Exhibitions That Rock

When last year the Pompidou Centre in Paris organized the exhibition celebrating LA art, it was monumental, overwhelming, and slightly tedious in its academic intention to miss nothing, no matter how minor. When last week the Orange County Museum of Art opened its exhibition celebrating California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, it turned out to be not too big, not too small – just right in size. With about 150 objects, including paintings, photographs, TV footage, furniture, and architectural pottery, this exhibition tells the captivating story of how California -– thousands of miles from New York and light-years from Europe –- came, artistically speaking, into its own...