The Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Trust just revealed grants totaling $8.5 million to various institutions for another edition of Pacific Standard Time, the sprawling ambitious exhibition program that takes place at 43 institutions across Southern California.

The first edition of PST was groundbreaking, as it presented a much-needed survey of art from Southern California dating from 1945 and 1980. With the next edition, the momentum builds upon insights made during its 2011 debut. Set to open in the fall of 2017, the theme of the next program is “L.A./L.A.,” which stands for Los Angeles/Latin America.

“Now we have a greater understanding of the potential and benefit of the project, so we can invest more confidently in it,” Getty director James Cuno told told Jori Finkel in the New York Times. “What we want to leave behind after the exhibitions are over is a bedrock of scholarship,” he added.

The Getty Center.
Image: Courtesy of Getty.edu.

Since 2013, the trust has awarded nearly $14 million in funding to arts organizations. With this new infusion of grants, institutions are able to be ambitious. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will host “Home—So Different, So Appealing,” (June 11–October 15, 2017), that will look at ideas surrounding the American dream, and the Hammer Museum will show work by influential artists from Mexico to Argentina, in “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-85” (September 15, 2017–January 1, 2018). Hammer chief curator Connie Butler said the show is now able to become “bigger in scope and budget” than originally envisioned.

Some museums are pursuing single-artist shows, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), which will present a major survey of Italian-born, Brazil-based artist Anna Maria Maiolino, while Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Hollywood, and Pitzer College Art Galleries in Claremont will focus on the late artist Juan Downey, known for his large-scale installations. Not to be outdone, nonprofit group LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), will exhibit a midcareer survey of noteworthy Mexican artist Jose Dávila.

LA Times writer Carolina Miranda called the next edition of PST “an unprecedented series of exhibitions that will add to the scholarship of an under-researched area of art history.”