Leland Curtis was an American painter with a passion for the environment. He was active in the Sierra Club and served as the official artist for the United States Antarctic Service Expedition from 1939 to 1940. Curtis visited Antarctica a total of three times during his life.

Curtis is not the only artist in our collection who has had an interest in this mysterious and magical land. In 2006, California artist and Laguna Art Museum trustee Lita Albuquerque led an expedition to the farthest reaches of Antarctica near the South Pole to create the first installment of her global work Stellar Axis. The expedition was aided by a grant from the National Science Foundation and was the first and largest ephemeral art work created on the continent. The resulting installation consisted of an array of ninety nine fabricated blue spheres. The placement of each corresponded to the location of one of 99 specific stars in the Antarctic sky above.