Award to Fund Museum’s Exhibit on Race

Earning its fourth prestigious award from the Fellows of Contemporary Art--the most of any museum in California--the Laguna Art Museum announced Friday that it will receive a $50,000 grant for an exhibition on race and identity.

The award will be presented to museum curator Tyler Stallings in 2002 for his 84-page exhibition proposal of “Whiteness, or Coloring Authority,” scheduled for 2003.

The award caps months of intensive research, said Stallings, who has been a professional curator since 1995 and was invited by the Fellows to submit a proposal.

“I’m thrilled because I’ve never received this kind of award,” Stallings said.

Stallings is the fourth Fellows recipient from the Laguna Art Museum. Laguna’s 1982 exhibition “Changing Trends: Content and Style--12 Southern California Painters,” curated by Robert Smith, was the first to receive a Fellows award. Two traveling shows, “Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980” organized by director Charles Desmarais in 1993, and Marilu Knode’s “Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place” in 1996 also benefited from Fellows funding. Stallings’ show also is expected to travel.

“It’s a validation from the Fellows that the museum is doing good programming,” said museum director Bolton Colburn. “The Fellows concentrate on exhibitions, and they tend to reward progressive ideas. With the demise of the NEA’s ability to fund contemporary exhibitions, it becomes more important for the Fellows to help support these kinds of exhibitions.”

The award money will go toward publishing the show’s catalog and will be disbursed in increments a year before scheduled exhibition.

“Whiteness” deals with race and identity and explores the color white and how it is used to create a sense of authority in the art world, whether discussing a white gallery room or skin tones.

The show involves a group of up to 25 California artists whose works include paintings and installations.

The proposal also examines political issues such as affirmative action and Proposition 187, a measure to deny public services to illegal immigrants and their children.

Stallings’ proposal emphasizes California’s shifting demographics with the white majority becoming a minority and how that plays out in the art world with visual whiteness, said Fellows administrative director Merry Scully.

“It’s sociological and definitely political,” said Scully, who became aware of Stallings when he was curator of the Huntington Beach Art Center. Coincidentally, the art center is featuring an exhibition titled “White,” a nonpolitical show that focuses on the aesthetics of white.

The Los Angeles-based Fellows of Contemporary Art is an independent support organization that offers annual funding for exhibitions focused on California art. The group was formerly the Fellows of the Pasadena Art Museum, now the Norton Simon Museum. Fellows celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

“Los Angeles and Southern California are now much hotter in the art world than they used to be in the past,” Scully said.