Laguna Art Museum

HOURS:

Open 7 days a week 11:00am-5:00pm

Admission Fees:

Laguna Art Museum is proud to be a participating Blue Star Museum. Blue Star Museums is a partnership among Blue Star Families, the National Endowment for the Arts, and more than 700 museums in all 50 states to offer free admission to active duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, through Labor Day, September 6, 2010. Some of the participating museums on Art Museum Touring started May 28.

Click on the Blue Star for more information and to see all the participating museums.

$12 for adults
$10 for students, seniors, and military
Children under 12 & Museum Members admitted free

Mission Statement:
Laguna Art Museum is a museum of American art with a special focus on the art of California. Its purpose is to provide the public with exposure to art and to promote understanding of the role of art and artists in American culture through collection, conservation, exhibition, research, scholarship and education. Working within the tradition of the oldest cultural institution in Orange County, Laguna Art Museum documents regional art and places it in a national context. The Museum maintains its historic ties to the community and is responsive, accessible, and relevant to the area’s diverse population.

Exhibitions:

Select works from Northern and Southern California artists
Through October 3

The Upstairs Gallery will feature select works from Northern and Southern California artists included in the Museum's permanent collection. Laguna Art Museum's collection consists of works from the early nineteenth century to the present day and features significant examples from all periods of California art.

Artists in California represents art from the early twentieth century and includes artists William Wendt, Joseph Kleitsch, Matteo Sandonà, Charles Rollo Peters, Frank Cuprien, Granville Redmond, Donna Schuster, and Mabel Alvarez, among others. Alvarez's In the Garden is the most recent gift to the collection from Nancy Dustin Wall Moure.

Art Shack
June 13 - October 3, 2010

Art Shack is a group exhibition in which artists such as Don Ed Hardy, Shag, Paul Frank, and Mike Shine combine art and architecture. Explore surf shacks, tattoo huts, retro shanties and more, and immerse yourself in 25 different worlds created by the artists.

Shack up at Laguna Art Museum this summer!

About Art Shack
Guest curated by Greg Escalante, Art Shack is a group exhibition in which artists such as Don Ed Hardy, Shag, Paul Frank, and Mike Shine combine art and architecture. Explore surf shacks, tattoo huts, retro shanties and more, and immerse yourself in 25 different worlds created by the artists.

Many shacks will be enterable, and some will include interactive components such as music and film. Don Ed Hardy’s Tattoo Hut will feature an activated tattoo machine.

“In the last ten years we have noticed that many of the artists we have exhibited in the Museum’s popular culture shows have made some type of ‘shack’,” said Laguna Art Museum Director Bolton Colburn. “We’ve worked with Greg Escalante on many of the Museum’s pop culture exhibitions over the years and he brought forward the idea of gathering these art shacks together into a central exhibition that explicates the phenomenon.”

Abandoning the rules of the art market and pressure to create saleable work, art shacks allow the artists to create an experiential environment, narrowing the distinction between art and function, object and environment.

Though few of us have any direct experience with living in shacks, they are at least present in our collective memory through post-apocalyptic films like District 9 or childhood games like MASH (Mansion-Apartment-Shack-House) that predict your future life and placement in social class. Along the West Coast, we're quite familiar with surf shacks, date shacks, and Tiki-inspired shacks-romantic, boutique-like bungalows for the leisure visitor.

However, architecturally, a shack is the lowest form of construction, meant to serve the most basic or immediate needs. By definition, a shack is a place of disrepair made of the most humble scrap materials like plywood, corrugated metal, and plastic. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people (one-sixth of the world's population) live in slums-a settlement made of shacks.

In every sense of the word, a shack is temporal. It even implies to the more humorous, subversive, and misbehaved-to "shack up"-or abandon social norms and "shack up in the mountains."

Ultimately, the artists in this exhibition aim to defy the norms of rules set against them, questioning the modes of mass production, social restrictions, and perhaps global capitalism.

Events

Laguna Beach Film Society July Screening
The Orange County premiere of
Mao's Last Dancer

Directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Tender Mercies, Crimes of the Heart, and Double Jeopardy). Taken from a small rural village when he was 11 years old, Li Cunxin was one of the last chosen to study at Madam Mao's Beijing Dance Academy. He was offered a scholarship to study with the Huston Ballet, and defected to the United States two years later which set off a flurry of political controversy between China and the United States. Li's quest for dancing, honor, and love is an inspiration!

Thursday, July 15, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)
South Coast Cinema, 162 S. Coast Hwy, Laguna Beach

A pre-show reception will take place at 6:00 p.m. at Wells Fargo Bank, Community Room, 260 Ocean Avenue, and includes wine and hors d'oeuvres.

Screenings and reception are FREE to LBFS Members, $20 for guests and public
Screening tickets available at South Coast Theater, $15

"Build Your Own Art Shack"
Workshop with Hurley resident artist and Art Shack artist Jason Maloney
Sunday, July 18, 2010 (1:00 p.m.)

Students K-8 are invited to Laguna Art Museum for a workshop in conjunction with the Museum's current exhibition Art Shack. Learn the art of shack-making from Hurley resident artist and Art Shack artist Jason Maloney (pictured left), and take home your very own art shack.

Only 40 spots available!