Join Karen Maness, Hollywood scenic painting expert and author of The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop and Susan Aberth (virtually), the Edith C. Blum Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College, for a discussion on the Scottish Rite Freemason backdrop currently featured in Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation. Maness is the leading expert on historic Hollywood backdrops. She, along with several students, reproduced the backdrop for the exhibition and at the program will share details about that process as well as her ongoing research. Aberth's essay for the accompanying catalog for the exhibition looks at some of the history of the Scottish Rite backdrop paintings. She will share more of her ongoing research especially as it relates to Los Angeles history and the mid 20th Century.
Program Schedule:
1:30 PM - Doors Open
2:00 PM - Discussion Begins
2:50 PM -Q&A
3:10 PM - Exhibition viewing
4:00 - Museum Closes
Bios:
Karen Maness is a member of the Live Design faculty at The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre & Dance, Scenic Art Supervisor at Texas Performing Arts, and co-founder of Texas Applied Arts conceived to deliver project-based collaborative, interdisciplinary courses to develop nimble students for the 21st-century workforce. A founding member and faculty at Atelier Dojo, an Austin community and school dedicated to the language of figurative painting, Maness advocates for mastery of painting in the physical world with the ability to communicate this understanding in digital, virtual, augmented, and mixed realities. She has worked extensively in theatre, themed attractions, industrial displays, music tours, and teaching master painting classes in the USA and abroad. She is the co-author of the award-winning The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, the definitive behind-the-scenes history of Hollywood’s motion picture scenic art.
Susan Aberth is the Edith C. Blum Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College. Her publications include The Tarot of Leonora Carrington, co-authored with Mexican curator Tere Arcq, and Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art. She has contributed to the publications Witchcraft; Not Without My Ghosts; Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist; Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous; and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde, among others. Her work has also appeared in Artforum, Journal of Surrealism of the Americas, Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies, and Black Mirror.
About the exhibition:
Sci-fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation considers the importance of science fiction fandom and occult interests to U.S. LGBTQ history. Science fiction and occult communities helped pave the way for the LGBTQ movement by providing a place for individuals to meet and imagine spaces less restricted by societal norms. The exhibition focuses on Los Angeles from the late 1930s through 1960s and looks both forward and backward to follow the lives of writers, publishers, and early sci-fi enthusiasts, including progressive communities such as the LA Science Fantasy Society, the Ordo Templi Orientis at the Agape Lodge, and ONE Inc. Spanning fandom, aerospace research, queer history, and the occult, Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A. reveals how artists, scientists, and visionary thinkers like Jim Kepner, Lisa Ben, Margaret Brundage, Morris Scott Dollens, Marjorie Cameron, Renate Druks, Curtis Harrington, and Kenneth Anger worked together to envision and create a world of their own making through films, photographs, music, illustrations, costumes, and writing.
