13ThingsLA: June 17
Shared Realities for your art calendar
This is the kind of unhinged week in art that makes me wonder if it can possibly be real, or if it’s all some kind of shared hallucination… Choose your adventures between and among the LACMA Block Party, Juneteenth at CAAM, plus new shows and experiences at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, Pieter Performance Space, The Broad, Dataland, ALRATITOstudio at the Bradbury Building, Philip Martin Gallery, Descanso Gardens, LA River Arts, and PBS SoCal; and spend Father’s Day with the Blues Brothers.
And if you are in the mood for some Shana time, she’ll be doing a walk-through with photographer Dean Hendler at Art/Space 114 downtown Thursday night at 7pm; and a marvelous panel talk with some incredible women at the Matriarchy show at Art Wolf Gallery, next Wednesday, June 24 at noon at the PDC, with champagne!
FEATURE
LACMA Block Party, Art Parade, and Grand Opening Weekend in general, Thursday-Monday, June 18-22. With a suitably festival-like multi-stage four-day atmosphere of tours, talks, sound baths, DJs, jazz, soccer, art-making tents, outdoor art installations, and of course, the soon to be world-famous Art Parade, this weekend will be a big glorious mess on Wilshire Blvd in the best possible way. So, about that Art Parade. They’re saying 1400 participants across something like 150 approved projects will work Wilshire like a runway with everything from balloons to an unraveling Constitution, beaded and painted vehicles (but only human-powered allowed), sporting every kind of costume and multi-player performative shenanigans you can imagine. Also the breezeway from the Academy to the Tar Pits is a fantastic new public plaza demanding to be activated. It’s going to be the pinnacle of Dada and I suggest just going with the flow. You can and probably should take the D-Line train; those three new stations are their own museum-level art reward (and much more brightly lit). Almost entirely free; lacma.org. —SND
