LFLA Presents Something In Common Exhibition At Los Angeles Public Library

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) today announce a new major exhibition and program series called Something in Common, highlighting the ways we form community. The exhibition will run from May 7 through November 6, 2022.

Exploring unique connections, Something in Common, is an examination and celebration of the ideas, interests and beliefs that bring us together and what we can create or accomplish collectively. Through the stories of fascinating and sometimes surprising social clubs and unique organizations, this exhibition will highlight the importance of finding common ground and points of connection. It will recognize the role of the public library as a critical gathering place, not only serving communities, but also creating community.

The major exhibition will be presented at Central Library in downtown Los Angeles along with a city-wide program series at various LAPL branches and a highlight of the Wellcome Trust's major international cultural program about mental health, called Mindscapes. Combining diverse perspectives and expertise, the Mindscapes program brings together culture, communities, policy, and research to reflect on how we understand, address and talk about mental health.

"Over the past two years, we have been forced to reconsider our relationship to public space, compelled to physically isolate ourselves, and left wondering how and when we can come back together," said Todd Lerew, the Library Foundation's Director of Special Projects. "The library has always served as a place of belonging and the sharing of ideas, and we hope the stories of the groups featured in this exhibition will inspire visitors to consider their own affiliations, where they find a sense of community, and the ways we can connect with others in a city as vast as Los Angeles."

Highlights of this wide-ranging exhibition will include:

• Christine Wong Yap and Mindscapes: we are commissioning new work by visual artist Christine Wong Yap that will celebrate the Los Angeles Public Library as a place of belonging by highlighting library-based clubs and groups such as the Persian Poetry Forum, Teen Councils, and Health Matters Book Club. Christine Wong Yap is a social practitioner whose work often explores dimensions of psychological wellbeing such as belonging, resilience, interdependence, and collaboration. This commission is organized in collaboration with Wellcome Trust and Christine Wong Yap as Artist-in-Residence At Large. It is part of Mindscapes, Wellcome's international cultural program about mental health.
• The Los Angeles Black Underwater Explorers: a SCUBA diving club dedicated to expanding access, knowledge, and enjoyment among African Americans in a sport where some had previously been made to feel they didn't belong.
• The Feminist Center for Creative Work: a membership-based organization that supports and promotes intersectional feminist artists and creatives, building community and a network of engagement and opportunity to share work and ideas.
• The Baseball Reliquary: a non-profit organization "dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history and to exploring the national pastime's unparalleled creative possibilities."
• The Cloud Appreciation Society: a group that brings together people who love the sky, with members in 120 countries around the world, all united in the belief that clouds are the most dynamic, evocative and poetic aspect of nature.
• The Los Angeles Breakfast Club: a storied club that has met on the edge of Griffith Park every Wednesday morning for the better part of a century, devoted to friendship and hospitality, and featuring rituals, lectures, performances, and sing-alongs to go with their ham and eggs.
• South El Monte Arts Posse: a collective of artists, writers, urban planners, educators, scholars, ecologists, swap meet vendors, and youth dedicated to engaging with the El Monte and South El Monte community through public history and arts-based projects.
• LA Community Cookbook Archive: a project by artist Suzanne Joskow, inviting interaction with a collection of hundreds of community cookbooks representing social organizations across Los Angeles County over the last 100 years.
• Roller Pigeon Clubs: organized groups, mostly men of color, dedicated to the uniquely acrobatic Birmingham Roller Pigeon, known for doing backflips while flying. Members of the roller clubs breed and raise these birds for competition, with many crediting the hobby for keeping them off the streets.
• 29 Palms Historical Society's annual Weed Show: in an area often disparaged by outsiders as barren or empty, this community event brings together people from a wide variety of backgrounds and age groups for a friendly competition based on displays of the local high desert flora, AKA "weeds".
• Microscopical Society of Southern California: dedicated to the science, art, and history of microscopy, MSSC provides the opportunity for both the professional and the amateur to share in their enthusiasm for the microscope and the worlds they can reveal.

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles' Special Projects play a unique role in advancing the mission of attracting support for and excitement about the Los Angeles Public Library. Projects have explored topics from the history of LA restaurants and present-day food insecurity to the ways in which we seek to leave our own mark on the city. In 2018-19, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles produced 21 Collections at Central Library's Getty Gallery, visited by more than 44,000 people. Exhibition Curator and Director of Special Projects, Todd Lerew, visited more than 600 museums, libraries, and private collections as research for 21 Collections, and is taking a similarly expansive and wide-ranging approach to the preparations for Something in Common, having joined or visited well over 100 unique clubs and organizations across Los Angeles.

For more information, please visit lfla.org.

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