Cultural critic and journalist Christina Binkley interviews acclaimed photographer Matthew Rolston, whose solo exhibition Art People: The Pageant Portraits, is currently on view. Introduced by the museum’s executive director, Julie Perlin Lee, Binkely and Rolston will discuss the genesis of his project, its context in relation to the community, and his own experiences and influences as they pertain to this work.
The Art People exhibition catalogue, available exclusively at the museum store, will be available for an artist’s signing to guests at the event.
Advance tickets recommended. $13 for adults; $11 for seniors and students; free for LAM members.
Art People: The Pageant Portraits is an exhibition of Rolston’s larger-than-life, strangely haunting photographs of participants in Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters, known for its elaborate tableau vivant presentations. The exhibition connects two of the most beloved cultural institutions of Laguna Beach, a city founded as an arts colony in the early 20th century, while celebrating the broader history of art and photography that defines the cultural heritage of California. In Rolston’s brilliant, richly hued portraits, the artist offers not only a deeply poignant and personal account of the Pageant of the Masters and its participants, but also underscores the uncanny ways in which these works bring out fundamental aspirations of the human spirit and its underlying impulse towards art creation. Art People is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue with essays on various aspects of the project. The exhibition is on view at Laguna Art Museum through September 19, 2021.
Matthew Rolston
Matthew Russell Rolston is an American artist, photographer, and director known for his signature lighting techniques and detailed approach to art direction and design. Born in Los Angeles, Rolston studied drawing and painting in his hometown at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art and Design, as well as in the Bay Area at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also studied illustration, photography, imaging, and film at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where in 2006, he received an Honorary Doctorate. In 1998, Rolston endowed the “Matthew Rolston Scholarship for Photography and Film,” at ArtCenter. He remains actively involved in this program as a mentor and lecturer on the subjects of modern communication techniques, from fashion aesthetics and luxury brand strategies to social impact messaging.
Rolston’s works are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Portrait Gallery (Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture at The Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.), among others.
Christina Binkley
Christina Binkley is the Los Angeles-based editor-at-large of Vogue Business and author of the New York Times bestseller Winner Takes All. She is an award-winning journalist who writes and chats about the business of culture. At The Wall Street Journal for 23 years, she covered fashion, gambling, and topics that familiarized her with larger-than-life personalities. Binkley contributes to WSJ Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times’ DesignLA, and Robb Report’s Muse. She appears periodically on venues such as CNN and National Public Radio. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Binkley was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of 9/11. She was awarded the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. For the museum’s exhibition catalog of Art People, Binkley contributed an essay entitled Women in Gold.
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