Southern California has become known for art schools which have distinguished faculties and are intellectually and pedagogically innovative. The reputations of the region’s MFA programs are founded on the people who have come out of them, a very large number of internationally recognized artists attended graduate school here and this has made the Los Angeles area into one of the places on the map of the art world where new talent is expected to emerge.

"Finally it is happening—an exhibition of graduating MFA students in L.A. from not one school but many. What a payoff! The possibility to compare and assess, the ante will surely rise, as will the competition and resulting art—plus Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design will become an event destination," remarked John Baldessari, artist and UCLA Department of Art faculty.

Curated and installed by a committee formed out of students from each program and accompanied by a catalog written by criticism and theory graduate students from the participating schools, the exhibition will allow all those who graduate this year to see one another’s work and we hope that this will engender a new level of dialogue and critical exchange between the MFA programs involved. At the same time it will enable both the larger art community and the general public to catch a first glimpse of the work of the nearly one hundred artists who have just finished their studies in the region and perhaps to speculate about which seem to be the ones worth watching.

“This extraordinary collaboration will encourage and spotlight the next generation of artists graduating from our schools. I am certain it will attract international interest,” said Richard Koshalek, president of Art Center College of Design and former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Panel discussions, performances and other programs will be scheduled during the run of the show.