The Torrance Art Museum had a busy few weeks planned with a trio of new exhibits running from April 4-May 16 in separate galleries. However, like all other venues, those plans were shelved as the museum was forced to close due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. But the art must go on, so instead of physical exhibits the museum is giving all artists a chance to have their work displayed for the next few weeks. This weekend the museum launches its new “Hobson’s Choice” online exhibition made up of artwork submitted by the public.
“We could have looked at the show we were going to do at the museum, we could have put up images of what those artists were going to bring to us but we prefer to look at the artists in our audience,” said Max Presneill, director and curator of the museum.
The exhibition will run on the museum’s website from April 4-May 16 to coincide with the dates of the previously planned exhibitions. Once a week Presneill will choose seven artists and display one piece of artwork from each artist. And the response so far has been very good with more than 100 artists already submitting work representing local and international talent.
“We’ve had submissions from Greece, China and Germany,” he said.
“We are getting (work) from across the board. There’s installation, painting, videos, drawings, sculptures,” Presneill said.
And since this is a serious art museum, Presneill is curating the exhibition as he would any other exhibition that would go on display at the museum.
“We’re really looking at the quality of the work. It’s not going to be an easy process,” he said.
Presneill is also looking forward to discovering new artists through this exhibition.
“Because people can submit themselves or people they admire, it really goes beyond the curators previous knowledge. So we can get introduced to stuff that we might not know of,” he said.
To be considered, people can submit one image of their own work or that of an artist they admire with the artist’s name, the work’s title, date, size, materials and a short paragraph addressing the work’s content and why they think it’s significant and then emailing it to TAMchoicecot@gmail.com.
For more information and to see the art, visit torranceartmuseum.com.