An Art Show Ends. Now What?

It took five years of planning and more than $16 million in grants from the Getty Foundation. Since September, dozens of art exhibits have opened in every part of Southern California for “Pacific Standard Time LA/LA,” an exploration of Latin American and Latino art. Now, the crush of exhibits, performances, lectures and the like are mostly over: the initiative officially ended Sunday.

But many of the shows will hit the road — traveling to other parts of the world as far away as Madrid; Lima, Peru; and São Paulo. And others will stay open in Los Angeles for months to come, including a show featuring images from the newspaper La Raza at the Autry.

It will be months before the Getty has information about attendance, but Deborah Marrow, director of the foundation, said it was clear the shows reached a new audience. At several openings, she said, the audience was primarily young and Latino — and many of them broadcast their attendance on social media, reaching an even broader audience.

With more than 60 shows, it was virtually impossible for any one person to see the totality of PST LA/LA — but that was hardly the point, Marrow said.

“We wanted people to get a sense of how vibrant LA is as an art scene and also in producing local art,” she said. “Latin America is a vast area, we weren’t trying to tell a comprehensive story. But we wanted to get people excited about the ideas and see more.”

Every day, she said, more catalogs of the exhibits are coming into her office — she expects her colleagues and other art historians to pour over them in the months to come.

While it is not a given that there will be another PST initiative, Marrow said, they certainly will discuss it in the coming months. “If we want to get new people exposed to art, it might take a while to do it.”