5 minute read
Margo Leavin
Saturday, October 23, 2021
From UCLA Newsroom: Margo Leavin, renowned art dealer and influential contemporary art world figure, has died at the age of 85. A graduate of UCLA, she was a longtime champion of artists in Los Angeles, and was the lead donor in the renovation of UCLA’s graduate art studios. Leavin was born in New York, but spent her adult life in Los Angeles. She earned her diploma from UCLA with a psychology degree in 1958 and became a private dealer in 1967, selling art out of her home until she opened the Margo Leavin Gallery in West Hollywood in 1970. She took on former employee Wendy Brandow as her partner in 1989.
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The gallery was renowned for showing cutting-edge contemporary art by emerging and established artists — including John Baldessari, Claes Oldenburg, Lynda Benglis, Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin and Donald Judd. By the time it closed in 2013, it had produced more than 500 exhibitions, including 400 solo shows. Its archives were acquired by the Getty Research Institute in 2015. In 2016, Leavin made a gift of $20 million to fund the renovation and expansion of the UCLA Graduate Art Studios. The complex, a former wallpaper factory, had been located in the Hayden Tract in Culver City since 1985. Leavin’s gift is the largest ever made by an alumna to the arts at UCLA. In honor of her contribution, the complex was renamed the UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios.
“I’m grateful that my career in the Los Angeles art world has afforded me the opportunity to support those at the very heart of this community: artists,” Leavin had said in a statement. “The students, alumni and faculty from the art department at UCLA shape the future of the arts in Los Angeles and beyond.”
The major restoration and expansion created a new building for the nation’s top-ranked public university to support its leading graduate program. Designed by the Los Angelesbased architecture firm Johnston Marklee and opened in 2019, the 48,000 square foot campus was envisioned as a true artist’s neighborhood. The studios include exhibition galleries, a covered arcade that’s open to the outdoors, a garden and sculpture yards. The spaces were not overly deterministic in order to support the diverse and emerging needs of creative practice.
“Margo, a hero for and of the arts in Los Angeles, liked to say, ‘without artists, there would be no art world,’” said Brett Steele, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. “Thanks to her commitment to nurturing the next generation of artistic talent, our students will benefit from state-of-the-art facilities, in which to dream and to create, for many years to come.”
Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/in-memoriam-margo-leavin.
Sunday, October 24, 2021
It might be noted that Regent Blum did not attend. He also was not at the previous full board meeting when he was due to be censured for activities related to student admissions and was reported to be ill at the time. (The action on censure was removed from the agenda of that meeting.) He may still be ill.
Public comments covered bicycling for health, nurse staffing, nurse layoffs, and physician labor negotiations. A report followed by UC Health VP Carrie Byington on affiliation with Catholic hospitals. She then went on to discuss the coronavirus situation. That report was followed by discussion of the UC-Riverside School of Medicine.
Prof. David Hayes-Bautista of UCLA discussed the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the Latino population. He noted that by various measures, the Latino population has better health-related outcomes than the general population despite economic disadvantage. He attributed these outcomes to lifestyle effects. However, the Latino population was disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
At the end of the meeting, there was a brief presentation on clinical quality.
As always, we preserve the recordings of the meetings indefinitely since the Regents preserve their meetings for only one year. You can see the meeting at the links below:
Part 1: https://archive.org/details/regents-health-services-committee-part-110-20-21/Regents+Health+Services+Committee+Part+1+10-20-21.mp4.
Part 2: https://archive.org/details/regents-health-services-committee-part-110-20-21/Regents+Health+Services+Committee+Part+2+10-20-21.mp4.
Full meeting:
https://archive.org/details/regents-health-services-committee-part-1-10-20-21.
Monday, October 25, 2021
Following the Regents' Health Services Committee off-cycle meeting of Oct. 20, the Special Committee on Innovation Transfer & Entrepreneurship met the next day. The plan is to continue having the two committees meet in that sequence on an off-cycle basis.
An interesting question about this special committee is whether anyone other than the Regents is keen on it - or even knows about it. One interesting point is that there were no public comments, suggesting that information about the committee's existence or its agenda is not widely known.
There was some concern expressed about little faculty presence. Yet, presumably, it is the faculty - particularly in medicine, the sciences, and engineering - that is supposed to produce the innovations. Or, is the emphasis on entrepreneurship? In that case, shouldn't deans of the various UC business schools have been invited? For that matter, since the transferring and entrepreneurship that seemed to be at issue occurs mainly at the campus level, it isn't clear why the focus was at the systemwide level. Of course, the three Dept. of Energy labs, especially the Los Alamos Lawrence Livermore, might be seen as systemwide concerns. But they were not on the agenda.
There was lots of discussion about things going on at UCOP and changing the "culture." For example, chief investment officer Jagdeep Bachhler was invited, not to talk about financial returns, etc., but rather to talk about how he had changed the culture of his office when he was appointed.
In short, at this point, the impression gained from this committee is that it consists of Regents talking to themselves. But you can use your own judgment. The link to the session can be found at:
https://archive.org/details/regents-special-committee-on-innovation-transfer-andentrepreneurship-10-21-21
