Getty to increase grants for showing of L.A. postwar art

The J. Paul Getty Trust is stepping up its support of projects that tell the story of post-World War II art in Los Angeles.

The Getty Foundation, the philanthropic branch of the trust, has already awarded about $2.7 million to local museums and libraries to catalog archives that document L.A.’s cultural flowering. Today it is expected to announce an additional $2.8 million in grants to 15 Southern California institutions for a batch of 2011 exhibitions exploring the development of the local art scene, sources close to the Getty say.

As reported Sunday in The Times’ Calendar section, in 2011 the Getty Museum will present a survey of Southern California painting and sculpture from the late 1940s to the early 1970s in coordination with Getty-funded shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum. Today’s announcement, the sources say, will add a dozen institutions to that list.

Art organizations from Santa Barbara to San Diego will collaborate in the project under the umbrella of a 6-year-old Getty initiative, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980,” formerly called “On the Record: Art in L.A. 1945-1980.” Participants will include the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, Los Angeles Filmforum and Otis College of Art and Design.

All the participants are expected to receive research and planning grants for a coordinated array of exhibitions beginning in fall 2011. Along with LACMA’s “California Design, 1930-1965: ‘Living in a Modern Way,’ ” MOCA’s “California Culture, 1969-1980: Pluralism in the Postmodern Era” and the Hammer’s survey of African American artists in Los Angeles, the Orange County Museum of Art will present “Circa 1969: California Art on the Cusp” and Scripps College will offer “Clay Reconsidered: Ceramics in Southern California, 1945 to 1980.”

The University Art Museum at UC Santa Barbara is planning an architecture show, “The Ranch House: Cliff May’s Designs for Modern Living.” The California African American Museum’s exhibition “Places of Validation, Art and Progression” is to investigate how black artists got their work into the public eye in postwar years.

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suzanne.muchnic@ latimes.com