MAIN GALLERY: DEFENDING ETHICAL INTEGRITY: the new Degenerate Art

As political forces tighten their grip on cultural institutions, DEFENDING ETHICAL INTEGRITY (D.E.I.) stands as both a rebellion and a celebration of fearless self-expression while confronting state-controlled narratives, censorship, and the suppression of creative autonomy.

Drawing from the Trump administration’s intervention in the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, and the NEA and evoking the legacy of the Nazi Party’s 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition—used to vilify and silence artists—this show reclaims the term as a symbol of resistance. Featuring a diverse group of contemporary artists, Defending Ethical Integrity challenges power structures, disrupts social taboos, and amplifies voices that refuse to conform.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: AMBOS Project, Polly Borland, Cassils, Robert Andy Coombs, Hugo Crosthwaite, Jay Lynn Gomez, Ken Gonzalez-Day, Forrest Kirk, Laurie Lipton, Elana Mann, Narsiso Martinez, Patrick Martinez, Paul McCarthy, Dakota Noot, Zak Smith, Nadya Tolokonnikova / Pussy Riot, Steven Wolkoff

Curated by Torrance Art Museum in collaboration with Jenny Hager, Ty Pownall and Steven Wolkoff.

GALLERY TWO: Nine Visions X Nine Artists

The MRH Fund for Artists was established to provide artists with direct financial support to expand their creative reach through the realization of a defined art project. The artists selected each year have been nominated by invited arts organizations in the Southern California region. 

2025 Artist Cohort & Nominating Organizations: Weshoyot Alvitre (Museum of Ventura County); Patricia Fernández (Yucca Valley Material Lab); Leopoldo Pena (Art Division); Victor Reyes (Art Division), LaRissa Rogers (Clockshop); Ethan Stern (Craft in America Center); Cedric Tai (Yucca Valley Material Lab); Joan Takayama-Ogawa (Craft in America Center); Leila Youssefi (18th Street Arts Center)

MAIN HALLWAY: liminal level

Semi Permanent Installation

An immersive hallway experience featuring a new site-specific installation by artist Darel Carey.

Darel Carey is a visual artist focusing on optical perception. He graduated from Otis College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2016.His Optical Art (Op Art) includes immersive tape installations, painted murals, and digital art.  The demand for his crowd-pleasing work has been in demand in recent years, with installations at art institutions around the world and featured in major commercial ad campaigns.

Darel’s previous hallway installations for TAM include DIMENSIONALIZATION (2018-2019) and COALESCENCE (2019-2024).

Fallen Fruit's projects invite people to experience their city as a fruitful, generous place, to collectively reimagine the functions of public participation and urban space—to ponder forms of located citizenship, and to explore the meaning of community and neighborhood through creating and sharing new and abundant resources.

In 2021 Fallen Fruit installed a permanent community Fruit Park around the perimeter of the pre-existing community garden in Torrance’s Lago Seco Park as part of TAM’s public art exhibition ULTRA!

Permanent Installation: Public Art mural

This installation brightens the hallway of the Cultural Arts Building with bold and dynamic color in abstract arrangements that enliven the space and alter the perception of it as a neutral space into one of integrated experience with the studios.