Pasadena Art Alliance Reaches $1 Million Milestone in Support of ArtCenter College of Design

Pasadena Art Alliance (PAA) has become one of the most generous financial supporters of ArtCenter College of Design with a recent grant that brings a nearly 50- year record of giving to more than $1 million. The PAA ArtCenter partnership began in 1976, the same year the College opened the campus in the hills above the Rose Bowl.   ArtCenter President Karen Hofmann acknowledged the $1 million giving milestone at a special ceremony at PAA’s annual meeting on June 1st in Pasadena.  

“We are deeply grateful to the Pasadena Art Alliance for this extraordinary history of giving to ArtCenter” said Hofmann. “Supporting our students through scholarships to increase access to an art and design education is a very meaningful way to support the next generation. PAA’s sponsorship of our exhibitions for so many years has helped us reach new audiences and made an impact on the cultural landscape of our region.” 

The Pasadena Art Alliance’s partnership with ArtCenter has directly impacted scores of students. 

“I am the first in my family to finish college and I want my children to be inspired,” said Elysabeth Bell who graduated in Spring 2022. “Both my parents were immigrants to this country and wanted to give us a better life. Getting my degree will not only help me, it will help my children continue to pursue the better life that my father risked everything for by escaping communism.”

Bell is now teaching painting workshops for ArtCenter’s Integrated Studies Program while in graduate school at the Claremont Colleges.

The students who received PAA scholarships throughout the years identify as first generation American, first-generation college students, single parents, men, women, White, Latino/Hispanic, Black/African American, American Alaskan Native and Asian. Many have become successful exhibiting artists including Crystal Whitehead, Julio Torano, Filip Kostic, Case Esparros and Jose Flores while others have gone on to pursue graduate degrees. The scholarship recipients have aspired to be art teachers, gallery owners and fine artists, to inspire positive change and be in a position one day to help other students achieve their dreams, as the PAA has helped them.

The honorary ArtCenter donor pencil recognizing the milestone was presented to Pasadena Art Alliance President Annaly Bennett. The pencil will be displayed on donor walls on both campuses and positioned among the College’s most generous supporters such as The Rose Hills Foundation, Fletcher Jones Foundation and individuals including Alyce de Roulet Williamson and Adelaide Hixon.

The $1 million milestone tipping point was reached with a recent PAA grant of $32,000 to the College that included $17,000 to support exhibitions and $15,000 to fund Fine Art student scholarships.

In the nearly 50 years of supporting ArtCenter, PAA has donated $422,775 to support student scholarships; $514,500 to support the College’s Exhibitions program and another $67,366 was dedicated to a general restricted fund. 

The Pasadena Art Alliance’s mission is to foster the appreciation of contemporary visual art in Southern California. PAA annually supports deserving visual arts organizations throughout Los Angeles County through grants and awards programs.

PAA has recently supported the following upcoming ArtCenter exhibitions; 

Advance of the Rear Guard: Ceeje Gallery in the 1960s

In October 2023, ArtCenter College of Design will open Advance of the Rear Guard: Ceeje Gallery in the 1960s, an expansive, historical survey of artists affiliated with Ceeje Gallery, a groundbreaking but under-acknowledged venue that fostered remarkable diversity and equity in Southern California’s then-nascent contemporary art landscape. Organized by independent, Los Angeles-based curator Michael Duncan, Advance of the Rear Guard will be presented at ArtCenter’s 4,600-square-foot Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery. During its 22-week run, the exhibition will showcase approximately 70 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs by more than 30 artists. ArtCenter’s presentation of Advance of the Rear Guard will help ensure that Ceeje Gallery’s legacy of inclusivity and creative risk-taking– a seminal but under-examined chapter in Los Angeles’s cultural record, and in art history generally– is preserved, celebrated and more fully understood by scholars, artists and the public.

Devin Troy Strother: Gumbo Aesthetic

Devin Troy Strother works across a variety of creative modes; including sculpture, neon, installation and mixed media. He is known for incorporating pop culture imagery alongside humor and language in his pieces. It is through channeling satire that Strother has created a conceptual framework by which to explore conversations on the intersection of racial prejudice, kitsch and high art. His work draws on references ranging from stand-up comedy and music to Henri Matisse’s cutouts and Joseph Cornell’s intricate assemblages. Through works such as that 1996 jordan leaned back with that mccracken (a surprised jordan with a flat top very very rare) (2014), Strother interrogates stereotypes of the Black entertainer as a means of reclaiming representation and identity often fetishized in mainstream media. The exhibition Gumbo Aesthetic, scheduled to run at ArtCenter DTLA, will present a survey of the artist’s work and practice from the early 2000s to the present. Comprising works ranging from paintings, sculpture and collage, the show will trace the ways in which Strother has developed a practice that navigates and engages conversations on race from his own perspective— one that is informed by his experience of coming of age in a predominantly white neighborhood in the 1980s. 

PAA has supported these recent exhibitions; 

Kim Schoenstadt: Enter Slowly, The Legacy of an Idea

Enter Slowly, The Legacy of an Idea presented a new series of work inspired by Schoenstadt’s research of E-1027, an iconic house by 20th century architect, designer, and artist Eileen Gray. In 1926, Gray began building a personal residence in Roque-Cap-Martin, France to share with her lover, the architect and writer Jean Badovici. The house, given the enigmatic name E-1027— E standing for Eileen, 10 for J (Jean), 2 for B (Badovici), and 7 for G (Gray)— is now recognized as a modern masterpiece. Yet it has also become a symbol of injustice towards Gray and indicative of gender bias and discrimination towards women in professional roles. Not only did Badovici wrongly take credit as co-architect; but more infamously, Le Corbusier (who was a frequent guest) painted over Gray’s original designs with murals of his own (c. 1938-39). Schoenstadt’s installation consisted of several large-scale wall murals, sculptures and floor treatments inspired by the original and subsequently misinterpreted architecture and color-block motifs of Gray’s interior. Enter Slowly, The Legacy of an Idea provided a means to not only explore the legacy of Gray and E-1027, but also to examine issues underrepresented artists face when breaking into the field in which they are not typically represented. The project demonstrates the synthesis of a memory and the possibilities for error through acts of restoration and reinterpretation. As the artist states: “I never lived in her head, nor can I ever understand how she would respond to the house. She is a phantom and created a house that was haunted by ghosts in all genres of history, from famous architects, to Nazis, to purposeful neglect. These figures all live in the house in some way.”

Cantos of the Sibylline Sisterhood

Cantos of the Sibylline Sisterhood was an exhibition of works by contemporary female artists who draw on the realms of science fiction, fantasy, spirituality and mythology as grounds for the experimentation and investigation of identity and agency. Featuring a group of intergenerational artists, the exhibition pays special attention to works that navigate a means out of, or parallel to, the various iterations of female identity that are part of our history, present and future. Creating and often simultaneously critiquing new realities, these artists are invested in a strategy of feminist art practice focused on creating work that eschews binary, oppositional positions for fluctuating and situational platforms that allow for slippages, unfixed expressions, and alternate meanings. Cantos of the Sibylline Sisterhood featured work in a wide array of media by a diverse range of artists exhibiting together for the first time. With works by emerging and established artists conjuring scenarios that range from the near-possible to the wildly fantastic. Many of the artists also reference and challenge established fables and allegories that are as diverse as they are ingrained in our cultural backgrounds. 

Victor Estrada: Purple Mexican

Work by Victor Estrada, in his own words, investigates “the relationship between subjectivity, identity, aesthetics, and change.” For more 30 years, this Los Angeles-based artist produced paintings, drawings, and sculptures that navigate the realms of pop and conceptual art. A Latinx artist, his work draws heavily from our region’s unique cultural landscape, including Southern California art collectives ASCO and Los Four. Informed by Chicanx politics and 1980s punk rock, Estrada’s surreal forms push the boundaries of abstraction while also teasing the viewer with eruptions and viscera of his own identity. While his work in other media has attracted a degree of attention, the artist’s drawings most clearly and hauntingly articulate the trajectory of his history and engagement with the cultural and political landscape. Focusing on work created due the past three decades, the exhibition featured approximately 40 works on paper and several of Estrada’s amorphous sculptures. The exhibition was curated by Marco Rios and organized by Julie Joyce, vice president of Exhibitions and director of ArtCenter Galleries; and Christina Valentine, curator of Exhibitions and associate director of ArtCenter Galleries.

Additional exhibitions supported by PAA include Julia Christensen: Upgrade Available that took place from Sept. 2020 until July 2021; SKY presented from in 2020 and TOMES in 2019.

ArtCenter Exhibitions is a program of public-facing curated spaces. The programs seek to ignite emotional resonance, provoke intellectual dissonance and conjure unexpected pathways of thinking by connecting art and design with the social, scientific, humanitarian and poetic dimensions of our time. 

Founded in 1930, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers 11 undergraduate and 10 graduate degrees in a wide variety of art and design disciplines. In addition to its top-ranked academic programs, the College also serves the general public through a highly regarded series of year-round online and on campus extension programs for all levels of experience.