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.

Mike Kelley is ten years gone. He was a known Catholic apostate, and sometimes his jovial irreverence carried the shy sting of the once-bitten. This falling out of faith is relevant to his practice only because Kelley found it hard to stay between the lines, no matter which way they were drawn. From this, transgression became habit; memory and conspiracy became material spaces to render. Focusing on Kelley's "Educational Complex," and on the artist's preoccupation with the McMartin Preschool child abuse scandal, Anthony Strain examines the Kelley style of eclecticism and how it relates to leaving expectations behind, and finding the taboo in the ordinary.