While the Hammer Museum at UCLA and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens await state and county public health approvals to reopen their galleries for “Made in L.A. 2020: a version,” Angelenos can get a preview of the biennial via two artist projects located around the city.

Two off-site projects — one by Larry Johnson and the other by Kahlil Joseph — are accessible now.

  • Johnson’s new works are on view on five commercial billboards in the MacArthur Park neighborhood, just went of Downtown Los Angeles, throughout the run of the exhibition. Their content features site-specific texts and visuals. Poetic and humorous interventions into space and local geography, the billboards quote their cultural and quotidian environment. Two of the billboards are located near the intersection of South Alvarado Street and Eighth Street, two near the intersection of South Rampart Boulevard and Seventh Street, and the fifth nearby at Seventh Street and Hoover Street. The presentation is coproduced by The Billboard Creative.
     
  • Joseph’s ambitious installation of BLKNWS®, a conceptual news program that blurs the lines between art, reporting, entrepreneurship and cultural critique, is installed in satellite sites around the city. Coproduced by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), the two-channel video presentations of BLKNWS® are being hosted predominantly in Black-owned businesses such as barbershops and cafés and in other sites of community gathering, as well as commercial hubs and health care facilities.

    Six sites can be viewed without reservation, with physical distancing practices in place: Patria Coffee Roasters (108 Alameda St.), Sole Folks (4317 Degnan Blvd.), Natraliart Jamaican Restaurant (3426 W. Washington Blvd.), Bloom & Plume Coffee (1638 W. Temple St.), Hank’s Mini Market (3301 W. Florence Ave.), and Go Get ’Em Tiger (5916 N. Figueroa St.).

The exhibition catalog, which showcases newly commissioned interventions made by artists specifically for the page and functions as another “version” of the exhibition, is also available. And the first episode of an artist-created podcast series conceived as part of the exhibition will be available soon.

“Made in L.A. 2020: a version,” is the fifth iteration of the Hammer’s biennial exhibition highlighting the practices of artists working throughout greater Los Angeles It is cocurated by Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler, with the Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi as assistant curator of performance. All 30 artists included in Made in L.A. 2020: a version will be represented at both the Hammer and The Huntington — in two versions that make up the whole — with select off-site and online interventions in between.

The exhibition’s opening date is dependent on Los Angeles County guidance allowing museums to reopen to the public, in keeping with the State of California’s “Blueprint for a Safer Economy.” Updates about exhibition dates will be shared via the Hammer website and The Huntington website.

BLKNWS® will also be on view at the Hammer Museum and the Underground Museum, pending approval from L.A. County for museums to open to the public. More BLKNWS® sites will be confirmed and updated throughout the run of the exhibition.

Looking toward the opening of “Made in L.A. 2020: a version” in the Hammer and Huntington galleries, some artist projects have been adjusted and reimagined in light of COVID-19 safety considerations, particularly performance-based works and installations. Three previously announced performance weekends will no longer take place in person. Instead, most performances will be transferred to an online stage and presented digitally.

Read the full news release.