In 1920s Germany, Galka Scheyer began championing recent painting by artists she dubbed The Blue Four: Alexej Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Wassily Kandinsky. A decade later, Scheyer was settled in Los Angeles, a Weimar Auntie Mame tirelessly promoting modern art and its capacity to alter lives and transform attitudes. Her collection, the first important collection of German modernism in Southern California, is now known around the world.

"What does the avant-garde look and sound like when it blooms outside the hothouse of the bourgeoisie?" When Asco, the self-named Chicano art collective, first collapsed the space between graffiti and conceptual art, their streetwise institutional critique started delivering an abundance of unforgettable answers.

In 1930, as the film East of Borneo was being made, a team of scientists descended on the remote volcanic island of Niuafo'ou to view an eclipse. Joseph Cornell, an avid stargazer who kept dossiers on constellations and heavenly bodies and subscribed to at least one journal of astronomy, was likely aware of this expedition.