Tpoics : ART : Museum Series Goes Behind the Canvas

Contemporary art can baffle even the most ardent art lovers. Sometimes an abstract or conceptual work offers hardly a clue to its meaning.

At the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the mysteries of contemporary art and culture are unraveled during the museum’s free Friday Evening Salons. The informal sessions take place almost every week, providing an opportunity for the public to participate in the exchange of ideas about art and other imaginative endeavors.

“We’ve always talked about trying to create opportunities to demystify the art-making process, especially in installations that we do,” said Scott Boberg, the museum’s education director. “I think that’s true for the salon series. . . . It’s almost a voyeuristic opportunity for people to come in and get inside an artist’s brain and find out whatthey’re thinking.”

Boberg cites the informal, “living room” character of the salons--and the fact that they are presented regularly. “There’s questions and answers; it’s a comfortable thing, not intimidating,” he said. “It really gives an immediacy and accessibility to what’s being discussed or presented.”

In a typical salon, one artist or more will start a dialogue about a current exhibit or about a contemporary arts issue that has nothing to do with the museum’s schedule. Friday night, Lili Lakich, founder of the Museum of Neon Art, will be at the museum to discuss the use of neon by fine artists and the history of neon signage. Betye Saar’s installation, “Limbo: A Transitional State or Place,” which incorporates neon, will serve as a starting point for discussion. (The Saar exhibit closes Sunday).

“We’re a contemporary art institution. Why not try to get the people who are making the art together with the people who are trying to understand it? I think part of our role here is to provide a kind of participative, interpretive forum between art, audience and artist,” said museum director Thomas Rhoads. “It’s a unique opportunity that we as a contemporary art institution have.”

Rhoads describes three aspects of the salons: “In some senses, it’s artists talking about their process and how they create work. In other senses, it’s a cultural kind of phenomenon where people from different backgrounds come and meet people different from who they are. The third one is probably more museum-like, about art ideas or aesthetic kinds of ideas, which functions in a much more traditional kind of role.”

Not all of the salons center on the visual arts. Boberg said that by creating a more eclectic program, he wants to “introduce new audiences to the museum. The last series we did, I invited a number of playwrights and actors to come and talk about theater in Los Angeles.”

The July 22 salon will offer a cooking demonstration inspired by the museum’s upcoming exhibition, “The Return of the Cadavre Exquis “ (French for “Exquisite Corpse”). Chef Carol Cotner is going to re-create one of photographer Lee Miller’s surrealist meals.

“Late in her life, (Miller) got very interested in food, collected recipes, made her own recipes and held a whole series of surrealist banquets in the ‘60s and early ‘70s for her friends. So it’s going to be like Julia Child meets Andre Breton,” Boberg said. “One of the things that I’ve tried to do with the series is to create events that inspired thinking among the audience, but were fun, that really had a surprising quality to them.”

The salons have benefited artists and audiences alike. For artists, they have provided a place to present unfinished work. “It’s turned out to be a really good opportunity for many of them to work out new ideas,” Boberg said.

Because exhibition schedules are often set years in advance, there’s a considerable lag between the time an artist imagines a work and the time the piece goes on exhibit. By then, “the artist is on to completely new ideas,” he said. “So this series provides an opportunity to literally keep it in the moment in terms of what people are thinking about.”

Until now, the museum has supported the free salon series from its own coffers, and Starbucks donations of coffee. Recently, though, it was awarded a grant for the series from the National Endowment for the Arts. The money will be used to continue to pay honorariums ($50 and a yearlong museum membership) to salon participants.

“Our commitment is to the future,” Rhoads said. “We’re involved with artists who are creating culture and it’s always hard to have a perspective on that. While they’re doing it, you don’t have the vantage point of history. But I think if you can provide some entry point or access, then at least it becomes a springboard for discussion.”

All Friday Evening Salons are free and begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica. Friday: Neon Art. July 8: No salon. Salons continue weekly beginning July 15 through Sept. 4. The surrealist cooking salon is on July 22. For information and a schedule, call (310) 399-0433.