The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture will present more than 200 public events this winter that will bring a broad spectrum of programming to campus that will enrich the cultural ecosystem and challenge audiences to engage with work and ideas produced by artists, scholars, architects and performers from across the globe.
Featured in exhibitions, lectures, workshops, screenings and performances are emerging and established artists, designers, architects, dancers, writers, musicians, activists and cultural critics, like Toshi Reagon, Neil Denari, Marlon James and Suné Woods.
A selection of UCLA Arts events, many of which are free and all are open to the public, follows. For more details and a complete listing of events, see the UCLA Arts calendar.
Exhibitions
Feb. 2–May 10: The Hammer Museum at UCLA will mount the first comprehensive survey in the United States of drawings and works on paper by Paul McCarthy, Los Angeles-based artist and UCLA professor emeritus of art. Spanning more than five decades, “Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019” examines the significant role of drawing as it relates to McCarthy’s broader practice involving performance, video, photography, sculpture and installation. On Feb. 2, McCarthy will be joined in conversation by exhibition organizers Aram Moshayedi, curator, and Connie Butler, chief curator.
Feb. 4–March 10: Throughout the winter quarter, first-year graduate students in the Department of Design Media Arts will present two-day solo exhibitions of recent work in the Broad Art Center.
Feb. 12: Enjoy an early Valentine’s Day-themed celebration at the Fowler Museum at the “Through Positive Eyes” closing reception. Special guests include artist Adriana Bertini — who has made garments entirely of condoms, the UCLA Sex Squad and others who will speak on arts and activism.
Feb. 13–27: The art department presents the 2020 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, curated by Ike Onyewuenyi, Hammer Museum curatorial assistant.
March 5–13: The UCLA Department of Art kicks off its series of four final exhibitions of work in various media by graduating M.F.A. candidates. The first M.F.A. exhibition presents work by Ash Garwood, Jae Hwan Lim and Hailey Loman.
Performances
Jan. 31 and Feb. 1: The annual interdisciplinary showcase, “Wacsmash,” is produced by and features original works developed by undergraduate students in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. This year’s show, “Systems and Self,” will incorporate dance and a non-performative art exhibition.
Feb. 15 and 16: UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance will present “Four Quartets,” T. S. Eliot’s rumination on time and timelessness. American choreographer Pam Tanowitz, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and American modernist painter Brice Marden will be joined by Tony Award-nominated actress Kathleen Chalfant in an unprecedented collaboration.
Feb. 29 and March 1, April 18 and 19, May 9 and 10: Dutch director and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Professor Marike Splint specializes in creating work in public spaces that explores the relationship between people, places and identity. “Among Us—UCLA,” presented by CAP UCLA, is an audio-theater experience that navigates participants throughout the UCLA campus, while inviting active observation, quiet contemplation and self-revelation to explore the tension between our desire to belong and our desire to be free.
March 7: CAP UCLA will present Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s genre-defying work of political theater, based on Octavia Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower,” on the Royce Hall stage.
Lectures
Jan. 8: Guggenheim Fellow and National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi, an author who reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice, will discuss his 2019 memoir, “How to Be an Antiracist” at the Hammer Museum.
Jan. 13: The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design welcomes Neil Denari, principal of Neil M. Denari Architects Inc. and UCLA professor of architecture and urban design, to speak in the department’s lecture series.
Jan. 15: Wendy Teeter, curator of archaeology at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, will discuss the pioneering work of the online project Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles and her experience of engaging stakeholders around the city in uncovering multiple historical layers of Los Angeles.
Jan. 21: Masaki Fujihata, one of the pioneers of Japanese new media art, will give a UC Regents Lecture in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts.
Jan. 26: The art department presents a lecture by Los Angeles artist Suné Woods at the Hammer Museum. Woods’s work takes the form of video installations, photographs and collage and was exhibited in the museum’s Made in L.A. 2018, which was curated by Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale.
Feb. 5: Vijayalakshmi, an award-winning performer of the South Asian dance Mohiniyattam, will deliver a UC Regents Lecture in the world arts and cultures/dance department.
Feb. 23: Jane Fonda, actor and activist who recently said: “We are the last generation who can make the difference between life and death of the planet,” will be joined by broadcast journalist Laura Flanders and community organizer Janet Valenzuela at the Hammer Museum to discuss the future of environmental justice.
Feb. 27: Marlon James explores Jamaican history through the perspectives of multiple narrators and genres. His newest work, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” is a surreal fantasy epic that has been described by The New Yorker “as an African Game of Thrones.” CAP UCLA invites James to the Royce Hall stage.
Feb. 29: “Land. The Future of Land Value in L.A.” is a one-day symposium at the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design’s IDEAS campus in Culver City, which will look beyond architecture’s traditional boundaries to create an opportunity for an interdisciplinary exchange of research on the future of Los Angeles and the evolution of architecture and the urban environment.
March 7: Tour important Los Angeles sacred sites along the Vermont Avenue corridor with Patrick Polk, Fowler Museum curator of Latin American and Caribbean popular arts, and Amy Landau, Fowler Museum director of education and interpretation.
Workshops and screenings
Feb. 16: The Fowler Museum’s Community Day: Self-Love, Self-Care will honor the artivists who generously and courageously shared their stories of living positively with HIV/AIDS to inspire audiences with their weekly performances in the “Through Positive Eyes” exhibition. Self-Love, Self-Care will include pop-up classes, lectures, food and drinks that support the joy and determination of mind, body and spirit.
March 11: In dialogue with the Hammer Museum’s exhibition of Ja’Tovia Gary’s film “The GIVERNY SUITE,” “Intertextuality: Performance/Subjectivity in Experimental Shorts” is a screening of short films that situates Gary’s work in the context of Black women’s experimental films across a 25-year period. By gathering video, photos, sound clips and printed media these filmmakers give an account of what gendered Blackness feels like in North America and the United Kingdom. Artist and scholar Ayanna Dozier joins Gary for a post-screening discussion and Q&A.