For our February meeting, we returned to Pasadena to the Western Justice Center on Grand Avenue.  Following the usual lively coffee hour, members and guests enjoyed learning about the 35 institutions that will be receiving a record $310,000 in PAA Grants funding this year.  Chairs Gwen Robinson and Meg Aldrich presented a tremendous slide show to inform and illustrate what we all have to look forward to in exhibitions and contemporary happenings in the months ahead.

After the Grants presentation and the remainder of the meeting, our guest speaker was William Hackman, author of “Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties.”  Mr. Hackman is a former managing editor at the J. Paul Getty Trust and a longtime arts journalist who has written extensively about art, music, and theater for general audiences. He read excerpts from his book, mostly pertaining to the early days of the Pasadena Art Museum, and its infamous director Walter Hopps.  His stories, familiar to many, were illustrative of the ways our own beginnings helped shape the emerging art scene in mid-century Los Angeles.  It was a nice book-end to how we continue to do so with our healthy grants program!