Beall Center for Art + Technology awarded a research and planning grant from the Getty Foundation for Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA

The region-wide collaboration opening in 2024 will explore intersections of art and science

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 27, 2021 — A $100,000 research and planning grant from the Getty Foundation will allow The Beall Center for Art + Technology to join the third regional collaboration in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA. Forty-five cultural, educational and scientific institutions throughout Southern California will receive support for their projects, all of which will explore the intersection of art and science. The diverse community of Southern California institutions will present exhibitions, publications, performances, public conversations and programs in 2024.

“This substantial new research grant rewards an area of our work less generally recognized: research into the creation and cultural impact of art and its relationship with other academic and aesthetic disciplines,” said Stephen Barker, dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. “We’re doubly proud, because it means the Claire Trevor School of the Arts will have contributed to all three iterations of the Pacific Standard Time collaborations organized by the Getty. We look forward to the many opportunities the grant will create.”

As part of this collaboration, The Beall Center for Art + Technology will present Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Predictability, a thematic show and artist residency program. David Familian, artistic director and curator for the Beall Center, will lead the research and planning. He will be joined by Jeffrey Barrett, Chancellor’s Professor of logic & philosophy of science at UCI, who will serve as the primary advisor for the history and philosophy of science related to the exhibition. Familian plans to allow artists, researchers and scientists to facilitate work that visualizes and critically interrogates and educates audiences. Subjects will range from the threat of Orwellian control to more proactive, productive solutions to myriad biological, environmental, social, political and existential issues we face in the 21st century. 

The exhibition will feature up to a dozen artists whose interdisciplinary practices examine complex systems such as evolutionary biology, meteorology, machine learning and social networks to engage and critique different ways of predicting the future. A select number of collaborators will participate in the Beall Center’s Black Box Projects residency program, which invites artists to collaborate on new work and research with UCI faculty and Ph.D. students.

“In the Future Tense exhibition, artists will respond to our exceedingly unpredictable 21st century as they explore indeterminate and complex systems such as global warming, pandemics and social relations,” said Familian. “Their interdisciplinary works across media will reveal how complex systems profoundly dislocate, disrupt and impact our lives.”

Pacific Standard Time will include dozens of simultaneous exhibitions and programs focused on the intertwined histories of art and science, and past and present, that together address some of the most complex challenges of the 21st century – from climate change and environmental racism to the current pandemic and artificial intelligence – and the creative solutions these problems demand.  

“We applaud our partners for embracing remarkably diverse and imaginative approaches to this PST’s theme of art and science,” said Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. “Beyond the inventiveness they are bringing to their individual research topics, they will build new community partnerships and engage the public in civic dialogues around pressing issues of our time. This will be a PST defined by creativity, curiosity, and community.”

About Pacific Standard Time: Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented series of collaborations among institutions across Southern California. In each, organizations simultaneously present research-based exhibitions and programs that explore and illuminate a significant theme in the region’s cultural history. In Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980, more than 60 cultural institutions joined forces between October 2011 and March 2012 and rewrote the history of the birth and impact of the L.A. art scene. In Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, presented from September 2017 through January 2018, more than 70 institutions collaborated on a paradigm-shifting examination of Latin American and Latinx art, seen together as a hemispheric continuum. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty.

About the Beall Center for Art + Technology: The Beall Center is an exhibition and research center located at the University of California, Irvine, in the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Since its opening in 2000, the Beall Center has promoted new forms of creation and expression by building innovative scholarly relationships and community collaborations between artists, scientists and technologists, and encouraging research and development of art forms that can affect the future. For artists, the Beall Center serves as a proving ground — a place between the artist’s studio and the art museum — and allows them to work with new technologies in their early stages of development. For visitors, the Beall Center serves as a window to the most imaginative and creative visual arts innovations. The curatorial focus presents a diverse range of innovative, world-renowned artists, both national and international, who work with experimental and interactive media. The Beall Center received its initial support from the Rockwell Corporation in honor of retired chairman Don Beall and his wife, Joan; the core idea being to merge their lifelong passions – business, engineering and the arts – in one place. Today, major support is generously provided by the Beall Family Foundation. For more information, please visit https://beallcenter.uci.edu/.

About UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts: As UCI’s creative laboratory, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts explores and presents the arts as the essence of human experience and expression, through art forms ranging from the most traditional to the radically new. The international faculty works across a wide variety of disciplines, partnering with others across the campus.  National-ranked programs in art, dance, drama, and music begin with training but end in original invention. Students come to UCI to learn to be citizen-artists, to sharpen their skills and talents, and to become the molders and leaders of world culture. For more information, visit www.arts.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

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