LANDSCAPE DESIGN AT CAL STATE FULLERTON

“Six Views: Contemporary Landscape Architecture” explores affinities betweeen architecture, art and recent landscape design in California in an exhibition in the Main Art Gallery at Cal State Fullerton.

The show presents scale models of landscape design supplemented by slide presentations and drawings. Organized by gallery director Dextra Frankel and landscape architect Pamela Burton, the exhibition demonstrates divergent viewpoints and radical departures from tradition.

A free public symposium focusing on design that incorporates symbolic meaning, ideas of “synthetic refuge” and crossovers among architecture, art and landscape architecture is set for Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the University Center’s Multipurpose Room A.

Barbara Goldstein will moderate the panel discussion among Pamela Burton, Lloyd Hamrol, Craig Hodgetts and Ron Wigginton.

The exhibition includes work by Gary Dwyer, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; George Hargreaves, Hargreaves Associates, San Francisco; Pat O’Brien and Barbara Meacham of Meacham/O’Brien, San Francisco; Martha Schwartz and Peter Walker, San Francisco; Ron Wigginton and Andrew Spurlock, Land Studio, San Diego; Pamela Burton and Katherine Spitz of Burton & Spitz, Santa Monica.

Information: (714) 773-3262 or (714) 773-2037.

Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum caps its 50th anniversary year with an exhibition titled “Colombia Before Columbus,” Saturday through March 1.

Bowers’ Chief Curator Armand J. Labbe says the 250 Pre-Columbian sculptures display the “fascinating ceramic artistry of the Indians who lived in the northern regions of South America, as early as 2000 BC until the time Columbus discovered the New World.” According to Labbe, Colombia is recognized as having the oldest dated works in ceramic produced in the Americas. People traveling North or South on land had to cross the territory now known as Colombia; when the Spanish arrived, the region was replete with evidence of rich and varied artifacts from many cultures.

Exhibited objects include animal, plant and human representations, burial jars, musical instruments and storage vessels, some used for religious ceremonies and rituals, others for utilitarian or decorative purposes. The pieces originate in about 30 sub-cultures.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Labbe has authored a copiously illustrated book, published by Rizzoli forthe museum and The Americas Foundation, a nonprofit organization functioning in support of Pre-Columbian studies.

Richard Andrews, director of the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Program will hold an open meeting Thursday, 4-6 p.m. at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1804 Industrial St. He will talk about NEA grant opportunities for organizations and individual artists who work in painting, sculpture, photography, crafts, printmaking, drawing, artists’ books, performance, video and conceptual art. Andrews will show slides of works by recent fellowship recipients.

A body of works by American master John Marin has been given to the National Gallery of Art by the artist’s son, John C. Marin Jr. The collection consists of 113 watercolors dating from the late 1880s through 1940, 13 drawings, 20 etchings, 12 paintings and 16 sketchbooks containing some 419 watercolors and drawings ranging in date from the early 1890s to the early 1950s.

Seventeen notebooks, more than 300 pieces of personal correspondence between the artist and public figures such as Alfred Stieglitz and Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, as well as archival materials also are part of the gift.

Marin is known for using watercolor as a major vehicle of artistic expression. He first gained visibility in the early 1900s as one of the Stieglitz circle of artists, photographers and intellectuals in New York. During the 1920s he was a leading force in a movement favoring expressive abstraction over naturalist representation.

William Klein’s black-and-white city street photography from New York, Paris and Moscow will be seen in an exhibition at UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography, Friday through Jan. 11.

Klein, a New Yorker now living in France, has long been recognized in Europe as an innovative artist who explores a city’s culture through gritty photographic images. According to curator Ed Earle, Klein’s sensibility is related to that of Robert Frank, whose photographic work is far better known here. “I certainly think that Klein ranks up there as someone who also broke photographic conventions to create interesting and startling photographs,” said Earle.

Works in this exhibition, presenting an overview of Klein’s work, were lent by the Zabriskie Gallery in New York.

Correction: An item in the Oct. 6. Calendar’s Art News column erroneously referred to “ArtQuest ‘87” as a competitive video show. In fact, the juried competition will result in two exhibitions, one of actual works and the other a traveling videotape. The exhibition of actual works will be shown at Cal State Northridge and the Art Institute of Boston, The touring video show consists of an hour-long videotape featuring slides of works selected by the jury, with voice-over comments by the artists.