During his long, high-spirited career, photographer John Coplans (1920-2003) served as director of the Akron Art Museum, editor in chief of Artforum, and senior curator of the Pasadena Museum of Art. In this 1975 Artforum essay, he recounts the Pasadena Museum's financial collapse and subsequent takeover by powerful Southern California industrialist Norton Simon.

In this interview, Rosamund Felsen describes engaging in the nascent 1960s Los Angeles art world; the founding of Gemini GEL with her husband, Sidney, and Stanley and Elyse Grinstein; working in the now-defunct Pasadena Art Museum and that museum’s downfall; starting a gallery to show younger artists making nontraditional forms of art; the financial difficulties of exhibiting Conceptual art; and the importance of art schools in forming a regional art scene.