Michael Carter is an LA-based artist, researcher, and educator working in painting and performance. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from Claremont Graduate University. His work is an investigation into metaphysical theories of art and the cultural histories of science, philosophy, and religion in modernity to the contemporary. Recent exhibitions include Hansell Art Gallery of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, Ruscha & Co. in Los Angeles, and Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles and Bucharest. He is currently a lecturer at the Geffen Academy at UCLA.
Interview 
The Spiritual in Art: An Interview with Maurice Tuchman by Michael Carter
Maurice Tuchman, LACMA’s first curator (1964–1993) of 20th century art, remains an outsized figure in the history of art in Los Angeles. Known for a legacy both controversial and groundbreaking, his most well known exhibitions—Art and Technology (1971), The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 (1986), and Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (1992)—continue to resonate today. The following conversation looks more deeply into Tuchman’s motivations for staging the Spiritual in Art exhibition, his struggles to realize it, its reception, and the continued influence and controversy of “the spiritual in art” today.