DeWoody Brings West Coast East

   Anyone following the national art scene last year was probably aware of a series of Southern California exhibits devoted to the area’s regional artists called Pacific Standard Time, which took over most museums and many galleries with related events and shows. The art ranged from works produced in 1945 up through 1980, and the series was initiated by the Getty Center, where some of its own exhibits continue to be on view through May.

    The Parrish Art Museum is responding with its own evocation of Los Angeles Art: “EST-3: Southern California in New York — Los Angeles Art from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection,” opening to the public on Sunday. It will be on view through June 17.

    The show will highlight about 150 works in a variety of mediums. The title is short for “Eastern Standard Time minus three.” A survey of art created over the same 40-year period covered in Los Angeles, it was organized by David Pagel, a Los Angeles critic, academic, and curator who is also an adjunct curator for the Parrish.

    At the opening reception on Saturday evening, a film will be screened documenting the organization of the exhibit, followed by a discussion with Mr. Pagel and Ms. DeWoody. Reservations are required for the 6 p.m. program and can be made by calling the museum. The cost is $10, or free for members.

    Ms. DeWoody is a wide-ranging collector who inherited an interest in California artists from her family. Her mother and stepfather collected art by Joe Goode, Ed Ruscha, John McCracken, and John MacLaughlin, she said in a press release. Mr. Pagel worked with Ms. DeWoody in making the selections, which include an early lithograph by Frederick Hammersley, paintings from the 1960s by John McLaughlin, signature works by Ed Ruscha, and portraits by David Hockney.

    Mr. Pagel has approached the art primarily by theme, rather than by time period or style, putting work into three categories — people, places, and things — to organize it visually and presumably to allow viewers to make greater connections between artists from different styles and periods.

    Artists in the people section will include Don Bachardy, David Hockney, Beatrice Wood, John Wesley, and Robert Colescott. In the places category will be Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Conner, and Jack Goldstein, among others. The things category will include work by such sculptors as Larry Bell, Craig Kaufman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, and DeWain Valentine, as well as the abstract painters Karl Benjamin, Joe Goode, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin. Vija Celmins, also of Sag Harbor, will be included as well with her “Plastic Puzzle Piece, No. 1” from 1966, a fur-lined box containing nine shaped Plexiglas pieces. She is more typically known for her paintings of skies and ocean waves.

    Terrie Sultan, the director of the Parrish, said in a press release that the show has thematic parallels to this region. “Like our own region, Southern California in this time period was a place of innovation and experimentation. This exhibition gives us an opportunity to see not only the artistic crosscurrents that flowed between the two coasts, but also the ways in which California artists developed idioms specific to the region.”