Johanna Burton is the Maurice Marciano Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Prior to joining MoCA, Burton served as executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, and as Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum, New York.
1
BARBARA KRUGER (ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO; CURATED BY JAMES RONDEAU AND ROBYN FARRELL)
That Kruger’s work gets only more relevant with time speaks directly—and profoundly in its paradox—to how we’ve not only failed to progress as a society but in many ways gone backward.
Co-organized with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (by Michael Govan and Rebecca Morse) and with the Museum of Modern Art, New York (by Peter Eleey and Lanka Tattersall), where it is on view through January 2, 2023.
2
NIKITA GALE (52 WALKER, NEW YORK/LAXART/COMMONWEALTH AND COUNCIL, LOS ANGELES)
Three ostensibly autonomous shows by Gale differently but fundamentally highlighted the implications of the blurry lines drawn between actor and audience, subject and object, image and abstraction. Takers, made for LAXART’s former Hollywood space, draws inspiration from the location’s once having been the home of the iconic Radio Recorders studio, the site where Big Mama Thornton recorded “Hound Dog” four years before Elvis’s version. Playing from behind a wall stripped down to its original, bare-bones studio structure, the blues classic accompanied a three-minute video whose vision is decidedly dog-eat-dog: two men locked in an endless violent embrace.
3
TRULEE HALL, LADIES’ LAIR LAKE (LOS ANGELES NOMADIC DIVISION)
Staged by land in a pop-up gallery on Western Avenue, Ladies’ Lair Lake offered visitors a truly immersive experience, starting, as it were, at the beginning of time. A rewriting of Adam and Eve, Hall’s blasphemous biblical origin story, told via experimental opera, stop-motion animation, sculpture, and, dare I say, sorcery, prioritizes the messy, the matriarchal, and the manic—and was staged just months before the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
4
ART FOR HOPE
An initiative of ART 2030 (which partners with UN Global Goals), Art for Hope foregrounds the fundamental role art can play in changing behavior, encouraging collaboration, and imagining (and making) a better world. Responding directly to the catastrophe of climate change, Art for Hope is an inspiring and urgently needed force for good and a reminder that art’s ecosystem entwines with planet Earth’s.
5
LOUISE NEVELSON (PROCURATIE VECCHIE, VENICE; CURATED BY JULIA BRYAN-WILSON)
A collateral event of the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale, “Persistence” surveyed more than sixty of Nevelson’s works, marking the six decades since the artist represented the United States at the exhibition. Unrelenting and visionary, Nevelson (1899–1988), who emigrated with her family from Ukraine when she was five, never questioned the importance of her own art, even when others didn’t see it. Bryan-Wilson positions her as a queer feminist hero, writing that the artist dons “modernist drag.”
6
PHENAKITE (“A FOREST FOR THE TREES,” LOS ANGELES)
A phenakite is a “rare mineral that forms into gems under extreme pressure and conditions,” and there is no better description of the seemingly impossible joy of intimate dining during a global pandemic. I experienced Phenakite, a culinary concept developed by the native Angeleno chef Minh Phan, as part of “A Forest for the Trees,” a sprawling installation conceived by the artist Glenn Kaino that aimed to visualize and educate around climate change and traditional ecological knowledge. Chef Phan’s craft is an art entirely its own: Serving exquisite small courses (I stopped counting after ten), Phan focuses not only on presentation and flavor but on intentional consumption. Every bite, while supremely pleasurable, feels like an offering, to be accepted with care. Phan quietly received a well-deserved Michelin star last year; her hospitality and humanity are twinned beacon and blessing.
7
GRACE JONES AND YUVAL SHARON (HOLLYWOOD BOWL, LOS ANGELES)
I know it’s a cliché as a recent LA transplant to go on about loving the Hollywood Bowl. But the Bowl with Jones in it? My cup runneth over. The seventy-four-year-old legend is aware what figure she cuts: one that continually upends, resignifies, and ultimately defines culture. Belting out a forceful rendition of “Amazing Grace,” the singer invoked history without letting it linger. Just weeks earlier at the same venue, Sharon’s wacky, wonderful, futuristic take on Wagner’s Ring cycle showed how history does linger, however much we seek to expunge it. In Sharon’s hands, and with plenty of green screen, such haunting ascends (descends? transcends?) into hallucination.
8
MICHAEL HEIZER, CITY, 1970–2022 (GARDEN VALLEY, NEVADA)
It seems impossible, but City is officially complete. The culmination of more than a half century of the artist’s vision and unwavering diligence (with a little help from his friends), it’s finally something we can visit, and I did. (For me, a native Nevadan, seeing City has been a lifelong hope.) At nearly a mile and a half long, it’s one of the largest Earthworks (and works of art, period) in the world, a monumental—some say macho—feat. Yet being there, and now continually flashing back to being there, I am struck by what Heizer so generously enables: a vivid, singular experience of oneself as part of—and yet truly apart from—an immense and immensely fragile world.
9
MY BARBARIAN (INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES; CURATED BY ADRIENNE EDWARDS)
After some twenty years of tireless (and really fun) collaboration, the trio known as My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade) put on a retrospective. Curated by Edwards for the Whitney and subsequently shown at the ICA LA, what could have been a sprawling affair (My Barbarian has made a lot of work) appears, at first glance, restrained, humbly occupying a single gallery. Evoking “poor theater”—and a whole lot of other theater and nontheater, too— the show smartly and pointedly drills down on quality over quantity, transforming the space into a frame that rigorously narrates twenty years of work, the world the work responds to, and the evolution not only of the artists but of their audiences, too.
On view through January 15, 2023. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
10
DOLLY PARTON’S STRAWBERRY PRETZEL PIE ICE CREAM
Reissued by Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in January 2022 after preselling out in minutes the year before, the salty-sweet treat directly benefits Parton’s Imagination Library, which, in recognition of the power of literacy, provides one million free books every month to children around the world. The ice cream is a symbol of and a testament to the power of nostalgia, Americana, and that which, per Jeni’s ad slogan, “makes it better”—three things I’m allergic to 99 percent of the time. Dolly is my 1 percent.
