Presented by the Muckenthaler Family
2015 marks 50 years since the Muckenthaler family deeded their extraordinary home and property to the City of Fullerton for use as a cultural center. For five decades the first floor of the Muckenthaler villa has served as an art gallery. The two part exhibit contains selections and catalogues from shows presented through the 50 years.
“World News: Artists Respond to World Events”, was a show organized by Kim Abeles, Barbara Benish, and Deborah Lawrence in February 1991 in opposition to the Gulf War.
The exhibit was first presented at the Onyx Cafe Gallery in Los Angeles with about twenty artists and writers. The exhibit was installed in the patio during restaurant hours and deinstalled each night. A second iteration was created at Beyond Baroque; and, in 1992, more than sixty artists, poets, and writers participated in the exhibit at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center. “World News” is represented with several artworks and catalogues as part of the Muckenthaler’s “50th Anniversary Exhibition”.
This summer, Abeles updated the catalogue that was made for the Muckenthaler show in the 1990s. (The original catalogue was created on a Syquest disk at the computer lab at Chaffey College. During one, non-stop production weekend, Abeles and Randy Gavazzo got access to the lab, taking turns at the vending machine and bathrooms, in order to keep the lab open.)

The new catalogue retains the flavor of the first, and updates as many images as possible. The catalogue includes essays by social justice activist Paul Von Blum, Kurdish artist Zuhdi Sardar, and co-curator Deborah Lawrence.

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