UCLA/Getty Distinguished Speaker Series: Gala Porras-Kim
Join us for a lecture by Gala Porras-Kim, who will speak aboutThe weight of a patina of time, a current exhibition at the Fowler Museum featuring works that emerged from conversations with Fowler curators about Mexican archaeology.
Friday Oct 6, 2023 11 am
Free
The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Porras-Kim, Glenn Wharton, UCLA Professor of Art History and Conservation of Material Culture, and exhibition curator Matthew H. Robb about her in-depth explorations of the uncertain histories of ancient objects reimagine their pasts while charting new possibilities for their present and future. The works on view reflect the artist’s affinity for fragments, conflicting histories, undeciphered texts, and other instances of uncertainty within the space of the museum. They additionally address the challenges of maintaining knowledge over centuries in shifting institutional contexts.
About the Speaker
Gala Porras-Kim lives and works in Los Angeles/London. She received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2009 and an MA in Latin American studies from UCLA in 2012. Solo exhibitions have been held at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville (2023); Gasworks, London and CAMSTL, St. Louis (2022); Amant and Kadist, Brooklyn (2021); and MOCA LA (2019). She has participated in numerous biennials, including the 12th Liverpool Biennial (2023); 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021); 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); Whitney Biennial (2017); and the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA (2016). Porras-Kim is a recipient of numerous awards, including an Art Matters Foundation Grant (2019), Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2016), and a Creative Capital Grant (2015). She has participated in residencies at the Getty Research Institute (2020-22); Delfina Foundation, London (2021); and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge (2020). Her work is in the collections of MOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Brooklyn Museum in New York; MOCA, LACMA, and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; MCA and DePaul Art Museum in Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Perez Museum, Miami; and the Seoul Museum of Art.
Matthew H. Robb is the Mesoamerican Specialist at the Library of Congress. He is an expert in the history of art and architecture at Teotihuacan, as well as the history of collecting pre-Columbian art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has lectured and written on a broad range of topics related to the Indigenous arts of the Western Hemisphere.
Glenn Wharton is Professor of Art History at UCLA and Chair of the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. His publications cover a range of initiatives in the anthropology of public monuments, artwork identity, and enhancing sustainability and social justice through conservation intervention.
Image credit: Gala Porras-Kim, 254 offerings for the rain at the Peabody Museum, 2021; © Gala Porras-Kim; photo Paul Salveson
This program is co-sponsored by the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.
