Episode 28: A Conversation with Leland Rice, Part I
Leland Rice was born in Los Angeles in 1940. He studied at Arizona State University, Chouinard Art Institute, and California State University, San Francisco. He taught at California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland (1969-72); University of California, Los Angeles (1972, 75, 82); California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (1973); Pomona College, Claremont, California (1973-80); Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia (1976); University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1980-81); and University of Hartford (1981).
Leland Rice at 10 years old.
Leland Rice (right) with Lewis Baltz at Robert Heinecken's studio, Los Angeles, 1972.
(Left to right) Robert Fichter, Leland Rice, and Robert Heinecken, Los Angeles, 1972.
Leland Rice (left) with the National Endowment for the Arts panel to select fellowship winners for 1980.
Leland Rice at the opening reception for the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Berlinart 1961-1987. The exhibition ran from June 4 - September 8, 1987 and included Rice’s large-scale Cibachrome photographs of the Berlin Wall.
(left to right) Leland Rice, Manuel Sander, and Gerd Sander at the Berlinart 1961-1987 reception at the Museum of Modern Art, 1987
Van Deren Coke & Leland Rice at Forecast : Shifts in Direction. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, 1994. This exhibition was curated by Van Deren Coke and included works by Leland Rice.
Leland Rice and Maggi Weston at an Ansel Adams exhibition at ‘Ansel Adams, A Legacy: Masterworks from the Friends of Photography Collection,” San Francisco, 1997
Selected Exhibitions Organized and Curated by Leland Rice:
1969
Exhibition as a Form of Dialogue - The Visual Dialogue Foundation, center of the Visual Arts, Oakland, California, March 25 - April 25. Catalogue.
(First exhibition of this San Francisco-based group of photographers that was founded in late 1968. Group included Michael Bishop, Judy Dater, Oliver Gagliani, Leland Rice, John Spence Weir, Jack Welpott, and Don Worth.)
1970
Photographic Synthesis, Art Gallery of California College of Arts & Crafts. May 1 - 30.
(Concept was to exhibit artists and photographers who worked in techniques not traditionally associated with photography.
Robert Rauschenberg, photo-lithographs from Stone Moon Series; Robert Heinecken, photo-sensitized linen; Robert Fichter, verifax transfers and cyanotypes; Harold Jones, postcard collages; Lee Friedlander and Jim Dine, silver prints and etchings from the series titled Work from the Same House; Max Hine, photo-silkscreens; other artists included: Carl Cheng and Mike Stone.)
1975
Photographs of Moholy-Nagy, The Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, California, April 4 - May 8. Catalogue.
(An exhibition of seventy vintage photographs and photograms, camera-less images, from the collection of William Larson of Philadelphia. The images date from the early 1920's to the early 1940's and uniquely illustrates Moholy's aesthetic concepts as they parallel his painting and sculpture works produced at the Weimar Bauhaus where he taught and later at the School of Design in Chicago, which he established in 1938 (later known as the Institute of Design). This was the first major traveling exhibition of Moholy's photographs ever held in the United States and the publication echoed in both concept and layout the earlier publication, L. Moholy-Nagy 60 Fotos (1930) authored in Germany by Franz Roh and designed by Jan Tschichold.)
Traveled to: 1975 - San Francisco Museum of Art; University Art Museum, University of New Mexico; 1976 - Fine Art Gallery of San Diego; Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia; 1977 - Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; Tyler Museum of Art, Texas; Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Detroit Institute of Arts; Center for the Visual Arts Gallery, Illinois State University; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; 1978 - J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; Baltimore Museum of Art; Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina; New Orleans Museum of Art; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; Art Gallery, Camden College of Arts and Science, Rutgers University, New Jersey; 1979- Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine; Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; Indiana University Museum of Art, Bloomington.
1977
Herbert Bayer: Photographic Works, Arco Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles, April 19 - May 28. Catalogue.
(Exhibition concentrates on Bayer's photographic work from 1928 when he left the Bauhaus for Berlin, to 1938, when he immigrated to the United States, a period of intense photographic activity. Three kinds of imagery dominate: camera studies of architectural environments, photo-montages, and sculptural three-dimensional like assemblages he fabricated to photograph, and called Fotoplastiketen. The exhibition marked the first comprehensive viewing in the United States of this material.)
Traveled to: 1977 - Museum of Modern Art, New York; 1978 - Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, California; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Roswell Museum and Art Center, New Mexico; South Dakota Memorial Art Center, Brookings; Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio; 1979- University of Iowa Art Museum, Iowa City; University Art Gallery, Arlington, Texas; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; Center for the Arts, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; San Jose Museum of Art, California: 1980 - Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut; Baltimore Museum of Art; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville; Springfield Art Museum, Missouri; Edwin Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Kansas; 1981 - Aspen Center for the Visual Arts, Colorado.
1978
Contemporary California Photography (Second Exhibition), Camerawork Gallery, San Francisco, April 4 - April 29. Catalogue.
(Three curators: Harold Jones, Jack Welpott, and Leland Rice were asked to select both known and unknown photographers for three independent exhibits to display the variety of work going on in the State. attempted to select artists that were involved in formal invention where the content of the images grows out of intellect. The selection included: Judith Miller, Vida Freeman, Steven Cortright, John Divola, Philip Galgiant, Robert Cumming, Raul Guerrero, Lawrie Brown, Barbara Noah, and others.)
1978
A Vision Shared, Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, Pomona College, March 15 - April 24.
(This was an exhibition of twenty-eight images that accommodated a large display of the photographs of the writer/photographer, Wright Morris. The selection included work by his contemporaries Walker Evans, Ralph Steiner, and Russell Lee. Contemporary work of the1960's and 70's revealed a common spirit of intention in selections by Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Stephen Shore.)
1978-79
A Memorial Exhibition in Honor of Marion Palfi, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, December 30 - January 31, 1979.
(Thirty print exhibition in the entrance gallery in the memory of Palfi who photographed the plight of the poor and the neglected child. She lived and taught in Los Angeles for some thirty years.)
1979
Peter Campus, David Haxton & Victor Schrager, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, October 27 - December 8.
(Three artists that had extensively used the polaroid process for large-scale images of a formal invention. All the settings for these photographs were physically fabricated and often featured ambiguous or paradoxical uses of space and scale.)
1980
Frederick Sommer at Seventy-Five; A Retrospective, The Art Museum and Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, February 11 - March 9. Catalogue.
(On the occasion of Sommer's seventy-fifth year both photographs and drawings were selected from specific sources to place the work in the best possible context. The exhibition focused on forty years of images that revealed the dedication of an artist to unearth through ironic or absurd artifact the hidden force of an ancient idea, presenting things we have likely overlooked. His attention to the decisive and sensuous use of the tonal scale of the photographic surface elevates the medium to new heights of measured excellence. This was the most extensively traveled exhibition of Sommer's work to date and provided the first ever display of his images in England.)
Traveled to: 1980 - Seattle Art Museum, Washington; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; University Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; 1981 - Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; International Center for Photography, New York City; Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London, England.
1980-81
Southern California Photography 1900 - 65, An Historical Survey, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 18, 1980 - March 15, 1981. Catalogue.
(For Los Angeles a bicentennial exhibition was formulated to display the rich heritage of photographic styles that most typify the visual attitudes of camera artists that have worked in and around the City. Both familiar and unfamiliar images were selected by some of the following photographers: Karl Struss, Hiromu Kira, Will Connell, Edward Weston, Toyo Miyatake, William Mortensen, Robert Frank, Man Ray, Lee Friedlander, and Weegee.)
Selected Exhibitions Co-Curated
1973
Exhibition broadside, From 1839: Revolution in a Box, 1973
From 1839: Revolution in a Box, An Historical Survey of Photographica in Two Parts, Presented by the Art Departments of Pomona College, and the University of California, Riverside. Catalogue.
(Co-organized by James Turrell and Leland Rice. The exhibition broadside was accompanied by 10 plates enclosed in a cardboard folio.)
1976-77
Emerging Los Angeles Photographers, The Friends of Photography, Carmel, California, October 30, 1976 - January 2, 1977; and International Center of Photography, New York City, February 10 - March 13, 1977. Catalogue.
(Five resident photographer/teachers of Los Angeles were invited to curate an exhibition of young photographers that would present emerging significant work. John Upton, Robert Heinecken, Darryl Curran, Jerry McMillan, and Leland Rice were the curators. Included were photographs as sculpture, as printmaking, as well as traditional camera images.)
1979
Frances Benjamin Johnston: Women of Class and Station, The Art Museum and Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, February 12 - March 11. Catalogue.
(In researching the undocumented archives of some 1200 negatives at the Huntington Library with Connie Glenn, a group of images emerged of women to provide a rare portrait of turn-of-the-century American political aristocracy. Modern prints were made from the original negatives under my supervision with attention to the toned accuracy of the few existing original prints.)
Traveled to: Trinity College, Washington, D.C.; Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas; San Diego State University.
Photographer's/Photographers, Arco Center for the Visual Arts, Los Angeles, June - July.
(Four members of the western photographic community, Fred Parker, Darryl Curran, Arthur Taussig, and Leland Rice, each sponsored three photographers. I selected Brian Forrest, Michael Levine, and Mike Degrjarawsky, who all worked on fabricating the setting through manipulating what goes on in front of the camera.)
1980
Situational Imagery, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine, February 15 - March 15.
(A selection of contemporary artists who work within a sensibility of sculptors in one of two ways: either setting up an environment and then photographing it, or using the photograph itself as an object, many times presenting it in modular sections relating to minimal sculpture, was chosen with Melinda Wortz. Artists who set up environments to be photographed included: David Haxton, John Pfahl, Michael Levine, and Robert Cumming. Those who treat the photograph as an object or module included: Jan Groover, Bernd and Hilda Becher, Steve Kahn, Jan Dibbets, and Elyn Zimmerman.)
1983
The Photography of Imogen Cunningham - A Centennial Selection, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, March 3 - May 15.
(One hundred photographs consisting primarily of vintage prints contemporary with the date the negatives were made. Range of subject matter includes plant forms, nudes, pictorial studies, and portraiture. Selection was made with Susan Ehrens to emphasize the significance of the artist's innovative oeuvre from the pictorial work of the teens, the close-up studies of plant forms in the 20's, images of the dancer Martha Graham dancing for the camera, celebrated portraits of Alfred Stieglitz, James Cagney, Gertrude Stein, and Morris Graves. Organized by the American Federation of Arts.)
Traveled to: Museum for Photographic Arts, San Diego; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston; 1984 - The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art; Oklahoma Museum of Art; 1985- The Toledo Museum of Art; The Baltimore Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum; 1985-86- Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris.
Catalogue Essays/Contributions
William Doherty, 1973, appreciation.
Oliver Gagliani, Scrimshaw Press, 1975, introduction.
Photographs of Moholy-Nagy, Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, 1975, introduction.
Los Angeles Photography, c. 1940 - 1960, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art Journal, No. 5, April - May 1975.
American Photography: A Perennial Trend, American Photography of the Twentieth Century: Master Works from California Collections, Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, 1976.
L.A. X Six, Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, 1976, introduction.
Edward S. Curtis, The Kwakiutl, University of California, Irvine, 1976.
Some Thoughts on Camera Art, Emerging Los Angeles Photographers, The Friends of Photography, Carmel, 1976.
New Portfolios, Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, 1976, introduction.
Appraising the Photograph: An Art of Separate Realities, The Photographs of Southern California Painters and Sculptors, College of Creative Studies Gallery, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1977.
Herbert Bayer: Photographic Works, Arco Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles, 1977, introduction.
Contemporary California Photography, Camerawork Gallery, San Francisco, 1978, introduction.
Frances Benjamin Johnston: Portraiture, Women of Class and Station, The Art Museum and Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, 1979.
Frederick Sommer at Seventy-Five, The Art Museum and Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, 1980, introduction.
Southern California Photography 1900 - 1965, An Historical Survey, The Photography Museum for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980-81.
In Focus: László Moholy-Nagy, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995
Leland’s own photographs are in the collections of many museums:
The Art Institute of Chicago
Baltimore Museum of Art
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge
The George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Musée Reattu, Arles, France
Musée Cantini Art Contemporain, Marseille, France
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence Museum of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, Florida
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
New Orleans Museum of Art
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
The Oakland Museum, Oakland, California
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Leland Rice’s “baseball card,” from a series made by photographer Mike Mandel, 1975
Each card featured stats, including FC (favorite camera), FP (favorite paper), FD (favorite developer), and FPh (favorite photographer)
