WeHo Standard Time: Artes Y Artistas

From a traveling public sculpture to landmark surveys of queer Latinx artists, this fall, the city of West Hollywood’s WeHo Artes engages the Getty’s sprawling Pacific Standard Time: Latin America | Los Angeles initiative, staging eclectic and important visual arts in venues within and beyond WeHo city limits.

- Shana Nys Dambrot

The history of art in Los Angeles is deeply intertwined with Latino culture—not only the richness of the region’s Mexican and Chicano heritage but the dynamic global diaspora from Europe and North, Central and South America. A follow-up edition to its citywide initiative of a decade ago highlighting the accomplishments of regional artists from 1945 to 1980, The Getty Foundation’s new PST:LA|LA undertakes a deliberate, focused approach to scholarship of the Latino presence and influence in all its myriad forms and mediums. With literally hundreds of galleries and institutions offering thematic programs from September 2017 and into 2018, PST is covering every township and surrounding county that could possibly be considered part of Greater Los Angeles, and communities are encouraged to see themselves reflected in the programs they host. To that end, the robust WeHo Arts organization created WeHo Artes, a slate encompassing both official PST exhibitions as well as additional original projects distributed between the Public Library, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives Gallery, MOCA at the Pacific Design Center, LAXART, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Great Hall/Long Hall in Plummer Park and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) in West Hollywood Park. The scores of artists represented practice video, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation and more; their work speaks to art and cultural historicism and the avant-garde, the intersection of LGBTQ and ethnic experiences and identities, public culture, politics, immigration, class, race, gender, the environment and even the origin story of the Disney empire.