Four L.A. exhibitions top critics’ awards

Four Los Angeles exhibitions, including two devoted to 20th century abstract art, are among the top winners in the 2003-2004 International Association of Art Critics / USA Awards.

“Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s,” organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and curated by Lynn Zelevansky, tied for first place in the category of best thematic museum show nationally with “Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America,” organized by the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, co-curated by Mari Carmen Ramirez and Hector Olea.

“A Minimal Future? Art as Object: 1958-1968,” organized by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Ann Goldstein, was the second-place winner in that category.

Another Los Angeles institution, the UCLA Hammer Museum -- in partnership with the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art -- took a first-place award in the category of best monographic museum show nationally for “Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective,” featuring the artist’s sculptures and drawings and curated by Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art curator Elizabeth A.T. Smith in association with Hammer director Ann Philbin.

In addition, L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice took second place in the category of best show in a commercial gallery nationally.

The awards, voted on by the nearly 400 members of the U.S. section of the international group, are given in recognition of exceptional work by artists, curators, gallerists, critics, scholars and cultural institutions.

Other first-place awards include “Schoenberg, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider” at the Jewish Museum, New York, in the category of best thematic show in New York City; “The Privilege of Solitude: Alfred Jensen and Forrest Bess,” at Boston’s Neilsen Gallery, for best show in a commercial gallery nationally; “El Greco,” organized by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and London’s National Gallery, for best historical show; and “Robert Lazzarini,” organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, for best exhibition of digital art (Web art or art using a computer).

Curator and art historian Robert Rosenblum will receive an award for distinguished contribution to the field of art criticism.

The awards will be presented Jan. 25 at a ceremony at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.