Ken Gonzales-Day (born 1964) is a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist best known for interdisciplinary projects that examine the historical construction of race, identity, and systems of representation including lynching photographs, museum display and street art.Zellen, Jody. "Ken Gonzales-Day: 'Profiled/Hang Trees/ Portraits' at Luis De Jesus," ''Art Ltd.'', January-February 2013.Ollman, Leah
"Gonzales-Day fills the holes of history,"
''Los Angeles Times'', April 10, 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Knight, Christopher

''Los Angeles Times'', November 9, 2012 Retrieved March 5, 2020.Villafranca, David
"Los Angeles se mira en el espejo de su arte callejero,"
''La Capital de Mar del Plata'', October 9, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020. His widely exhibited "Erased Lynching" photographic series and book, ''Lynching in the West: 1850-1935'' (2006),Gonzales-Day, Ken
"Lynching in the West: 1850–1935,"
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Retrieved March 5, 2020. document the absence in historical accounts of the lynching of Latinos, Native Americans and Asians in California's early history.Bryan-Wilson, Julia
"'Phantom Sightings', Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA),"
''Artforum'', Summer 2008, p. 432–3. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Berger, Maurice
"Lynchings in the West, Erased from History and Photos,"
''The New York Times'', LENS Blog, December 6, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Estes, Steve. "Lynching in the West," ''Journal of Southern History'', May 2008, p. 453. The series has toured in traveling exhibitions staged by the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

(LACMA),Knight, Christopher. "'Phantom Sightings' at LACMA," ''Los Angeles Times'', April 15, 2008.

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

Ramos, E. Carmen. "Ken Gonzales-Day," ''Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art'', Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2014, p. 182–9. and

Minnesota Museum of American Art The Minnesota Museum of American Art ("The M") is an American art museum located in the Historic Pioneer Endicott building in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The museum holds more than 5,000 artworks that showcase the unique voice of American artists from ...

,Berdan, Kathy
"Art inspired by lynchings in 'Shadowlands' exhibit at Minnesota Museum of American Art,"
''Twin Cities Pioneer Press'', January 17, 2017. Retrieved March 6, 2020. and appeared at the Tamayo Museum (Mexico City),

Generali Foundation The Generali Foundation was established in 1988 by the Generali Group Austria as a private and non-profit-making art association for the promotion of contemporary art. Situated in Vienna, Austria, it is one of the important museums specialised in ...

(Vienna) and

Palais de Tokyo The Palais de Tokyo (''Tokyo Palace'') is a building dedicated to modern and contemporary art, located at 13 avenue du Président-Wilson, facing the Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The eastern wing of the building belongs to ...

in Paris, among other venues.Carson, Juli. "Exile of the Imaginary: Politics, Aesthetics, Love," in ''Exile of the Imaginary: Politics, Aesthetics, Love,'' Vienna: Generali Foundation, 2007.Wahler, Marc-Olivier and Mark Alizart and Frederic Grossi (eds). ''2009 A-Z: Palais de Tokyo'', Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2009, p. 61, 84–6.Neumann, Marc
"Lynching in den USA: Auch der Mob mordet mit System,"
''Neue Burcher Zeitung'' (Zurich), July 13, 2018. Retrieved March 9, 2020.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
Fellows. Retrieved March 5, 2020. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic Holly Myers writes that Gonzales-Day's work conveys "a palpable quality of tenderness" through a "delicate form of visual ethics" that explores racial tendencies, perceptions and presumptions "without pinning the dialogue to actual individuals";Myers, Holly

''Los Angeles Times'', February 13, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020. curator Gonzalo Casals describes his method as "simple artistic gesture that allow for the reinterpretation of history, opening up new perspectives and allowing for the voices of the 'other' to rise above the official history."''Artnet''
"Tear Down the Confederate Monuments—But What Next? 12 Art Historians and Scholars on the Way Forward,"
''Artnet'', August 23, 2017. Retrieved March 6, 2020. Gonzales-Day was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2017, and is the Fletcher Jones Chair in Art at Scripps College in Claremont, California.''Artforum''
"Guggenheim Foundation Announces 2017 Fellows,"
April 7, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Scripps College
Ken Gonzales-Day
Faculty Profiles. Retrieved March 5, 2020.

Early life and education

Gonzales-Day was born in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

in 1964 to parents of mixed ethnicity and grew up in Northern California and Idaho; his father's family dates back to 17th-century New Mexico. He studied art at Pratt Institute (BFA, 1987, Painting) and art history at Hunter College in New York City (MA, 1991), before moving back to California, where he earned an MFA at

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

(1995). In his first professional decade, Gonzales-Day was a practicing artist and critic, contributing regular reviews and articles to the publications ''Artissues'', ''ART/TEXT'' and ''

Leonardo Leonardo is a masculine given name, the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese equivalent of the English, German, and Dutch name, Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate ...

'', and books including ''Whiteness: A Wayward Construction'' (2003) and ''The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts'' (2004), among others.Gonzales-Day, Ken. "Marsden Hartley," ''Artissues'', July/August 1998.Gonzales-Day, Ken. "Daniel J. Martinez," ''ART/TEXT'', October/November 2002.Gonzales-Day, Ken. "Analytical Photography: Portraiture, from the Index to the Epidermis," ''Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology'', Vol. 35, No. 1, 2002, p. 23–30.Myers, Holly
"White Noise,"
''LA Weekly'', April 24, 2003. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Gonzales-Day, Ken. "Seeing Gray: Whiteness and the Erasure of Difference," i
''Whiteness: A Wayward Construction''
Tyler Stallings (ed.), Laguna Beach/Los Angeles: Laguna Art Museum/Fellows of Contemporary Art, 2003. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Gonzales-Day, Ken. "Photography, Gay Male: Pre-Stonewall" and other articles, in ''The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts'', Claude J. Summers (ed.), San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2004. He began teaching at Scripps College in 1995, serving as Professor of Art and Chair of the Art and Art and Art History departments through various terms.

Work and reception

Writers consider Gonzales-Day an artist and historian whose larger project (art and research) seeks to broaden the established canons of art and history to recognize those who have been erased, ignored or misrepresented due to race, ethnicity or sexuality.Gerwin, Daniel
"An Artist Reimagines His Ancestors Through Costumed Self- Portraits,"
''Hyperallergic'', October 20, 2017. Retrieved March 6, 2020.Mizota, Sharon

''Los Angeles Times'', March 25, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Caldwell, Ellen C
"Ken Gonzales-Day's Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River,"
''Riot Material'', January 28, 2018. Retrieved March 5, 2020. His conceptually oriented photography often focuses on historical gaps, literalized through prominent blank spaces or "visual silences";Mizota, Sharon
"Ken Gonzales-Day Re-Examines Violence, Race, and Identity,"
''KCET'', November 28, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2020. critic Leah Ollman writes that his work instructs through the framing of holes in the record and collapsing of space between different times and places, "disturb ngin direct proportion to its importance." His work also draws on restorative justice practices that seek reconciliation, restitution, the recovery of history and public dialogue to remedy injustice. Caragol, Taína
"Recognition of Major Osage Leader and Warrior Opens a New Window Into History,"
''Smithsonian Magazine'', February 19, 2020 Retrieved March 5, 2020.

Early work

Gonzales-Day's early art focuses on issues surrounding identity, multiculturalism and prejudice—which relate to his own liminal position as a gay Mexican-American—and on broader social concerns, including the

AIDS crisis The AIDS epidemic, caused by HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), found its way to the United States between the 1970s and 1980s, but was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual ...

, queer rights, and immigration.Osberg, Annabel. "Galerías en LA/LA: Spotlight," ''Artillery'', September/October 2017, p. 48.Curtis, Cathy
"A Safe Tamale,"
''Los Angeles Times'' (Orange County), December 7, 1993, p. F2. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Curtis, Cathy

''Los Angeles Times'', August 5, 1997, p. F2. Retrieved March 9, 2020. ''Bone Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River'' (1993–6, recreated in 2017) explores these issues through the lens of his family's complex genealogy, which he re-envisioned as an invented

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...

-era narrative whose partial text is presented as a historical artifact.Goldman, Edward
"Is It Clay? No, Glass! Is It Woman? No, Man!"
''HuffPost'', September 12, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Fragoza, Caribbean
"What Is Latin American Art? Finding Answers at Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA,"
''LA Weekly'', September 12, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020. The project combines the appropriation of master-painting poses and scenes,

Pictures Generation ''The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984'' was an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City that ran from April 29 – August 2, 2009. The exhibition took its name from ''Pictures'', a 1977 group show organized by art h ...

-style costumed self-portraiture, and early digital imaging techniques in photographic tableaux in which Gonzales-Day portrays a wide cast of female and male ancestors/characters.Black, Ezrha Jean
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
''Artillery'', November 7, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020. His reassembled version added installation elements, including full-wall genealogical and regional mural-map renderings. ''

Artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...

s Annabel Osberg calls it "a conceptual yet cuttingly poignant photo-novella"; other reviewers described it as eerily timeless and timely, historical and futuristic, with a "ghostly sensuality." Gonzales-Day's photography of the later 1990s and early 2000s explored similar issues, often through extreme close-up images of skin lesions and growths, tattoos or body parts that reviewers described as "ominous ndstrangely seductive"Ise, Claudine
"Examining Consequences of Medical Advances,"
''Los Angeles Times'', December 11, 1998, p. F36. Retrieved March 5, 2020. and "marvelous patterns assembled like a mosaic."Ollman, Leah

''Los Angeles Times'', May 12, 2001, p. F1 & F10. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Curtis, Cathy. "Dressing the Flesh," ''Los Angeles Times'', May 12, 1998, p. F2.

"Erased Lynching" series (2002–17) and related works

The ''Erased Lynchings'' series arose out of research Gonzales-Day conducted that uncovered more than 350 lynchings of Latinos, Native Americans and Asians as well as African-Americans in California between 1850 and 1935, the most perpetrated against Latinos.Cotter, Holland

''The New York Times'', September 22, 2006, p. 32. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Hill, Jason
"The Camera and the 'Physiognomic Auto-da-fe': Photography, History, and Race in Two Recent Works by Ken Gonzales-Day,"
''X-TRA'', Spring 2009. Retrieved March 5, 2020. Its images range from postcard-sized works to photomurals and billboard reproductions and are derived from appropriated lynching souvenir cards and archival sources, from which Gonzales-Day digitally removed the victim and rope (e.g., ''The Wonder Gaze (St. James Park)'', 2006–17). Critics suggest that the erasure crucially recalibrates the power of each image, redirecting scrutiny away from death to the spectacle, social dynamics, and relish of the perpetrators (often jeering and smiling disconcertingly); ''New York Times'' critic

Holland Cotter Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Life and work Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...

notes that this shift also "makes hard lines between then and now, them and us, difficult to draw." The erasures additionally serve as a metaphor for the expunging of the victims from history and prevent their re-victimization through re-presentation. Gonzales-Day also produced ''Lynching in the West'' (2006),Duke University Press
"Lynching in the West 1850–1935,"
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Retrieved March 5, 2020. an unprecedented textual and visual examination of California lynching in relation to

frontier justice Frontier justice is extrajudicial punishment that is motivated by the nonexistence of law and order or dissatisfaction with justice. The phrase can also be used to describe a prejudiced judge. Lynching, vigilantism and gunfighting are considered f ...

, race-based theories of criminality, whiteness, and public and photographed spectacle as visual culture.Márquez, John D. "Lynching in the West: 1850–1935," ''Latino Studies'', 7. 2, 2007, p. 282–3.Pinder, Kymberly. "Lynching in the West: 1850–1935," ''Journal of American Studies'', 43, 2009, e30. The book draws on newspaper articles, periodicals, and court records to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the lynchings and juxtaposes Gonzales-Day's contemporary photographs of lynching sites with historical artifacts.Pfeifer, Michael J. "Lynching in the West: 1850-1935," ''The Journal of American History'', September 2007, p. 574–5. Reviewers describe the work as an "essential corrective" to the Western frontier justice myth and a thought-provoking, innovative, cross-disciplinary example of visual and historical research.Fu, Albert. "Lynching in the West: 1850–1935," ''Visual Studies'', September 2008, p. 179–91.Webb, Clive. "Lynching in the West: 1850–1935," ''The Americas'', January 2008, p. 445–6.Diehl, Travis
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
Artforum, May 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2020. For "Searching for California Hang Trees" (2002–14), Gonzales-Day sought to visit and photograph the more than 300 California lynching sites he uncovered. More performative than documentary—since many exact locations are unknown—the series' recordings and approximations feature stark, large-scale color portraits of trees, often set against flat, black backgrounds that range, according to reviews, from quietly beautiful to ordinary suburban to vaguely ominous (e.g. ''Nightfall I'', 2007).Gabler, Jay
"Ken Gonzales-Day: Minnesota Museum of American Art,"
Artforum, March 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020. Critics suggest that the trees' twisted roots, interwoven branches, and thick trunks—suggesting age, wisdom, silent witness and a land heavy with history—offer a critical look at landscape photography and the erasure of uncomfortable legacies within seemingly pastoral locales.Caldwell, Ellen C. "Ken Gonzales-Day at Luis De Jesus," ''New American Paintings'', December 17, 2012.Wilson-Goldie, Kaelen
"'Past Over,'"
''Artforum'', August 2007. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Regan, Sheila
"Ken Gonzales-Day on his Long-Term Exploration of Racial Violence in America,"
''Popular Photography'', January 19, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020. In several exhibitions, Gonzales-Day juxtaposed the hang trees with his "Memento Mori" bust-length, frontal portraits of contemporary Latino men matching the lynching victims in age and ethnicity, which reviewers describe as similarly "elegant, muscular and mute." Gonzales-Day further extended the hang tree project with a self-guided walking tour of lynching sites in downtown Los Angeles. In 2015, Gonzales-Day produced ''Run Up'' (directed by Andrew Hines), an eight-minute, stylized reenactment of California's last documented lynching of a Latino in Santa Rosa in 1920.Zellen, Jody. "Ken Gonzales-Day: 'Run Up' at Luis De Jesus," ''Art Ltd.'', July 2015. Leah Ollman wrote, the film's "episodic and discontinuous, mildly haunting" approach shifts actions between cover of night and light of day, "conjuring the lynching's variable realities as suppressed history and public spectacle." Gonzales-Day exhibited the film with still photographs taken in

Ferguson, Missouri Ferguson is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. It is part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. Per the 2020 census, the population was 18,527. History What is now the city of Ferguson was founded in 1855, when William ...

and Los Angeles in the wake of protests and marches over recent police shootings of Michael Brown and others; the images of damaged environments and scenes of conflict incorporate period figures from the film's historical reenactment in poses that quote iconic art historical works, drawing parallels between spatially, temporally distant events.

"Profiled" series and related works

Gonzales-Day's ''Profiled'' explores the legacies of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, and Western assumptions about beauty and human value through ethnological depictions in historic expositions and museum collections, methods of art instruction, and pseudo-sciences, such as

physiognomy Physiognomy (from the Greek , , meaning "nature", and , meaning "judge" or "interpreter") is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face. The term can also refer to the genera ...

and

mesmerism Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, was a protoscientific theory developed by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century in relation to what he claimed to be an invisible natural force (''Lebensmagnetismus'') possessed by all liv ...

.Feeney, Mark
"Cross-Cultural dialogue in Photographs of Ken Gonzales-Day,"
''The Boston Globe'', October 6, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Foritano, James
"Ken Gonzales-Day: Profiled at the Koppelman Gallery,"
''Artscope Magazine'', October 14, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020. Self-described as a "prequel" to Gonzales-Day's earlier projects, "Profiled" raises questions about the line between portraiture and caricature, categorization and hierarchies, and the commodification and internalization of aesthetics largely based on whiteness.Frank, Priscilla
"Racial Stereotypes Exhibition by KGD Shines at Luis De Jesus,"
''HuffPost'', December 13, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2020. Christopher Knight describes the series as a portrait of power in society that "lies outside the frame," its blankness echoing "with the force of a condemnation." The series' visual strategy (literalized in a title that also references

racial profiling Racial profiling or ethnic profiling is the act of suspecting, targeting or discriminating against a person on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or nationality, rather than on individual suspicion or available evidence. Racial profiling involv ...

) is described by the ''Boston Globe'' as "a simple yet devastatingly effective conceit": photographs of museum statuary in facing profiles in single frames featuring pointed juxtapositions of Western classical "artworks" and anthropological depictions of "primitive" persons.''The New Yorker''
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
November 3, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020. Reviewers suggest that subtle lighting, positioning and delicate tinting create "electric fields" in the work, suggesting complex, silent, cross-cultural dialogues and sometimes-comic incongruities, as in an untitled work presenting a Blackfoot tribesman with crossed index fingers who seems to chastise a seducing Greek

faun The faun (, grc, φαῦνος, ''phaunos'', ) is a half-human and half-goat mythological creature appearing in Greek and Roman mythology. Originally fauns of Roman mythology were spirits (genii) of rustic places, lesser versions of their c ...

.Owen, William. "'Profiled' creates poignant dialogue on race relations," ''The Tufts Daily'', October 4, 2011. Critic Sharon Mizota writes that in works such as one with facing black marble busts—one African, one recognizably Caucasian (see image, right)—what emerges "is something more tender and strange… the impassive sculptural pairs begin to look oddly like couples, gazing at each other across boundaries of geography, time and ignorance."Cheng, Scarlet
"Art is the Message of these Billboards,"
''Los Angeles Times'', February 20, 2010. Retrieved March 5, 2020. Gonzales-Day traced the idea further in the exhibition, "UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light" (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, 2018), in photographs of sculptural depictions of Native American and First Nations people from museum collections in Washington, DC.Ober, Cara
"Titus Kaphar and Ken Gonzales-Day Reveal the Fictions in Depictions,"
''Hyperallergic'', June 14, 2018. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Ault, Alicia
"Two Artists in Search of Missing History,"
''Smithsonian Magazine'', April 4, 2018. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Smith, Brendan L
"Two Contemporary Artists Recast White Male-Dominated World of Portraiture,"
''Washington Diplomat'', May 29, 2018. Retrieved March 5, 2020. In the course of his work, Gonzales-Day discovered a forgotten piece of history: a neglected 1904 bust of the Osage priest, Shonke Mon-thi^; working with museum personnel, he uncovered the priest's story and historical importance, and the Portrait Gallery—dedicated to prominent historical figures—acquired his photo of the bust. Later works from this project, such as ''Americas (Large and Small Constellation)'' (2019), present museum objects in merged constellations or clusters that reflect on art historical categories and art collection themselves.''Frieze''
"Diálogos: Celebrating Latinx and Latin Art in the Global Art World,"
April 9, 2019. Retrieved March 9, 2020.

Public art and related projects

Gonzales-Day has produced permanent public art works as well as temporary billboard installations of images from his "Erased Lynching" and "Profiled" series, some included as part of a For Freedoms fifty-state voting Initiative ahead of the 2018 U.S. mid-term elections.Arredondo, Maria Luisa
"Artistas de Metro: Ken Gonzales-Day crea una ventana a la naturaleza,"
''El Pasajero'', February 6, 2017. Retrieved March 6, 2020.''Artfix Daily''
"150+ Artists and Billboard Locations Announced as Part of The Largest Public Art Project in U.S. History,"
October 19, 2018. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Saati, Briana
"Temporary Contemporary: Bass Museum Redefines Street Art,"
''Miami New Times'', November 7, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2020. His four photographic glazed-tile murals at the South Central Los Angeles County Administrative Building (2007) offer calming images of traditional California oaks in an often-stressful environment (e.g., ''California Landscape'');Stromberg, Matt

''LA Weekly'', December 20, 2016. Retrieved March 9, 2020.CRA/LA
"Ken Gonzales-Day, California Landscape, Variations 1 through 4, 2007,"
Art Projects. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Ken Gonzales-Day website
"Public Art."
Retrieved March 9, 2020. an installation at the San Fernando Valley Canoga Metro Station (2012) subtly integrates the local landscape into the built environment with four large porcelain-enamel images of composite, imagined views of the surrounding mountains and two glass mosaics depicting kaleidoscopic, patterned images of native

manzanita Manzanita is a common name for many species of the genus ''Arctostaphylos''. They are evergreen shrubs or small trees present in the chaparral biome of western North America, where they occur from Southern British Columbia and Washington to Or ...

and oak trees. His commission for a LAPD Metro Division Facility (2016) offers eleven porcelain-enamel photographs of cultural artifacts that represent people, real and imagined, from various continents and eras and comment on philosophical, spiritual, legal and scientific constructions of race and racial difference.Quirk, Vanessa
"Secret Weapon: How LAPD Uses Design to Improve Community Relations,"
''Metropolis'', May 18, 2017. Retrieved March 9, 2020. Gonzales-Day's "Surface Tension" exhibition (

Skirball Cultural Center The Skirball Cultural Center, founded in 1996, is a Jewish educational institution in Los Angeles, California. The center, named after philanthropist-couple Jack H. Skirball and Audrey Skirball-Kenis, features a museum with regularly changing e ...

, 2017)Gonzales-Day, Ken
"Surface Tension: Mapping Murals in Los Angeles,"
''East of Borneo'', June 26, 2018. Retrieved March 9, 2020. featured public artwork by other, often anonymous, artists—more than 140 images documenting street art throughout Los Angeles.Daichendt, James
"Photographer Parses the Politics and Relevance of L.A.'s Murals and Marks,"
''KCET'', October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Zellen, Jody
"Ken Gonzales-Day at Skirball Cultural Center,"
''Art and Cake'', October 17, 2017.Miranda, Carolina A

''Los Angeles Times'', October 5, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020. The exhibition included a room-wide floor map tracing his documentary journey that served as an index to the works and explored the relationships between areas densely or sparsely populated with street art.Drohojowska-Philip, Hunter
"Ken Gonzales-Day and Anita Brenner,"
''KCRW'' Art Talk, January 18, 2018. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Wakim, Marielle. "Crossing Artistic Boarders," ''Los Angeles Magazine'', September 2017, p. 60–61. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Lloyd, Annie
"This Artist Photographed Murals All Across Los Angeles,"
''LAist'', October 5, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020.

Awards and recognition

Gonzales-Day has been awarded fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2017) and

California Community Foundation The California Community Foundation (CCF) is a philanthropic organization located in Los Angeles, California. Foundation Center, an independent nonprofit organization, ranks it among the top 100 foundations in the nation by asset size and total ...

(2007), the Photographic Arts Council Prize, and grants from

Creative Capital Creative Capital is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City that supports artists across the United States through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has commi ...

, the City of Los Angeles (COLA) (both 2012), and

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

(1997, 1996).California Community Foundation
" Fellowship for Visual Artists,"
2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Creative Capital
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
Artists. Retrieved March 9, 2020.''Artforum''
"Creative Capital Announces Recipients of 2012 Film/Video and Visual Art Grants,"
January 12, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Place, Vanessa. "Ken Gonzales-Day," ''COLA 2011'', Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles, 2011. He has also been recognized with residencies from the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) (2014),

Terra Foundation for American Art The Terra Foundation for American Art is a privately operated nonprofit organization dedicated to the support of American art exhibitions, projects, academic research, and publications worldwide. Its goal is to promote a greater understanding and a ...

(2013), Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA) (Paris, 2013, 2011),

Getty Research Institute The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".

(2008–9), and

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

Independent Study Program (1992), among others. His work belongs to the public art collections of LACMA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Getty Research Institute, L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts and

Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loca ...

(Paris), Art Gallery of New South Wales,

Norton Museum of Art The Norton Museum of Art is an art museum located in West Palm Beach, Florida. Its collection includes over 8,200 works, with a concentration in European, American, and Chinese art as well as in contemporary art and photography. In 2003, it overt ...

, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others, and many private collections.LACMA
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
Collections. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Smithsonian American Art Museum
"Ken Gonzales-Day,"
Artists. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Waldorf, Sarah
"Physiognomy, The Beautiful Pseudoscience,"
''The Iris'', October 8, 2012. Retrieved March 9, 2020.Art Gallery of New South Wales
"At daylight the miserable man got carried to an oak, 2002, Ken Gonzales-Day,"
Collection. Retrieved March 9, 2020. Monographs of Gonzales-Day's work include ''Lynching in the West: 1850-1935'' (2006), ''Profiled'' (LACMA, 2011), and ''Surface Tension'' (2018).Gonzales-Day, Ken
''Profiled''
Edward Robinson (ed.), Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2020.Gonzales-Day, Ken
''Surface Tension''
''Los Angeles Review of Books'', 2018. Retrieved March 6, 2020.

References

External links

*
Ken Gonzales-Day on KCRW
discussing LA murals, "Surface Tension"
Lost L.A.: Hanging Trees: The Untold Story of Lynching in CaliforniaKen Gonzales-Day
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Gallery {{DEFAULTSORT:Gonzales-Day, Ken 20th-century American photographers Conceptual photographers People from Santa Clara, California Pratt Institute alumni Hunter College alumni University of California, Irvine alumni 21st-century American photographers Photographers from California Scripps College faculty 1964 births Living people