THE ART OF EVERTHING exhibition presents 55 works - paintings, prints, mixed media, and one weaving, drawn from the archives of the June Wayne Estate. The exhibition premiered at Fullerton Museum Center, Fullerton, CA, in concert with The Getty's Pacific Standard Initiative. "Art & Science Collide." The exhibition opening was well-attended and featured a short program with comments from museum Director, Elvia Rubalcava, President and CEO of PBS SoCal, Andrew Russell, and June Wayne's granddaughter, Ariane Claire . A new catalog has been published for the exhibition. The exhibition is now available for scheduling to museums world wide through 2026.
June Wayne conducted a lifelong exploration of the relationship between Art and Science. In doing so she also revolutionized print making and the textile medium, while fighting fearlessly for freedom of expression and the rightful inclusion of women and minorities in the art world. This new exhibition, which features an essay by esteemed Curator and Art Historian, Jay Belloli, entitled June Wayne: Art & Science, examines this relationship.
As the founder of the renowned Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Wayne brought lithography masters to the United States to collaborate with experimental artists in residence (1960-1970) at her Tamarind, Hollywood studio, including Louise Nevelson, Ed Ruscha, Charles White, David Hockney, Annie Albers, Ed Ruscha, Louise Nevelson, Sam Francis, Francois Gilot, Rufino Tamayo, Ruth Asawa, Bruce Conner and many others.
Wayne’s work is represented in the permanent collections of dozens of major museums and private collections. The Los Angeles City Council recognized her cultural and artistic contributions on the centenary of her birth March 7, 2018, as it had done in 1999 at the time of a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The exhibition presents works from the many series Wayne created based on scientific themes including the Terrestrial: Genetics, Optics and Perception, Surveillance and Technology, Physics,Tidal Waves, Winds, Earthquakes, and the earthly Environment; the Celestial: Astrophysics, Stellar Light, Stellar Winds, Space Exploration, Space and Time, Celestial Bodies; and the precursor works: the Kafka and Justice Series.
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| Early Paintings |
Early Paintings |
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| Optics & Perception |
Optics & Perception |
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| Surveillance & Technology |
Surveillance & Technology |
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| The Nuclear Age & our Environment |
The Nuclear Age & our Environment |
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| The Nuclear Age & our Environment |
The Nuclear Age & our Environment |
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| Water and Tidal Waves |
Water and Tidal Waves |
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Stellar Winds
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Terrestrial Winds |
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| Solar Flares |
Solar Flares |
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| Space and Time |
Space and Time |
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| Physics & Space Exploration |
Physics & Space Exploration |
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| Planets |
Planets |
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| Earthquakes |
Earthquakes |
June Wayne (1918-2011) was born in Chicago, but moved to Los Angeles in wartime. Wayne exhibited her first paintings in an international exhibit in Mexico City at age 17, and proved a prodigy in many media. As a young girl, June Wayne sat on the shores of Lake Michigan in her native Chicago, observing with terror and fascination the power of water and waves. This was the beginning of a lifelong interest in natural phenomena. Wayne early “recognized that the cosmic images that had inspired generations of poets had been superseded by a new vision of the universe that scientists were now discovering.” (Robert P. Conway) And as James Cuno, then Director and President of the Art Institute of Chicago, wrote at the time of Wayne’s landmark exhibit “Narrative Tapestries: Tidal Waves, DNA, and the Cosmos”, her works “magisterial in conception and extraordinary in their refined beauty and execution” represent “her decades of research into the intersection of art and science”.
By 1965, Wayne's artistic focus had shifted to science, and its relation to our humanity and planet. Her studies would encompass genetics, optics and perception, seismic events, wind and tidal waves, quantum physics, environmental change, artificial intelligence, and the rapid expansion of the tools of state surveillance. Her attention subsequently expanded to the outer cosmos and the origins of the universe. She was informed both by her own research, and conversation with leading scientists of her day, including Harrison Brown, Richard Feynman, Al Hibbs, and Jonas Salk, with frequent visits to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and Palomar Observatory. Wayne’s approach was lyrical and poetic, mindful that “too close a relationship to the facts work against the metaphysical and aesthetic potentials.” (Jay Belloli)
“Even when he engaged in blue sky thinking, his science was not separate from his art. Together they served his driving passion, which was nothing less than knowing everything there was to know about the world, including how we fit into it." These words by Walter Isaacson, describing Leonardo da Vinci, might well have been written about Wayne, whose Catalogue Raisonné was aptly titled “The Art of Everything”. No artist of the 20th century explored more consistently, persuasively, and arrestingly the frontiers of scientific knowledge.
Wayne’s work is represented in the permanent collections of dozens of major museums and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The Los Angeles City Council recognized her cultural and artistic contributions on the centenary of her birth March 7, 2018, as it had done in 1999 at the time of a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2011 she was named Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by then France Minister of Culture.
The exhibition and museum tour are organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions in association with the June Wayne Estate & M.B. Abram.
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