Sharon Lockhart / Noa Eshkol at LACMA, Los Angeles

Sharon Lockhart / Noa Eshkol
June 9 - September 9, 2012
LACMA

In June 2012, LACMA will present a new project by the Los Angeles–based, internationally renowned photographer Sharon Lockhart. One of the most influential artists currently working in Los Angeles, Lockhart came to prominence in the 1990s with highly refined, lyrical examinations of specific moments observed within specific cultures. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and Kunsthalle Zurich. She has participated in numerous group shows, such as the 1997 SITE Sante Fe Biennial and the 1997, 2000, and 2004 Whitney Biennials. Her most recent films, Lunch Break (2008) and Double Tide (2009), have been presented internationally to great acclaim.

This new project began with a residency in Tel Aviv sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles in 2009. There Lockhart discovered her subject: modernist choreographer Noa Eshkol (1924–2007), whose legacy is sustained by a close-knit community of dancers whom she trained. Eshkol, the daughter of third Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol, founded her dance group in 1954. Her innovations are significant, but remain little known, because she worked in relative isolation and without concern for public acclaim.

Intuitively recognizing Eshkol as a visionary and seeking to understand her legacy, Lockhart filmed and photographed Eshkol’s aging students, women now in their seventies. Lockhart’s subsequent visits to Israel led to deeper immersion in Eshkol’s circle of devotees, who are seeking to pass their knowledge on to future generations. The project has evolved into a true collaboration between the two women---Lockhart and Eshkol---occurring across time and place.

The exhibition is comprised of film projections of five individual dances, mesmerizing in their deliberate grace, each accompanied by a metronome soundtrack. Seen in the films and also on view in the show are colorful, abstract textile “carpets” or wall-hangings, designed by Eshkol from found scraps and sewn by the dancers over the years. Lockhart’s still photographs of three-dimensional wire-and mesh models elucidate the movement notation system that Eshkol devised in the late 1950s with engineer Abraham Wachman. Drawings and manuscripts relating to this aspect of Eshkohl’s work have also been discovered. Finally, we very much hope to bring the dancers to Los Angeles for a first-ever American performance of Noa Eshkol’s dance compositions during the run of the show.

LACMA is organizing the exhibition in partnership with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, along with the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. It will open in Israel in December 2011, and the Israel Museum will publish a catalogue including interviews with the dancers conducted by Lockhart, along with other documentary and interpretive components. LACMA’s exhibition, co-curated by Stephanie Barron and Britt Salvesen, will open in June 2012, in the Broad Contemporary Art Museum