Edited by David Kipen

Dispatches from a land of extremes, by writers and movie stars, natives and visitors, activists and pioneers, and more.

California has always been, literally, a place to write home about. Renowned figures and iconoclasts; politicians, actors, and artists; the world-famous and the not-so-much—all have contributed their voices to the patchwork of the state. With this book, cultural historian and California scholar David Kipen reveals this long-storied place through its diaries and letters, and gives readers a highly anticipated follow up to his book Dear Los Angeles.

Running from January 1 through December 31, leaping across decades and centuries, Dear California reflects on the state's shifting landscapes and the notion of place. Entries talk across the centuries, from indigenous stories told before the Spanish arrived on the Pacific coast through to present-day tweets, blogs, and other ephemera. The collected voices show how far we've wandered—and how far we still have to go in chasing the elusive California dream.

This is a book for readers who love California—and for anyone who simply treasures flavorful writing. Weaving together the personal, the insightful, the impressionistic, the lewd, and the hysterically funny, Dear California presents collected writings essential to understanding the diversity, antagonisms, and abiding promise of the Golden State.

Redwood Press (Stanford University)
October 2023

Hardcover ISBN: 9781503614697
Ebook ISBN: 9781503637054

Erica Clark, Louise Steinman, Joseph Giovannini, Alma Ruiz

Edited by Laurie Winer and Alma Ruiz

Designed by Brad Bartlett

240 pages, 150 black-and-white and color illustrations

Published by the Sam Francis Foundation, California

October 2022

ISBN 978-1-7339663-2-0

Printed in Italy by O.G.M. SpA

Produced in a limited edition of 1,000

Led by Richard Koshalek, from 1980-1982 MOCA’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and from 1983-1999 the Museum’s Director, the book is conceived as a cultural and educational initiative, and not as a commercial product: a resource to share with cultural, civic, and educational institutions, artists, students, scholars, art professionals, and trustees and philanthropists.

The book, whose research and execution took four years to complete, details the first 20 years of MOCA’s founding and emergence as an international arts institution. Documenting the complex collaborative efforts required to bring a major new cultural institution into being, and to serve as a potential guide to others seeking to create new arts institutions.

All copies will be distributed nationally and internationally to museums, art schools, and libraries; public and private universities and colleges with museum- and curatorial-studies programs; art professionals; art foundations and galleries involved in the making of the .

from THE QUESTIONS WE ASK

“MOCA reflected Los Angeles, that something brash could happen.” - Richard Koshalek

In July of 1980, Richard Koshalek, the thirty-six-year-old director of the Hudson River Museum, boarded Metro North at Grand Central Station. He settled into his window seat, unfolded his New York Times and opened to the arts section. A headline caught his eye: “Los Angeles Putting Focus on Modern Art.” The piece heralded the building of a new institution to be named the Museum of Contemporary Art. Out of curiosity, Koshalek scanned the piece and was dumbfounded to see his own name listed as one of the leading contenders for the position of director. “I just thought, ‘Well, there’s some mistake here.’"

“I’d grown up with the phrase ‘Never forget’ imprinted on my psyche. Its corollary was more elusive. Was it possible to remember—at least to recall—a world that existed before the calamity?”

A lyrical memoir chronicling my immersion in the exhilarating, discomforting, sometimes surreal and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation. What happens when we look at our entwined history together?

from PROLOGUE: SOMEWHERE AT SEA

In January, 1944, when my father crossed the Pacific for the first time, he did not know where he was going. He did not know he was headed for New Zealand. He did not know that after a year of training and wait, first in New Zealand and then in New Caledonia, he and his army buddies in the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division would be transported to northern Luzon, the Philippines, where they would sweat out five and a half months of combat.

This hands-on guidebook to creating and understanding performance pieces offers a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process involved in transforming personal stories to theater.

from ONE: The Body AS HOME

Road to Recovery

At the time I am writing this chapter, I am one year from a car accident which nearly claimed my life, and which seriously injured my body. The road to recovery has taught me many lessons not dissimilar from those I learned from creating performance. Both experiences have to do with “making whole”—bringing together bone, bringing together the disparate experiences and sensations of one’s life.

A limited edition, crowdsourced nightmare anthology, edited by Louise Steinman with illustrations by Beth Thielen.

Benefit edition to support Swingleft's grassroots efforts to take back the House in 2018