The Long Beach Museum of Art is currently presenting Picturing Identity; Selections from the Permanent Collection and the Gail Oxford Collection through February 10, 2008.  This show highlights the Museum’s extensive collection of 300 years of portraiture in styles ranging from highly realistic to abstract.

Also at the LBMA is About Face: Portraiture Now, running through March 23.  This engaging exhibition presents the work of 35 contemporary painters who defy the modernist conventions of abstraction and non-representational imagery to produce breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly realistic human portraits. Their work combines “Old Master” technique with contemporary subjects and settings.

Starting with a reception on January 24^th, the University Art Museum at CSULB will be presenting site specific installations by artist and physicist Lothar Schmitz.  Survival Strategies features miniaturized three-dimensional synthetic and simulated landscapes that combine natural substances with artificial materials. These controlled environments include a large salt flat in Permeation (2008), to be constructed in the center court gallery, and a multi-channel video installation Biomorph (2008) which investigates the biological processes of plant cells, using time-lapsed imagery.

Also opening at the UAM is Tamper: Gestural Interface for Cinematic Design.  It is a participatory work that fuses cutting-edge interface technology with the practice of film production. The result is an off-kilter virtual editing room in which the museum visitor becomes cinema collage artist, literally using her or his hands to grab and recompose elements from different movies: characters here, props there, architecture from one, an entire scene from another.  John Underkoffler, the creator of Tamper, and developer of the technology, will be presenting a gallery talk on February 5^th from 12:15 – 1:00 PM in the museum. 

The Museum of Latin American Art is currently featuring two exhibitions.  Walter Goldfarb: D + Lirium, on view in the Exhibition Gallery through May 18, 2008, is an showcases the paintings of a contemporary Brazilian artist who is emerging on the international art scene.  The selection of 24 mixed-media paintings by Walter Goldfarb offers a tantalizing visual journey into his vibrant artwork created between 1995 and the present.  The exhibition begins with his early works drawn from a series of works titled, Black and White Series and leads to his most recent works that are saturated with intense color and layered with textures.  This series is titled Lysergic Garden and is the primary focus of the exhibition. With his electric palette and psychedelic undertones, the Lysergic Garden works are reminiscent of the 1960’s hallucinogenic designs and emotions of ecstasy.  Goldfarb uses color, floral motifs and plant forms to exude a sense of delirium and delight in his art. The exhibition is curated by Augustine Arteaga, Director of Museo de Arte de Ponce. A full color catalog accompanies the exhibition.

Also on display from the museum’s Permanent Collection is “A Bridge to the Americas,” offering over 80 works of art presented both geographically and thematically in two of the Permanent Collection Galleries. 

The first gallery highlights approximately 25 works of art, one to four from each of the 19 Spanish/Portuguese speaking countries in the regions of Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, to profile the various countries and their leading art movements and artists represented in the molaa Collection.

The second gallery will present approximately 60 works of art presented in 3 thematic movements—Cultural Landscapes, The Mestizaje of Identity and Spiritual and Religious Practices—offering an interpretation of the art related to the distinct and varied representation of ethnic identity, heritage and cultural practice specific to Latin America.