The Downey Museum of Art (DMOA) was founded by a group of women bonded by Art and community. And one woman in particular, Alice Woodrow decided in 1957 to open a Museum in order to provide a place for modern artists to show their works, a place to have a voice.  

1950's Artworld

In the mid 1950’s, when it came to the artworld Los Angeles was a very small town. The County Museums in Exposition Park were the cultural center of the city. The County Museum of Art was an encyclopedic museum that occasionally showed modern art. And the artworld constellation also included the Pasadena Art Institute which exhibited ‘19th century American & European art and hosted annual shows of California Artists and works from other cultures” (Norton Simon Museum). It wasn’t until the 1960’s under the direction of Walter Hopps that the Pasadena Museum focused on the cutting edge artists of the time. And the Laguna Art Museum was showing plein air painting.

La Cienega Boulevard

At the same time a few private art galleries were clustered on La Cienega Boulevard. It was here that the birth of the Los Angeles modern/contemporary art world occurred. In the 50’s, the Felix Landau Gallery was one of the few spaces in all of L.A. to show modern art. In 1960, the most important art gallery to L.A. art history, The Ferrus Gallery, opened. In regards to modern art it was a small town with few places for modernists to exhibit.

Alice Woodrow’s friendship with dealer Felix Landau and others in the 1950’s introduced her to the artists of the time and from those encounters she came to an understanding that there was a need for space and support of modern artists visiting and working in L.A. at the time.

A pioneer, Mrs Woodrow, with her friends such as Vinetta Lough as her Board of Directors, set out to establish an Art Museum to exclusively collect and exhibit modern art. The Museum would be a place for modern artists to gather and show their work and a forum for modern ideas.  In 1957, the Downey Museum of Art  was founded in Furman Park. 

DMOA becomes 1st Museum founded for Modern Art in L.A.

Alice Woodrow’s efforts and connections quietly created a Museum that became an important mainstay in the early L.A. modern artworld. In those early years, some of today’s well known artists exhibited at DMOA such as: Ed Moses, June Wayne, Boris Deutsch, Gordon Wagner, Vic Smith and later Ed Ruscha, Woods Davy, Laddie John Dill, Bettye Saar and others.

“…the DMOA was an outpost of cutting-edge culture when the Southland was a cultural desert. For instance, Bettina Brendel, a German-born artist, first lived in Downey when she moved here from New York. She organized several shows of abstraction at DMOA, working with the likes of John McLaughlin and Lorser Feitelson and Oskar Fischinger and Helen Lundeberg, and was featured in several other exhibitions such as DMOA annuals and juried shows. In the 1950s and ‘60s, we don't realize how barren the scene was before La Cienega Boulevard blossomed with galleries in the early 1960s and LACMA moved to the Tar Pits in 1965..." Peter Frank, art critic.

The Museum also drew visionaries. One of the most interesting cultural programs to be held at DMOA was a lecture by the noted Pygmy Scholar, Jean-Pierre Hallet. Hallet was working to preserve and protect the Efe Pygmy’s of Africa. He spoke at DMOA about his seminal work Pygmy Kitabu and presented his film “The Little Giants’.

LISTEN

Bambuti (Pygmy) Song *

50 years of Evolution

The Museum over the year’s evolved. It also became noted for its exhibition of work in fiber, metal, ceramics and the work of multi-cultural and emerging artists and rightly for the work of women artists.

DMOA holds one of the largest collections of works by Boris Deutsch outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The collection was a gift from the artist.

New Museum Target Opening:  Late 2009

Targeted for 2009, DMOA will open DMOA @ The Glidehouse, the first phase of the new Museum of Contemporary Art & Culture that will return the museum to its roots of exhibiting today’s leading contemporary artists and as a forum for contemporary culture and ideas.

Link: Historic site DMOA @ Furman Park

*

NOTE:

Bambuti (Pygmy) Song credit:

Folkways 04503, provided courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. c. 1957. Used by Permission.

(www.si.edu/folkways)