Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art
| Established | 1974 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | 1987 |
| Location | 2000 Avenue of the Stars Century City, California United States |
| Type | Nonprofit Organization |
| Founder | Robert Smith |
The Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA) was an exhibition venue for visual arts that ran between 1974 and 1987 (approximately) in Los Angeles, California. It played an important role in showing experimental work of the era as well as supporting the careers of young artists in Los Angeles.
LAICA's primary mission was to support contemporary artists of the area through a democratic organizational structure that responded to a large and diverse but then-underrepresented local arts community. To minimize operating expenses and remain flexible to the shifting arts population, LAICA's directors chose not to establish a permanent collection and eschewed expensive exhibition venues in order to prioritize the needs of artists over those of dealers and curators.
LAICA's Board of Directors included notable artists, art critics and gallery owners, including John Baldessari, Rosamund Felsen and Peter Plagens. Committees specifically in charge of exhibition programming were member-elected, and the duties of curator and editor (of the exhibition space and journal, respectively) rotated among members instead of belonging to permanent staff.
The organization began in 1971 with a registry of slides and biographical materials open to submission by any artist of Southern California. LAICA opened its first exhibition space in Fall 1974 with a 4,200 square feet area on the fifth floor of the ABC Entertainment Complex in Century City, an unbuilt-out space that they were able to rent for $1.00 a year. Earlier, in June of the same year, LAICA also released the first issue of LAICA Journal.
Exhibitions at LAICA's exhibition space covered a wide variety of media, from contemporary painting and sculpture to performance art, video and music. Exhibitions at this space included Three L.A. Sculptors: Lloyd Hamrol, George Herms, and Bruce Nauman in 1975 and Imagination in 1976, which was curated by Llyn Foulkes.
In 1976, LAICA lost the lease to their Century City location. By March 1977 they reopened in 2020 South Robertson Boulevard in an 8000 square foot location. Continuing its mission to showcase a wide range of contemporary art practices, both local and international, exhibitions here included a west coast showing of the groundbreaking exhibition PIctures (1978-1979), curated by Douglas Crimp, as well as Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan's Evidence, and solo shows by artists such as Eleanor Antin and Suzanne Lacy.
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