Let Them Eat LACMA! November 7th at LACMA

FIFTY ARTISTS EXPLORE ART, FOOD, CULTURE AND POLITICS IN “LET THEM EAT LACMA”

Fallen Fruit in collaboration with The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), presents Let Them Eat LACMA, a day-long event that explores art, food, culture, and politics on Sunday, November 7th, from noon to 8 pm. LACMA will teem with spectacular and subtle performances and installations that intervene in and activate the museum with surprising explorations into art and food. Let Them Eat LACMA is the culmination of the museum’s collaborative project with Fallen Fruit, EATLACMA, which investigates the social role of art and food and the rituals of eating. Since its launch in February, EATLACMA has included a series of interactive programming along with an exhibition and curated set of gardens on LACMA’s campus that will be on view at the event.

‘Let Them Eat LACMA’ Fallen Fruit, 2010

A tomato fight, a song and story cycle on the mystery of the knife, fork and spoon, an electronic melon drumming circle, Salome seducing her lover through the language of food, and a large Mandala of dinner plates ritually assembled and then dismantled by the public who take home each plate. a selection of food served to prisoners in California jails, chewing carolers, a watermelon eating contest, and belly listening sessions in which we hear digestion at its pinnacle. Jonathan Gold will read a text on Spam to accompany Ed Ruscha’s Actual Size, his painting of a can of Spam. Three Los Angeles muses (Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, and Phranc) will sing for their suppers.

‘Tomato Fight’, Jean Dunning

‘Old-Fashioned’ Jennifer Rubell

Artists and collectives participating in Let Them Eat LACMA include Machine Project, Gina Badger, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Lauren Bon, Michelle Carr, Robert Crouch, Cloud Eye Control, DidierHess, Harry Dodge, Jeanne Dunning, Fallen Fruit, Finishing School, Liz Glynn, Jonathan Gold, Veronica Gonzalez, Sean Griffin, Dana Gingras, Liz Hansen, Micol Hebron, Anna Homler, The Infamous Boom Boom!, Dawn Kasper, Emily Katrincik, Killsonic, John Knuth, Kadet Kuhne, Ann Magnuson, My Barbarian, National Bitter Melon Council, Katie Newcom, Gina Osterlogh, Adam Overton, Sun-Yun Park, Phranc, Eva Posey, Miss Barbie-Q., Marco Rios, Roots of Compromise, Jennifer Rubell, Susan Simpson, Slanguage, Asa Sonjasddotter, Squeaky Blonde, Kim Stringfellow, Lisa Teasley, Stephen van Dyck, We Are The World, Michiko Yao, and Bari Ziperstein.

Dana Gingras, ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’

Nov 7th will also be the groundbreaking for “Public Fruit Theater,” Fallen Fruit’s garden at LACMA. It is a theater in the round constructed of reclaimed concrete sidewalks curving around a single citrus tree. The “theater” is the durational performance of the fruit tree in its seasonal cycles, as well as the spectators watching each other watch the tree grow. It comments upon the neighborhood’s history as a one-time site of extensive citrus groves as well as a meditation on today’s prevalence of concrete and lack of publicly accessible or shared fruit trees. The amphitheater for this project was designed in collaboration with Marco Barrantes and Michelle Matthews and constructed by La Loma Development Company. lalomadevelopment.com

EATLACMA
EATLACMA plays the richness of the museum’s permanent collection against the natural growth cycle of gardens to create a year of programming in three acts. EATLACMA has unfolded seasonally to include a curated set of gardens on the museum’s campus; an exhibition curated by Fallen Fruit drawings from LACMA’s collection; and Let Them Eat LACMA, a one-day final event with more than fifty artists and collectives to activate, intervene, and re-imagine the entire museum’s campus and galleries.

EATLACMA exhibitions
Pursuing their ongoing obsession with fruit, Fallen Fruit has curated The Fruit of LACMA, assembling works from the museum’s permanent collection in several forms of media, including painting, photography, and decorative arts. The exhibition will also feature new work by Fallen Fruit, including a picnic table installation, LACMA Event Score – a text piece,Fruit Machine, a series of video portraits of people eating fruit, and Public Fruit Wallpaper, a decorative wallpaper pattern assembled from fruit publicly available, found in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, over the course of one day. Concurrently The Gardens of LACMA will be on view, showcasing artist-designed gardens installed throughout the LACMA grounds. Each artist’s garden examines public space, the actualities and symbols of food, and the people who give these things meaning.
EATLACMA is curated by Fallen Fruit – David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young – with LACMA curators Michele Urton and José Luis Blondet. For information online, visit eatlacma.org.

EATLACMA was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible by a Museum and Community Connections Grant from MetLife Foundation.
Additional support was provided by the Ralph M. Parsons Fund and Paramount Citrus.

General Information: LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036. lacma.org.
Museum Hours and Admission: 11 to 8 pm: Adults $12; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $8; After 5 pm, every day the museum is open, LACMA’s _Pay What You Wish_ program encourages visitors to support the museum with an admission fee of their choosing.