Our collections are curated sets of material that explore topics chosen by the editors.

Deep Like the Rivers Last updated: November 4, 2019
From the 1910s onwards, in response to the Jim Crow regime in the Southern States, African Americans began to move north in increasing numbers, and the first wave of this Great Migration saw people leaving the fields of the Mississippi Delta for the industrial cities of the Midwest and along the East Coast. One result of this flow of people and talent was the cultural explosion that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Following the end of the Second World War, a second American internal migration headed west to work in the new automobile and aerospace industries, to Seattle, Portland, Oakland, and above all, to Los Angeles. As that city’s black population grew, so did a distinct black culture in Southern California, making distinctive and long lasting contributions to new forms of music, dance, and the visual arts; in effect, a second, and perhaps more political, Renaissance.

The poet Langston Hughes, one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance and a sometime resident of Los Angeles, wrote The Negro Speaks of Rivers in 1920.

Artists at Work Last updated: November 21, 2019
Inspired by the long sequence of interviews with writers, Writers at Work, that has been a feature of The Paris Review since George Plimpton first…
Utopia For Some Last updated: November 14, 2019
Since the Gold Rush Americans have been traveling across country to California in search of a better life; seeking riches, health, or spiritual transcendence. A…
The Real City Last updated: August 13, 2019
As Los Angeles grew from small town to major city during the 20th Century, it became a living laboratory for all aspects of urban design,…
The Experimental Impulse Last updated: August 13, 2019
In conjunction with The Experimental Impulse exhibition, presented at REDCAT as part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA, 1945-1980, this selection of commissioned essays,…
Against the Wall Last updated: July 3, 2019
From Renaissance Italy to post-Revolutionary Mexico, mural painting has been understood as a privileged art form that revels in grand, philosophical narratives, carefully built to…
Museums in Crisis Last updated: March 14, 2019
The idea of the dedicated art museum came late to Los Angeles – LACMA, the County Museum of Art, was incorporated as a stand-alone entity…
Second Life Last updated: December 13, 2018
For our Second Life series, we work with writers and publishers to present selected essays, magazines, ephemera, and other previously published material that is out…
America Deserta Last updated: December 13, 2018
Following Reyner Banham’s classic 1982 travelogue Scenes in America Deserta, this selection of essays, interviews, and historical documents locates the desert as a puzzling critical…
Promoting the Modern Last updated: October 10, 2018
It is easy to forget that Los Angeles didn’t have an art museum until the mid-1960s. Movies were big business, but art was marginalized, distrusted.…
Some Place Chronicles Last updated: August 6, 2018
The Some Place Chronicles is a creative placemaking project set in four unincorporated communities of Los Angeles County. Numerous and varied engagements with the people…
Epic Waves Last updated: July 31, 2017
Experiments in broadcast media.
Hollywood Elegies Last updated: September 15, 2014
“On the hill, giant letters spell ‘Hollywoodland,’ but this is only another advertisement. It is silly to say that Hollywood, or any other city, is…