ART

FOUR NEW PAINTERS FOR THE NEW YEAR: Sharon Ellis, Michelle Fiero, Monique Prieto, Carolee Toon.

*

SPECIES CONFUSION: Visitors keep mistaking Bergamot Station in Santa Monica for a not-for-profit art center. (In fact, credit cards are welcome.)

*

SWITCH-HITTER: The Lannan Foundation announced that it would close its headquarters and much-admired exhibition space near Marina del Rey this year. Then it didn’t. But it will. Next year. Probably. Maybe March?

*

SWITCH-HITTER II: The Lannan Foundation had also announced that it would stop collecting contemporary art. And didn’t. (Stop, that is.) In the fall Lannan acquired several Light and Space installations and drawings by sculptor James Turrell for an undisclosed sum. No announcement was made as to what would be done with the new purchases.

*

TWO EDS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: L.A.-based painter Ed Moses and the late L.A.-based sculptor Edward Kienholz (with wife and collaborator Nancy Reddin) were the subjects of simultaneous retrospectives at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The two Eds are represented by one local gallery, which thereby got an added spin to its own punning museum name: L.A. Louver.

*

SOUNDS LIKE ORCA: Yes, the merger of the little Laguna Art Museum and the little Newport Harbor Art Museum created a big mess, sharply polarizing supporters and detractors. But even worse (aesthetically speaking) is the acronym for the newly christened Orange County Museum of Art. Do you really yearn to visit a place called OCMA?