Fall is finally here, after a heat-addled summer in SoCal. I hope we don’t have any more of those 100-degree temps, because some of us don’t have central air, and it was brutal throughout August and September. On those hottest days I told myself, autumn is coming. I’ve always loved that line in The Great Gatsby — “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

Fall is also when the art season gets a restart, and we had an electrifying one with the Getty-sponsored PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Lots of new exhibitions opened — there are over 70 slated for fall and spring, with most of the major ones opening in September. I had a couple of marathon weeks visiting many of the major shows, and here are a few of the extraordinary ones.

First off, For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability (until February 2, 2025) at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla is a remarkably compelling and even moving exhibition despite its morbid premise. The exhibition attempts “to narrate the history of recent art, going back to the 1960s, through the lens of illness and disability,” said Jill Dawsey, senior curator at the museum, during a walkthrough. “Since the pandemic, all of us are more aware that what we share is our bodily vulnerability, our mortality.” Yes, indeed. In “For Dear Life,” we travel through time from the AIDs crisis to the COVID epidemic, with other disabilities in between. Yes, we all get sick, and we all get old, and some of us have hereditary health issues to contend with. How artists can deal with those impairments through creative expression is a wonderment.

Take the choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer. Once when she was recovering from surgery, she filmed her hand in midair, experimenting with how it might be as expressive as her body.

The show opens with a black-and-white still from Rainer’s Hand Movie (1966) that launched her filmmaking practice. The exhibition goes from Laura Aguilar to Liz Young and Constantina Zavitsanos. I was especially happy to see Young’s work included. For years I would see her at openings in a wheelchair, an active participant in the art scene. A group show at Track 16 once featured one of Young’s sculptures — a whimsical flying machine to which she could strap herself. La Jolla Museum presents her compellingly poetic The Birth/Death Chair with Rawhide Shoes, Bones, and Organs (1993) — a chair but more than a chair, for at its base lie the pair of shoes of someone who might have been sitting there. One shoe is attached to a chain from which spring various bones and organs, the hardware and software of our mortal being.

While you’re down south, head to Balboa Park and the exhibitions at the San Diego Museum of Art and the Mingei International. At the former, Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World (until Jan. 5, 2025) includes over 200 works. The exhibition took as a springboard the 13th century book by scholar Zakariya al-Qazwini (d. 1283), The Wonders of Creation and Rarities of Existence, and features illustrated manuscripts, astronomical instruments, paintings and even contemporary art by Sherin Guirguis, Timo Nasseri, and others.

A short walk away at the Mingei is Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo (until March 16, 2025), which
presents the history of indigo, a plant found the world over that  produces a deep blue dye after rather elaborate processing. Some 180 objects from 30 countries are included, from Japanese kimonos to Levi jeans. Contemporary artists also use the material, sometimes to address indigo’s colonial history.

Luminex Redux

October 5th was a magical evening at Luminex — the outdoor art fest taking place after hours in the South District of DTLA, in its third and perhaps strongest iteration. Much of it was large-scale video projections on the sides of buildings and along an alley, and I loved how it drew people to the city streets at night. Kudos to the organizers!

Nao Bustamante recreated her “Brown Disco” with a large mirror ball spinning in the middle of the room of an industrial space, with a delirium of images projected onto and reflected from the ball. Bustamante paced around the ball, turning it with her hand. I love how her work is often low-tech, even while using bits of tech. JOJO ABOT danced before her video in her luminescent robes—some of the footage was from Africa—with an arcane sign projected on the ground, in “Re.Member.” The other artists were Refik Anadol, Alice Bucknell, Petra Cortright, Marc Horowitz, Carole Kim, Alan Nakagawa, Sarah Rara and LAVA (Los Angeles Video Artists). Kudos to the artists!

An End and Beginning at The Hammer

It’s hard to believe Ann Philbin is leaving the Hammer after a most remarkable 25 years as director. She took the place from a sleepy university museum to a leading hub of contemporary art with an international reputation. I still remember when she brought a retrospective of the then under-recognized Lee Bontecou to Los Angeles, and it was a stunner, so raw and powerful that we wondered where this artist had been. The “Made in L.A.” biennial started under Philbin’s watch, and it has been as important for rediscoveries—Magdalena Suarez and Michael Frimkess among others—as for new discoveries. Then there was the two-decade-long building project, which expanded exhibition space and reconfigured the entry to make it look less like an office building and more like a museum. The Hammer is an essential part of what makes Los Angeles the art capital it is.

Philbin steps down in November, and Zoë Ryan will take over in January 2025. Since 2020 Ryan has been director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has overseen a lauded slate of exhibitions and expanded public engagement. She already has the experience of working at a museum linked to a university, and that should come in handy. Before that she was chair and curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. “The Hammer Museum is one of the most exciting museums in the country,” Ryan has said. “Ann Philbin has had an extraordinary impact in making the Hammer an internationally influential institution. I am thrilled and honored to lead this museum and be a part of the vibrant creative communities of Los Angeles.”

All the best, Ann, on your next adventure — you can’t retire yet!