Nibbles and Bits

The Laguna Art Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art have announced two major acquisitions to the LAM/OCMA Trust Collection.

Agnes Pelton’s 1929 painting, “The Guide,” will be displayed at the Laguna Beach museum starting July 17. Stanton MacDonald-Wright’s untitled painting from 1927-28--actually two works, painted on either side of a canvas--will be exhibited at OCMA in Newport Beach beginning July 21.

MacDonald-Wright (1890-1973), who spent his early career in Europe, is best known for his 1912 co-invention (with Morgan Russell) of Synchromism, a painting movement emphasizing the role of pure color. After returning to California in 1919, over the succeeding decades he experimented with color motion picture film, directed the Works Progress Administration Art Project for Southern California and taught at UCLA.

Pelton (1881-1961) worked in obscurity, painting visionary abstractions inspired by views of the night sky. These works were rediscovered by delighted curators and critics in recent decades. The museum’s serenely mysterious painting dates from before her move from New York to Palm Springs in 1932.

Compiled by Ken Williams