December 9-15, 2013
Art, Culture, and History of Cuba

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ABOUT THE TRIP
Laguna Art Museum’s Contemporary Collectors Council is excited to announce plans for an art trip to Cuba. The trip is scheduled for December 9 through 15 and includes the option to attend Art Basel Miami Beach. Here are some of the highlights:

· Hotel stay in Old Havana

· Walking lecture of the Architectural history of Old Havana

· Visit artist studios, galleries, and museums

· Day trip to the beautiful and lush Pinar del Rio province

· Visit to the Superior Institute of Art, ranked among the top art schools worldwide

· Visit Ernest Hemingway’s house where he lived for 20 years

· Eat in paladares (private restaurants) within the city and in artists’ homes
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>> Click here for a detailed itinerary
>> Click here to read the terms and conditions
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PRICES
Contemporary Collectors Council Members:
$3,950 per person, double occupancy ($600 single supplement)
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Non-members:
$4,075 per person, double occupancy ($600 single supplement)
This price includes an Individual Level museum membership, and a Contemporary Collectors Council membership.
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RESERVATIONS
Only 24 spaces available! A refundable deposit of $350 for CCC members and $475 non-members paid by June 15 will reserve your place. We need 15 deposits by June 15 in order for the trip to take place.
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To reserve your spot, please make a deposit online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203. Once you make a deposit, Valerie will contact you with more information.
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About the Contemporary Collectors Council

The Contemporary Collectors Council is a support group of Laguna Art Museum that encourages a greater understanding of contemporary art, with a focus on the art of California. Members are offered an ongoing program of trips, activities, and events, including in-depth tours of artists’ studios, private collections, galleries, and museum exhibitions. Proceeds from CCC dues, trips, and other activities support Laguna Art Museum’s contemporary exhibitions, related educational programs, and purchases of contemporary art for the collection.
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>> All museum members are welcome to join the Contemporary Collectors Council! Click here for more information or to join online.

Llyn Foulkes, Preview, oil on board, 51 x 73 inches, 1961, gift of F. Elliot Leonard and Roger Litz

Despite the old saying “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” most museums are both. In order to put together the special exhibitions that are so central to what they offer their visitors, they frequently borrow works of art from one another. Except in rare instances, there are only minimal fees involved in museum-to-museum loans. The lending museum makes the loan on the basis of good will, the prestige and value of the exhibition, and usually a hope that the borrower might sooner or later return the favor.
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One of the benefits of lending works to other museums is to spread the word about one’s own collection, and this is certainly the case with the loan of five major paintings by Llyn Foulkes that Laguna Art Museum made to the Foulkes exhibition currently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
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Later this year the exhibition, including all the Laguna Art Museum loans, will be shown at the New Museum in New York and the Museum Kurhaus Kleve in Kleve, Germany. The museum is proud of the strength of its holdings in Foulkes’s work, and proud to take part in this international retrospective of a great California artist.

Revealing the Artist Through Film
Lecture and Films with Dale Schierholt
Thursday, August 29

7:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5-$7)
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Filmmaker Dale Schierholt

For more than a decade Dale Schierholt has captured the artistic persona through a series of acclaimed documentaries. Working with his subjects one-on-one and without a crew, he takes a deeply personal look at the work of regional and nationally-renowned artists. Using clips from his films on artists such as Robert Indiana, Will Barnet, and Louise Nevelson, Schierholt offers an insightful and entertaining look inside the artists’ lives.
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Presented in conjunction with the Laguna Beach Film Society.
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>> To reserve your spot for this lecture, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Schierholt recently spent some time with John Mason discussing Blue Wall (on display at Laguna Art Museum through October 13, 2013). Below is the short film that resulted from those conversations.
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Is There a Doctor/Curator in the House?
Lecture with Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.
Thursday, August 22

7:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5-$7)
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Dr. Kóan Jeff “KJ” Baysa

Dr. Kóan Jeff “KJ” Baysa will share his journey creating a career that combines the parallel passions of medical science and contemporary art.  Baysa has had clinical practices in Honolulu and Manhattan, and continues to do clinical research focusing on neuroscience. He is also a respected art collector, curator, writer, and critic. In this lecture he will describe the history and evolution of his projects as a medical curator, culminating in several current projects, including an app called Medical Avatar.
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The lecture coincides with the museum’s ex•pose: beatriz da costa exhibition. Da Costa passed away at age 38 after a long battle with breast cancer. The photos and videos featured in the exhibition (on display in the museum’s lower level galleries June 2-September 29, 2013) use self as subject and capture her struggle with the disease, examining the intersection of art, politics, engineering, and the life sciences.
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>> To reserve your spot for this lecture, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Lecture with Artists Sandow Birk & Elyse Pignolet
Sunday, August 11

7:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5-$7)
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Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet
CCTV #2
Mixed media, 2011

Los Angeles artists Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet are a husband and wife team who, in addition to maintaining successful solo careers, often collaborate on projects. In this joint lecture, Birk and Pignolet will talk about their collaborations, which have included two large-scale, hand-painted murals in Long Beach; Dante’s Inferno, a feature film done with paper puppets; Depravities of War, a series of monumental prints; as well CCTV #2, a ceramic surveillance camera featured in Faux Real.
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Faux Real is a group exhibition (on display in the museum’s main level galleries June 2-September 29, 2013) that features installation artists and sculptors who recreate reality with a twist, using off-beat materials and a keen sense of humor. The results are playful, intriguing, and highly entertaining.
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>> To reserve your spot for this lecture, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Lecture with Artist Matt Merkel Hess
Sunday, July 14

1:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5-$7)
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Matt Merkel Hess
Milk Crate
Stoneware, 2012

Los Angeles artist Matt Merkel Hess will lecture on his works featured in the Faux Real exhibition. Hess cleverly recreates everyday containers like buckets, jugs, and milk crates using glazed clay. In doing so, he allows the viewer to reconsider such familiar things as art objects.
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Faux Real is a group exhibition (on display in the museum’s main level galleries June 2-September 29, 2013) that features installation artists and sculptors who recreate reality with a twist, using off-beat materials and a keen sense of humor. The results are playful, intriguing, and highly entertaining.
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>> To reserve your spot for this lecture, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Lecture with Artist Cheryl Ekstrom
Thursday, June 27

7:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5-$7)
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Cheryl Ekstrom,
Eames Chair and Ottoman
Stainless steel, 2007

Laguna Beach artist Cheryl Ekstrom shrewdly reproduces icons of design by casting them in steel. The result is an intriguing transformation in which objects cease to be pieces of functional design and become works of art. In order to make the full-scale stainless steel sculpture of an Eames lounge chair and ottoman on display in Faux Real, Ekstrom was given exclusive permission from the Eames Office. Prior to being exhibited at Laguna Art Museum, the two pieces were featured in Collecting Eames at JF Chen in Los Angeles, an exhibition that was part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.
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Faux Real is a group exhibition (on display in the museum’s main level galleries June 2-September 29, 2013) that features installation artists and sculptors who recreate reality with a twist, using off-beat materials and a keen sense of humor. The results are playful, intriguing, and highly entertaining.
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>> To reserve your spot for this lecture, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Exhibition Tour with Crys Moore
Sunday, June 16

1:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5-$7)
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Artist Crys Moore will lead a walk-through of Beatriz da Costa’s ex•pose exhibition, followed by a Q & A session. Crys Moore is an artist, designer, and cultural producer who was the assistant to da Costa until her untimely death from cancer last December.
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Beatriz da Costa passed away at age 38 after a long battle with breast cancer. The photos and videos featured in the exhibition (on display in the museum’s lower level galleries June 2-September 29, 2013)  use self as subject and capture her struggle with the disease, examining the intersection of art, politics, engineering, and the life sciences.
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>> To reserve your tour spot, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Live! at the Museum: Evan J. Marshall, Solo Mandolin
Thursday, September 12, 2013

7:00-8:00 p.m.
Free for museum members; free for non-members with museum admission ($5.00-$7.00)
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Evan J. Marshall is the world’s premier solo mandolin virtuoso. By himself, he sounds like several of the world’s finest mandolinists performing together. His stylistic signature is classical music, with strong influences from the Italian and American folk traditions. Country guitar legend Chet Atkins called Evan “one of the few great musicians of our time.”
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Live! at the Museum is an ongoing series of early-evening concerts in the museum’s galleries, a feast of sight and sound. In presenting the series, Laguna Art Museum has partnered with Laguna Beach Live!, an organization cherished by music lovers for its work in bringing performances by top-level, professional musicians to the Laguna Beach community. Not only are the galleries an appropriately beautiful setting in which to experience great music, they also boast fine acoustics. The concerts take place the second Thursday of each month from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.
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TICKET INFO
To reserve your tickets, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203. Tickets will not be available for online purchasing after 4:00 p.m. the day of the concert, but will be available at the museum front desk. Reservation holders are advised to arrive no later than 15 minutes before the performance, otherwise your seats will be released to the waiting list. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis (only 70 seats available).
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