The Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH) has partnered with the Getty, and 70+ other organizations, for PST ART: Art & Science Collide. On Saturday, September 7, the Lancaster Museum of Art and History will open Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees, as part of the Getty PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. The exhibition sheds light on the threatened Joshua tree and the fragile Mojave Desert ecosystem that sustains it. The project integrates natural history, indigenous knowledge, public policy, scientific research, and artistic expressions to emphasize the challenges facing the Joshua tree and conservation efforts. With a focus on the impact of climate change, development, wildfires, and other threats, the exhibition explores the symbiotic relationships between Joshua trees, soil fungi, and moth pollinators, engaging a diverse audience interested in arts and environmental issues. Desert Forest features more than 50 historical and contemporary artists who have produced artworks that exemplify a range of ideas across myriad practices. The exhibition will remain on view from Saturday, September 7, 2024 to Sunday, December 29, 2024.
Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 70 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art
scott b. davis: sonora
Photography by scott b. davis
Essay by Joshua Chuang
Interview by Virginia Heckert
scott b. davis‘s recent work uses combinations of in-camera palladium paper negatives and traditional film-based platinum/palladium prints. The images explore the boundaries of visibility in the darkness and overwhelming light of the Sonoran Desert, creating pictures of landscapes that are both literal and abstract. The light and space found in the open desert are felt in these uniquely rendered images comprised of diptychs, triptychs, and occasional works that include as many as ten or twelve unique images in a series. By using exposure to intense UV light, Davis has pioneered a process that captures images invisible to the naked eye, creating prints rich in contrast to push the boundaries of the visible spectrum and the perceptual limits of human vision. His prints invite closer, deeper looking at landscapes that seem familiar to us in the daylight but evolve into something altogether different when rendered as abstract records of place. The aim is not to represent the desert as we think we know it, but to evoke an intimate connection with the desert through new perspectives.
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