From science community days and multimedia dance performances to futuristic film screenings and immersive installations, February is full of free, enlightening activations bringing PST ART – Getty’s wide-reaching arts initiative – to everyone. There’s also still time to see many of the PST ART exhibitions exploring the intersections of art and science at cultural spaces across Southern California, with 40+ exhibitions open. While some of these projects will close in February, Wired for Wonder: A Multisensory Maze, an exhibition presented at Kidspace Children’s Museum in collaboration with Getty, opens February 10 and select exhibitions will remain open through the fall. Visit pst.art/en/events for a range of partner programs.
Thursday, February 6
How Can Our World Rethink Climate Mobility?
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County | Free with RSVP | 7:00-9:30PM
Join us for a night at the museum, including a panel conversation at the new NHM Commons Theater moderated by New York Times International Correspondent Simon Romero, with artist Tanya Aguiñiga, paleobotanist and curator Regan Dunn, climate mobility scholar Liliana Gamboa, and New Nomad Institute co-founder Badruun Gardi. They’ll discuss what it would take to build a more interconnected, resilient, and nomadic world on the international, community, and individual levels. An after-hours reception featuring local artists and celebrating the diversity and resilience of Los Angeles will follow.
Saturday, February 8
Never Stop Planting – Social Forest Community Celebration
The Broad x Elysian Park | Free with RSVP | 11:00AM-2:00PM
Join The Broad for an outdoor celebration as we kick off the first day of planting for The Broad’s reforestation PST ART: Art & Science Collide project, Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar, at Elysian Park. Enjoy a day filled with nature-based workshops and engaging activities designed and led by Indigenous Tongva (Gabrielino) artists and educators, and local environmental groups. Shuttles between The Broad and the Elysian Park planting site will be available.
The Music Center Presents: The Gift and Special Event with LeVar Burton
The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center
LeVar Burton and Co-Curators Special Event | Free with RSVP | 4:30-6:30PM
The Music Center Presents: The Gift | Free | 6:30-9:30PM
Step into a music-filled reading room at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to explore what we can learn about ourselves—and each other—by observing the stars. The Music Center Presents: The Gift, is an immersive experience for Angelenos of all ages exploring deep emotional themes of grief, loss and human connection through an illustrated book, which will be available in five languages—English, Spanish, French, Simplified Chinese and Korean—with large-print text for enhanced readability, that conveys the story of two stars whose fates are intertwined. The Gift is a 30-minute experience open to the public.
Ahead of the presentation, actor, director, producer and literacy advocate LeVar Burton will join the co-curators of The Gift for an intimate conversation exploring the powerful themes of connection and loss.
Saturday, February 15
Free the Land! Free the People! Farmers Market & Closing Party
Crenshaw Dairy Mart | Free | 11:00AM-5:00PM
Join Crenshaw Dairy Mart for the exhibition closing event for Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod, themed around the CDM tenet of Healing and featuring extended gallery hours and interactive gatherings. Featuring Prosperity Market, a mobile farmers market featuring Black farmers and food producers, workshops from Teach to Reach and Huma House, and a Black Farmers Meetup led by WOW Flower Project, the event will foster community engagement, support small businesses, and provide educational and healing experiences through art and agriculture.
Sound Experience with Colloboh
Getty Center | Free with RSVP | 6:00PM
Visit the Getty for an evening of sonic experimentation with producer and composer Colloboh inspired by the Getty Research Institute’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibition Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Presented in partnership with dublab, this performance celebrates collaborations between artists and engineers—integrating technological processes, multi-sensory environments, modular synthesizers, and activated visual effects—tying the historical significance of E.A.T.’s groundbreaking pioneers with contemporary electronic experimentation.
*Advanced registration for this event is now closed, but there will be a standby line and walk-ins are welcome.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Women, Surrealism, and the Occult in Los Angeles
USC Fisher Museum | Free | 2-4 PM
Join curators Ilene Susan Fort and Laura Whitcomb and independent scholar Lisa Janssen at the USC Fisher Museum for a panel discussion on the role of Surrealism and the occult in Sci-fi, Magick, Queer L.A. Renate Druks and Cameron, two prominent artists in the exhibition, will be the starting point to consider the important contributions of women to midcentury Los Angeles art and occult history more broadly. Both creative muses for queer filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington, Druks and Cameron were also highly prolific artists whose work was informed by their travels to Mexico and interests in Surrealism, psychoanalysis, astrology, and tarot. Their impact on art today is more palpable than ever; for those seeking alternative visions of the world, their indelible artworks offer enchanting possibilities.
Tuesday, February 25
Conceptualizing the Multiverse: Josiah McElheny, David Weinberg, and Michael Govan
LACMA | Free with RSVP | 7:00-8:30PM
Join artist Josiah McElheny, astrophysicist David Weinberg, and LACMA director Michael Govan as they explore the multiverse—the idea that countless universes exist alongside our own—embodied in Josiah McElheny’s striking installation Island Universe, currently on view in the Resnick Pavilion. They will discuss our evolving understanding of this fascinating concept and representations of coexisting universes. The event is presented in conjunction with LACMA’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibition Mapping the Infinite: Cosmologies Across Cultures and Josiah McElheny: Island Universe.
Friday, February 28
Scientia Sexualis Convening: Reckoning and Repair (Day One)
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles | Free with RSVP | 6:00-8:30PM
Presented in conjunction with ICA LA’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibition Scientia Sexualis, join a three-day convening titled Reckoning and Repair to facilitate deep engagement with the exhibition’s timely themes. The weekend will include dynamic conversations between artists, writers, curators, researchers, and historians committed to in-depth explorations of the intersections of art, sex, and science from the perspectives of trans, feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial studies. Visit the ICA LA website for a full schedule of the weekend’s events.
PST ART Exhibitions on View
Last chance! These PST ART exhibitions are closing in February:
- Getty Center, Magnified Wonders: An 18th Century Microscope (Closes 2-Feb-25)
- Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, For Dear Life: Art, Medicine and Disability (Closes 2-Feb-25)
- UCR ARTS, Digital Capture: Southern California and the Pixel-Based Image World (Closes 2-Feb-25)
- OXY ARTS, Invisibility: Powers and Perils (Closes 15-Feb-25)
- ArtCenter College, Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art (Closes 15-Feb-25)
- Self-help Graphics & Art, Sinks: Places we Call Home (Closes 15-Feb-25)
- Los Angeles Filmforum, Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film (Closes 16-Feb-25)
- Center for Land Use Interpretation, Remote Sensing: Explorations into the Art of Detection (Closes 16-Feb-25)
- SCI-Arc, Views of Planet City (Closes 16-Feb-25)
- Armory Center for the Arts, From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments (Closes 23-Feb-25)
- Getty Center, Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) (Closes 23-Feb-25)
- REDCAT, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Closes 23-Feb-25)
- Museum of Latin American Art, ARTEONICA: Art, Science, and Technology in Latin America Today (Closes 23-Feb-25)
- Palm Springs Art Museum, Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science (Closes 24-Feb-25)
PST ART exhibitions to see in February and beyond:
- Vincent Price Art Museum, We Place Life at the Center / Situamos La Vida en El Centro (Closes 1-Mar-25)
- CAAM, World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project (2-Mar-25)
- ICA LA, Scientia Sexualis (Closes 2-Mar-25)
- Skirball Cultural Center, Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology (Closes Mar-25)
- LACMA, Mapping the Infinite: Cosmologies Across Cultures (Closes 2-Mar-25)
- ONE Archives at the USC Libraries presented at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, Sci-fi, Magick, Queer LA: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation (Closes 15-Mar-25)
- Mingei International Museum, Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo (Closes 16-Mar-25)
- The Broad, Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar (Closes 6-Apr-25)
- MCA Santa Barbara, Sangre de Nopal/Blood of the Nopal: Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez in Conversation (Closes 27-Apr-25)
- Los Angeles Public Library (presented by Getty), Alta / a Human Atlas of a City of Angels (Closes 27-Apr-25)
- Los Angeles Public Library, No Prior Art: Illustrations of Invention (Closes 11-May-25)
- Fowler Museum at UCLA, Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art (Closes 25-May-25)
- UCLA Art + Sci, Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption (Closes 31-May-25)
- USC Pacific Asia Museum, Cai Guo-Qiang: A Material Odyssey (Closes 15-Jun-25)
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Olafur Eliasson: OPEN (Closes 7-Jul-25)
- Academy Museum, Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema (Closes 13-Jul-25)
- LACMA, Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film (Closes 13-Jul-25)
- LACMA, Nature on Notice: Contemporary Art and Ecology (Closes 1-Aug-25)
- Kidspace Children’s Museum (Presented by Getty Research Institute), Wired for Wonder: A Multisensory Maze (Opens 10-Feb-25, Closes 1-Aug-25)
- LACMA, We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art (Closes 1-Sep-25)
- Museum of Jurassic Technology, A Veiled Gazelle: Intimations of the Infinite and Eternal (Closes 1-Sep-25)
- Natural History Museum, Reframing Dioramas: The Art of Preserving Wilderness (Closes 14-Sep-25)
- La Brea Tar Pits, Mark Dion: Excavations (Closes 15-Sep-25)
- The Wende, Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency (Closes 19-Oct-25)
- Academy Museum, Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema (Closes 12-Apr-26)
- Autry Museum, Future Imaginaries: Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology (Closes 21-Jun-26)
- Griffith Observatory, Pacific Standard Universe (Closes 9-Sept-30)
Credit: PST ART: Art & Science Collide
