“My imagination will attempt the future…all dreams are in us Prophetic!”
 – Sam Francis

 

As we embark on a new journey together in 2024, we extend our best wishes and appreciation of your ongoing support for Sam Francis’s legacy — encompassing his innovative spirit and oeuvre. We are filled with gratitude and appreciation for all the educational activities and programs this past year in celebration of Sam’s 100th birthday centennial (1923–1994). Thank you to everyone who helped spread the good cheer commemorating this milestone, especially a huge shoutout to the staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and all our collaborators (curatorial team Richard Speer, Hollis Goodall, and Leslie Jones) for the “Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing” exhibition and multitude of programs they organized (with special thanks to Elizabeth Gerber and Ravi GuneWardena).

Director's Letter

Archive Connection no. 5 Zoe Dusanne

 

In the Getty’s reading room, a woman born in the 1800s was speaking evocatively to us in the 21st century about the complicated histories of race and gender in America.

“A Table Set for Sam” poem by Richard Speer

 

Recited at Sam Francis’s 100th birthday celebration; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Saturday, June 24, 2023

The Space of Effusion: Sam Francis in Japan 

Richard Speer
Edited and with a foreword by Debra Burchett-Lere

 

Written by art critic and curator Richard Speer, the first full-length monograph to explore an important but sometimes overlooked milieu in Post-World War II art—a dialogue between Eastern and Western sensibilities that prefigured our current era of global interconnectedness and cross-cultural exchange.

Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis

Gabrielle Selz

 

The first in-depth biography of the artist.

Published by UC Press in October 2021

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