Cultivating Art, Not Argument, at a Los Angeles Law Office

Gonzalo Casals, New York’s cultural affairs commissioner, said the artists help to communicate to the public what the agencies do. “It’s a training that the artists have — it’s the thinking, the perspective, the creativity,” he said. “That unique perspective, the approach to problem solving, but also the quality of art. It makes us human.”

Pieces created by two New York City resident artists have found their way into museum collections: works from a series by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (pronounced PING-bodee-bak-ee-ah), who was partnered with the city’s Commission on Human Rights, were acquired by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and works from a series by Julia Weist, who was embedded in the Department of Records and Information Services, have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum and other institutions.

In Los Angeles, Quinn said he thought to create the residency, in part, when the pandemic emptied the firm’s offices. So while many of the firm’s nearly 400 attorneys and support staff in Los Angeles work remotely from home, he and the curator Alexis Hyde, hired by the firm to run the project, have turned over two offices to Segal and Ramirez for the four-month residency.

(They got 142 applications for the first residencies, which end next month. They’ll announce who takes up the next residencies in January; they plan to continue the program at least through 2022.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/arts/design/artists-in-residence-los-angeles.html