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.

Breathing grounds us in the present; it is a reminder that the quotidian is crested with the sublime. In forgetting to breathe, we feed our sense of lack and anxiety, our desire for more than what we already have in our possession to enact change. In countering this dread, Cauleen Smith has built a multifaceted art practice, spanning over 20 years, out of speculative investigations that trace the alternative realities embedded in our daily lives.