By RICHARD GUZMAN | riguzman@scng.com | Press Telegram
PUBLISHED: July 15, 2021 at 2:06 p.m. | UPDATED: July 15, 2021 at 2:06 p.m.
The Torrance Art Museum will use the city’s parks, malls and other public spaces as its new exhibition spaces when it reopens this weekend with an ambitious citywide installation.
Beyond filling the streets with art, the show could also signal a new direction for the museum
“We’ve never gone outside the museum walls and we were really interested in rethinking what the museum’s role will be in the future. And one of the things that came out of that conversation was the potential for the museum not to just be the site, but going out to the community more,” said Max Presneill, head curator of the museum, which reopens July 17 with the new “Ultra!” exhibition.
The museum, which has only offered online exhibitions for more than a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, will be the central hub for the free exhibition. “Ultra!” runs through Aug. 28 and is made up of more than 20 pieces of art spread out throughout the city at locations such as Del Amo Fashion Center, the Torrance Cultural Arts Center and the Madrona Marsh Reserve Nature Center.
It launches at noon Saturday with a reopening ceremony at the museum that will include a new mural dedication, an outdoor sculpture exhibition and performance art by various artists.
People can get a taste of what they’ll see around town in the museum’s main gallery which will feature work by some of the “Ultra!” artists.
From there, they can pick up a brochure with a map of the artwork — or see it online — and hop in a car, bike, bus or walk around town checking out sculptures, video installations, neon art, photography and even crochet art from contemporary Southern California artists and art collectives.
“Good art is there to promote thinking and to realize different ways of thinking about the world and most of the art we’ll have on display will have multiple leaves of meaning you can engage with,” Presneill said.
The idea for a large-scale outdoor exhibit had been around for years but it was the pandemic that helped push the project along, Presneill said.