and into the shade.
For Tom Fruin’s “Flag: Farragut Houses,” 2013, the artist stitched together drug bags that he collected over a six-month period from a housing project in Brooklyn. The resulting quilt-like sculpture is a testament to the perils of life today.
At the other end of the spectrum, Japanese artist Mineo Mizuno’s “Teardrop Winter #27A,” 2009, is a study in serenity and balance. The nearly 5-foot-tall ceramic sculpture, in the shape of an elongated drop of water, changes shades gently, from white at the top to deep blue at its base.
One of the most evocative pieces is “Hand With Spot G,” 2001 by Douglas Gordon. The artist super-enlarges an instant photograph of his left hand. From a distance, I thought the dark spot in the center was a depiction of stigmata. However, upon reading the notes, I learned the image is taken from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In the book, a black spot is the mark of death.
The exhibit is dominated by large scale abstract paintings. There are also examples of 19th-century California landscapes, Native American ceramics, 20th-century photography, modernist chairs and a wide range of contemporary art.
“This recent-acquisitions exhibition was fun to organize in that it allows us to share stories about our collection through unexpected juxtapositions,” said Mara Gladstone, associate curator of the Palm Springs Museum of Art, in a statement. “Alongside our important Alexander Calder mobile is an interactive shopping cart sculpture by Ruben Ortiz-Torres. A muscular bronze by Jacques Lipchitz parallels a similarly powerful female figure by Alison Saar, and a glass house by Mildred Howard is adjacent to mid-century modern design by Verner Panton and an assemblage of kitchenware by Subodh Gupta. Many of these treasures haven’t been displayed before, and this installation showcases the historical strength of our collection and the exciting direction in which it is moving.”
There’s time to experience this wonderfully eclectic exhibition before it ends on Sept. 16.
Eighty @ Eighty: Recent Gifts to the Permanent Collection is on display through Sunday, Sept. 16, at the Palm Springs Art Museum, 101 Museum Drive, in Palm Springs. Admission costs vary. For more information, call 760-322-4800, or visit www.psmuseum.org. Below: “Teardrop Winter #27A,” 2009, by Mineo Mizuno.
