Join us for an activity that will surely be fun and informative as we teach children how to create a Ferris wheel.
This Month’s theme will complement our permanent gallery focusing on the amusement piers of Santa Monica.
Saturday, February 23rd, at 11 AM.
Children and their parents are invited to this free series held monthly on a Saturday morning from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Each session will include a short, age-appropriate history lesson in the galleries followed by a related craft or activity.
Each workshop is designed to be engaging and educational for elementary age (5 – 11 years) children. Topics for the workshops will rotate throughout the year to feature relevant, seasonal lessons and activities.
RSVP is requested, but registration is also available at the door. Every workshop is offered free of charge.
By creating something with their hands related to the history topic of the month, children will further create memories based upon their history lessons. Families can expect a fun-filled learning hour at the museum!
For more information or to RSVP to the next workshop, please contact the museum at (310) 395-2290 or info@santamonicahistory.org

Maj Hasager |Iterations
Atrium Gallery
Visiting Artist Residency and Exhibition
February 23 – April 5
Exhibition Reception
Saturday February 23 | 5-8 PM

For a free ticket, RSVP here.

Danish visiting artist Maj Hasager presents Iterations, a project based on the Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica, where she is immersed for six months as an artist in residence at 18th Street Arts Center. Iterations continues Hasager’s interest in investigating the archive-as-process, as well as looking at the area’s multifaceted history, including forced relocations and exile. By drawing on the contents of 18th Street’s locally-based Culture Mapping 90404, Hasager collects local stories as an alternative to official archives, in the form of interviews, digitalization of private images, and field recordings (audio and video). Her multifaceted installation will consist of video, sound compositions, text and photography.

For a free ticket, RSVP here.

ALSO ON VIEW

Also on February 23, Los Angeles-based artist and Artist Lab Resident Clarissa Tossin will present a new body of work in the Main Gallery titled 21st Century Wisdom: Healing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Textile Block Houses centered on her ongoing research into US collections of pre-Columbian artifacts, and their relationship to appropriated pre-Columbian artifacts and motifs. More information about her project here.

OPEN STUDIOS

Resident artists will also be opening their studios at this event, including visiting Danish artists Jeannette Ehlers, Nikolaj Recke, and Marie Markman. Local artist residents including Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Debra Disman, Jeff Beall, Luciana Abait, Arzu Arda Kosar, Post Mango Studio, David McDonald, and Yvette Gellis will also be showing new work in their studios.

For a free ticket, RSVP here.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Maj Hasager is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work deals with power structures, identity, memory, architecture, and the construction of history, looking at how these interlinked phenomena are interpreted and represented culturally and spatially. Her artistic approach is research based and she works predominantly with text, sound, video, and photography. Hasager uses oral history interview techniques as a method for accumulating and creating narratives that address personal stories in a sociopolitical context. Maj Hasager’s residency is generously funded by the Danish Arts Council.

Clarissa Tossin is a visual artist who uses installation, video, performance, sculpture, and photography to negotiate hybridization of cultures and the persistence of difference. By embracing semantic displacements in given material cultural ecosystems, Tossin’s work reflects on circulation from the level of the body to the global industry. Tossin’s work has been featured at the 2014 Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; the Queens Museum, in New York; the Museum of Latin American Art, in Long Beach; SITE Santa Fe Biennial; the Wattis Institute, in San Francisco; Wesleyan University’s Zilkha Gallery, in Connecticut; Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France; Skulpturenmuseum, Glaskasten Marl, Germany; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil; Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, Brazil; among others. Tossin is the recipient of a Fellows of Contemporary Art Awards (2019); Los Angeles Artadia Awards (2018); Fellowship for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation (2014); and an Artistic Innovation Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation (2012). She received a M.F.A. from the California Institute of Arts.

Jeannette Ehlers is a video, photo and performance artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Experimental imagery characterizes her multidisciplinary work, and for years she has created artworks that engage with resistance towards coloniality. On these changeable terms, meaning and identity are explored, in both a sophisticated and immediate way. Ehlers’s performative and cinematic universes delve into ethnicity and identity inspired by her own Danish and Caribbean background. Her pieces revolve around big questions and difficult issues, such as Denmark’s role as a slave nation—a part of the Danish cultural heritage–which often gets overlooked in the general historiography. Ehlers’ residency is generously supported by the Danish Arts Council.

Nikolaj Recke is an artist based in Denmark whose practice has been called “emotional conceptualism,” and his re-enactments of land art and art history have characterized his work from the beginning. Recke invests his subjectivity (as an artist and a person) in the encounters with the works–not to return to narcissistic self-reflection–but to open these works to the levels of emotional experience that they have traditionally been dissociated from, and expand their intellectual and formal horizons even further with aesthetics involving self-irony, wit, politics, consciousness, and a romantic sense of beauty. Lately, Recke tries to expand the concepts of land art to engage with the artistic migration of material, places, and stories. Recke’s residency is generously supported by the Danish Arts Council.

Marie Markman is a Danish artist that works with art projects combining dynamics of art and urban planning. Markman’s artistic interest primarily merges perspectives like native approaches towards landscape, and industrial farming and activist methods. Since 2011, Markman has artistically challenged questions about beauty/aesthetics in new types of landscapes and in new contexts. In 2017, she founded The Exploratory Research Laboratory / TERL, a place for subtle yet radical landscape experiments, and functions primarily as a meeting point between artists, researchers, farmers, laymen, and different kinds of professionals. TERL builds on curiosity and the vision of future collaborations all across the Atlantic. All of Markman’s recent work flows backwards from really basic impulses revolving around questions like, “How do I want to live?” and “What kind of future do I want to pass on to the next generations?” Her work merges research, landscape, and art, revealing theoretical, practical, and professional challenges within urban development. Markman’s residency is generously supported by the Danish Arts Council.

Header image: Maj Hasager, Splitting Fields, 2018. Photographic print. Courtesy of the artist.

Clarissa Tossin | 21st Century Wisdom: Healing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Textile Block Houses
Artist Lab Residency and Exhibition
January 22 – March 29
Exhibition Reception
Saturday February 23 | 5 – 8 PM

For free tickets, RSVP here.

Los Angeles-based artist Clarissa Tossin will present a new body of work centered on her ongoing research into US collections of pre-Columbian artifacts, and their relationship to appropriated pre-Columbian artifacts and motifs. Tossin is conducting research into the forms and sounds of pre-Columbian instruments that will inform a new film concept based on the textile block houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the LA metro area. Tossin will bring a selection of 3D-printed replica instruments from public collections into the gallery at 18th Street Arts Center with the intent to sonically animate the appropriated pre-Columbian stylistic and material influences that make Wright’s houses so distinctive. The resonances and dissonances between “authenticity” of material, of design, and of tone invested in these instruments, and the pastiche or appropriation methodology of the architecture, produce spectres of the imagination that bring established subject positions into question.

Tossin will invite amateur and professional musicians from Central America and Mexico to play these traditional Mayan musical instruments in the gallery, which will be ornamented with a pattern derived from the textile block patterns of the Ennis House. She intends to link the travel of an archeological instrument with the travel of an architectural style, and ultimately, to complicate how cultures are displaced and appropriated.

For free tickets, RSVP here.

ALSO ON VIEW

Also on February 23, Danish visiting artist Maj Hasager presents Iterations in the Atrium Gallery, a project based on the Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica, where she is immersed for six months as an artist in residence at 18th Street Arts Center. Iterations continues Hasager’s interest in investigating the archive-as-process, as well as looking at the area’s multifaceted history, including forced relocations and exile. More information about her exhibition here.

OPEN STUDIOS

Resident artists will also be opening their studios at this event, including visiting Danish artists Jeannette Ehlers, Nikolaj Recke, and Marie Markman. Local artist residents including Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Debra Disman, Jeff Beall, Luciana Abait, Arzu Arda Kosar, Post Mango Studio, David McDonald, and Yvette Gellis will also be showing new work in their studios.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Clarissa Tossin is a visual artist who uses installation, video, performance, sculpture, and photography to negotiate hybridization of cultures and the persistence of difference. By embracing semantic displacements in given material cultural ecosystems, Tossin’s work reflects on circulation from the level of the body to the global industry. Tossin’s work has been featured at the 2014 Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; the Queens Museum, in New York; the Museum of Latin American Art, in Long Beach; SITE Santa Fe Biennial; the Wattis Institute, in San Francisco; Wesleyan University’s Zilkha Gallery, in Connecticut; Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France; Skulpturenmuseum, Glaskasten Marl, Germany; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil; Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, Brazil; among others. Tossin is the recipient of a Fellows of Contemporary Art Awards (2019); Los Angeles Artadia Awards (2018); Fellowship for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation (2014); and an Artistic Innovation Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation (2012). She received a M.F.A. from the California Institute of Arts.

Maj Hasager is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work deals with power structures, identity, memory, architecture, and the construction of history, looking at how these interlinked phenomena are interpreted and represented culturally and spatially. Her artistic approach is research based and she works predominantly with text, sound, video, and photography. Hasager uses oral history interview techniques as a method for accumulating and creating narratives that address personal stories in a sociopolitical context. Hasager’s residency is generously funded by the Danish Arts Council.

Jeannette Ehlers is a video, photo and performance artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Experimental imagery characterizes her multidisciplinary work, and for years she has created artworks that engage with resistance towards coloniality. On these changeable terms, meaning and identity are explored, in both a sophisticated and immediate way. Ehlers’s performative and cinematic universes delve into ethnicity and identity inspired by her own Danish and Caribbean background. Her pieces revolve around big questions and difficult issues, such as Denmark’s role as a slave nation—a part of the Danish cultural heritage–which often gets overlooked in the general historiography. Ehlers’ residency is generously supported by the Danish Arts Council.

Nikolaj Recke is an artist based in Denmark whose practice has been called “emotional conceptualism,” and his re-enactments of land art and art history have characterized his work from the beginning. Recke invests his subjectivity (as an artist and a person) in the encounters with the works–not to return to narcissistic self-reflection–but to open these works to the levels of emotional experience that they have traditionally been dissociated from, and expand their intellectual and formal horizons even further with aesthetics involving self-irony, wit, politics, consciousness, and a romantic sense of beauty. Lately, Recke tries to expand the concepts of land art to engage with the artistic migration of material, places, and stories. Recke’s residency is generously supported by the Danish Arts Council.

Marie Markman is a Danish artist that works with art projects combining dynamics of art and urban planning. Markman’s artistic interest primarily merges perspectives like native approaches towards landscape, and industrial farming and activist methods. Since 2011, Markman has artistically challenged questions about beauty/aesthetics in new types of landscapes and in new contexts. In 2017, she founded The Exploratory Research Laboratory / TERL, a place for subtle yet radical landscape experiments, and functions primarily as a meeting point between artists, researchers, farmers, laymen, and different kinds of professionals. TERL builds on curiosity and the vision of future collaborations all across the Atlantic. All of Markman’s recent work flows backwards from really basic impulses revolving around questions like, “How do I want to live?” and “What kind of future do I want to pass on to the next generations?” Her work merges research, landscape, and art, revealing theoretical, practical, and professional challenges within urban development. Markman’s residency is generously supported by the Danish Arts Council.

Image Caption: Clarissa Tossin, Ch’u Mayaa, 2017. HD single-channel digital video, color, sound. 17:56 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Originally commissioned by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for the exhibition Condemned to be Modern as part of Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time:LA/LA. Choreography/Performer: Crystal Sepúlveda; Cinematography: Jeremy Glaholt.

Join us for a screening of Eating Animals

How much do you know about the food that’s on your plate?

Based on the bestselling book by Jonathan Safran Foer, narrated by co-producer Natalie Portman, and directed by Christopher Quinn (GOD GREW TIRED OF US), EATING ANIMALS is an urgent, eye-opening look at the environmental, economic, and public health consequences of factory farming. Tracing the history of food production in the United States, the film charts how farming has gone from local and sustainable to a corporate Frankenstein monster that offers cheap eggs, meat, and dairy at a steep cost: the exploitation of animals; the risky use of antibiotics and hormones; and the pollution of our air, soil, and water. Spotlighting farmers who have pushed back against industrial agriculture with more humane practices, Eating Animals offers attainable, commonsense solutions to a growing crisis while making the case that ethical farming is not only an animal rights issue but one that affects every aspect of our lives.

Panel Discussion

A Panel discussion with filmmaker Christopher Quinn, Santa Monica Mayor Pro Tempore and EVP/Chief Strategy Officer for innogy eMobility US, Terry O’Day and Urban Farmer, Niels Thorlaksson will take place after the film.

This event is FREE for Santa Monica residents, High School and College students and Sustainable Works members!

Please reserve your seats at https://eatinganimals_screening.eventbrite.com.

Not a Santa Monica resident, High School/College student or Sustainable Works member? Purchase tickets at https://www.fandango.com/american-cinematheque-at-the-aero-theatre-AACPD/theater-page?date=2019-02-27.

Give-Aways

Some Farmers’ Market produce will be available for attendees after the film

*Please arrive by 6:40 to guarantee you get a seat.

Zero Waste Event – Enjoy the concessions, but when finished, please discard in a sustainable manner to minimize waste…ideally ZERO!  Bring Your Reusable Water Bottle!  Water provided by City of Santa Monica.

Ride don’t drive, if you can.

This event is brought to you by the City of Santa Monica’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment, American Cinematheque and Sustainable Works.

Maj Hasager, Ask Kaereby, and the Santa Monica Youth Orchestra
Performance and Sound Walk
Virginia Avenue Park | (meet at the entrance to the Thelma Terry Building)

For free tickets, RSVP

https://18thstreet.org/event/iterations-soundwalk-performance/

Artist Maj Hasager (DK) and composer Ask Kaereby (DK) will be working with the Santa Monica Youth Orchestra (SMYO) during a series of workshops, focusing on the sounds of the local environment and how these can be translated through their acoustic instruments. Field recordings will be made and interpreted by the young musicians, and on March 3rd, presented in the form of a performance and soundwalk around the area. Parallel to these sessions, short video interviews with the participants in SMYO will be collected.

Student-only workshops:

January 13, 2019: Brief introduction to the workshop for both age groups, examples of cross-disciplinary practices and soundscapes. Demonstration of QR codes and the recording app.

February 3, 2019: How can we listen to our surroundings. Part I: technical workshop in recording. Part II: field recording of sounds in the surroundings. Part III: Video interviews.

February 17, 2019: Rehearsal for the performance – translating recorded sounds from the surroundings for individual instruments. Film recording of the rehearsal.

Public Presentation: March 3, 2019: Soundwalk and improvisation by SMYO. For free tickets, RSVP

https://18thstreet.org/event/iterations-soundwalk-performance/

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Maj Hasager is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work deals with power structures, identity, memory, architecture, and the construction of history, looking at how these interlinked phenomena are interpreted and represented culturally and spatially. Her artistic approach is research based and she works predominantly with text, sound, video, and photography. Hasager uses oral history interview techniques as a method for accumulating and creating narratives that address personal stories in a sociopolitical context. Maj Hasager’s residency is generously funded by the Danish Arts Council.

Ask Kaereby is a Danish composer based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His artistic practice is interdisciplinary and research-based, involving experimental composition, soundscapes and electroacoustic music. He’s interested in the presentation of narratives by means of sound – not through traditional musical gestures, but using different approaches such as musique concrète or the futurists’ brutism. By placing himself in an intersection between known formats, Kaereby wishes to challenge our ways of listening – to music (live as well as recorded), to our surroundings and to (sonic) art.

Header image: Rehearsal Santa Monica Youth Orchestra, 2019. Photo: Maj Hasager.

Join us on Saturday, March 16th, from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM as we host a free panel discussion focusing on the history of local women’s service organizations, including the Philomatheans, an African American women’s organization founded in Santa Monica in 1921.
This discussion is free of charge, and includes free access to our galleries.
RSVP is suggested but not required. Please RSVP by emailing rsvp@santamonicahistory.org or calling (310) 395-2290.
We look forward to seeing you there!

This program is free and open to all ages. Seating is limited and on a first arrival basis. This event will be held at the Santa Monica History Museum, 1350 7th St, Santa Monica CA, 90401. The museum can be reached by following routes to the Main Library. The Main Library is served by Big Blue Bus routes 1, 7, R7, R10 and 18. Ride your bike? Bicycle parking racks are available at the library. The Santa Monica History Museum is wheelchair accessible.

13th Annual Santa Monica Airport ArtWalk

FREE: Admission & Parking

The 13th Annual Airport ArtWalk showcases the artist studios and multiple creative venues that occupy the airports converted airplane hangars. Featuring art and ceramic demonstrations, theater and art workshops, live music and food trucks, the ArtWalk offers a fun-filled day of artistic exploration.

#SMOArtWalk2019

Sponsored by Santa Monica Cultural Affairs

Sip, savor and supports students at the soiree of the year! Featuring dozens of tastings from the best wine and restaurants, along with exciting live and silent auctions, the Santa Monica Wine Auction is a can’t-miss food and wine event. And, the best part? All proceeds support arts, STEM and more for our students!

4:00 pm
Early Access to Food and Wine Tastings from Top Restaurants and Wineries
Silent Auction

5:00 pm
General Admission

7:00 – 9:00 pm
Live Auction, Desserts and Dancing