Past Exhibitions
The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and Idealism
SF MOMA | San Francisco, CA
December 22, 2018–April 28, 2019
South entrance marker, Black Point Barn, and Condominium One; Special Collections, University Library, University of California Santa Cruz; photographed by Morley Baer, 1965; © 2018 the Morley Baer Photography Trust, Santa Fe. Courtesy SFMoMA.
Distinctive architecture, uninhibited ocean views, bold supergraphics, shared open space, and meditative tranquility—these were the beginnings of the Sea Ranch, a beacon of Modernism on the Northern California coast. Designed by a small group of Bay Area architects and designers in the early 1960s, the development was envisioned as a progressive, inclusive community, guided by the idealistic principles of good design, economy of space, and harmony with the natural environment.
This exhibition brings together original sketches and drawings from the project's designers, along with archival images, photographs of the Sea Ranch today, and a full-scale architectural replica. The environmentally attentive design philosophies explored at the Sea Ranch, along with the now-iconic graphics, resonated globally and continue to influence architecture and design today.
West by Midwest
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago | Chicago, IL
November 17, 2018 - January 29, 2019
Anna Halprin and Lawrence Halprin, “Ritual Celebration,” Kentfield, CA. Halprin Summer Workshop, day thirteen, July 13, 1968. Courtesy MCA Chicago via The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.
Western art history is often viewed as a neat succession of individual artists and their singular masterpieces. This narrative runs parallel to the American story of westward expansion, propelled by the idea of individualism and independence. West by Midwest offers a messier alternative—one that illuminates the ways that contemporary art practices spread and develop by tracing the intersecting lives of artists who have migrated from the American Midwest to the West Coast since the mid-20th century. Lured by career opportunities, warmer weather, and the prospect of a better life promised by the postwar boom, artists in this exhibition attended art schools together, shared studios, exhibited work in the same galleries, collaborated on projects, engaged in activism, and dated. Following these crisscrossing lines of kinship, West by Midwest reveals social, political, artistic, and intellectual networks of artists and their shared experiences of making work and making a life.
Divided into five sections, West by Midwest presents more than eighty artworks in a wide variety of media, made by some sixty-three artists from the 1960s through the 2010s. Each section maps three overlapping forms of kinship: practice, or the ways that artists make and approach their work; place, or the spaces where artists congregate and exchange ideas; and people, or the manifold human relationships that compose artists’ personal and professional circles. Anchored by works in the MCA’s collection, West by Midwest eschews a definitive survey of individuals’ achievements to instead consider how artists move and make work within a larger field of relations.
West by Midwest is organized by Charlotte Ickes, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, with Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator. It is presented in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art on the museum's fourth floor.
The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin (traveling)
Organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation
National Building Museum | Washington D.C. | November 5, 2016 - April 16, 2017
NPU at the Palace of Fine Arts | San Francisco, CA | May 24 - September 4, 2017
A+D Museum | Los Angeles, CA | September 29 - December 31, 2017
The Boston Architectural College | Boston, MA | September 12 - November 17, 2018
NorthPark Center | Dallas, TX | February 28 - August 26, 2018
Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin exhibition includes more than 50 newly commissioned photographs of important residential, civic, and commercial projects. Its debut in 2016 was timed to the 100th anniversary of Halprin’s birth.
The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin was first shown at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. At the National Building Museum it was supplemented with drawings, sketches, notebooks, models and other artifacts from the Halprin Archive at the University of Pennsylvania, Architecture Archives, along with sketches from Halprin’s personal collection courtesy Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Los Angeles.
Lawrence Halprin : Alternative Scores - Drawing from Life
Edward Cella Art & Architecture | Los Angeles, CA
September 9 - November 4, 2017
Courtesy Edward Cella Art & Architecture.
Edward Cella Art & Architecture is proud to present Lawrence Halprin: Alternative Scores - Drawing from Life, the first exhibition of a collection of rarely-seen drawings by Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009), a leading figure in American landscape architecture, urban design, and environmental planning during the second-half of the twentieth century. The exhibition reveals Halprin’s almost daily practice of drawing as a means to not only record his diverse visual experiences, but also as a tool to engage with the trials and tribulations of war, the ecstasies of life, and the rawness and beauty in nature. The exhibition includes archival video, photography, and ephemera which provide a historical context for Halprin’s life and work; and highlight the experimental Workshops and happenings that he developed in concert with his wife and influential dancer and choreographer, Anna Halprin.
With a resurgent interest in the work of Lawrence Halprin, ECAA is thrilled to present this extensive and singular collection of rare works on paper in the possession of the Halprin family.
Experiments in Environment : The Halprin Workshops, 1966 - 1971
Organized by The Graham Foundation from the
University of Pennsylvania’s Halprin Architectural Archives
California Historical Society | San Francisco, CA | January 22 - July 3, 2016
The Beall Center, Columbia University | New York, NY | 2015
The Graham Foundation | Chicago, IL | 2014
Courtesy The Graham Foundation.
Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971 presents to the West Coast public for the first time original photographs, films, drawings, scores, and other archival documentation of the workshops, which were staged in the streets of San Francisco, on the shores and cliffs of Sea Ranch (a coastal community designed by Lawrence), and on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. In an observation reflective of Sixties culture, Anna Halprin said, “I want art and structures which express individual creativity and collective living. I want all the personal responses of my company members to be evident in themselves and also to unite into a communal experience.”
Organized by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania.
Also on display are Selections from the Collection: Countercultural Art and Lifestyle Movements, an examination of artistically and politically engaged, collaborative lifestyle movements that flourished in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s, around the time of the Halprin workshops, including posters, flyers, newspapers, and other ephemera drawn exclusively from the collections of the California Historical Society, and a contextual exhibition familiarizing visitors to the broader careers of Lawrence and Anna Halprin—both organized by the California Historical Society.