Since our founding in 1988 as the Santa Monica Museum of Art, ICA LA has had a longstanding history of working with guest curators who have organized landmark exhibitions. Recent examples include Scratching at the Moon (2024) curated by artist Anna Sew Hoy together with ICA LA Executive Director Anne Ellegood, Barbara T. Smith: Proof (2023) organized by curator Jenelle Porter, and Queer Communion: Ron Athey curated by art historian Amelia Jones, among many, many more!

This history continues with ICA LA's upcoming exhibition, Scientia Sexualis, co-curated by Jennifer Doyle and Jeanne Vaccaro-two leading scholars in feminist and trans studies-and opening to the public on Saturday, October 5, as a part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide presented by the Getty. In 2019, Doyle and Vaccaro approached ICA LA with a proposal for an exhibition about artistic practices that considered the fraught relationship between sex and science. "I knew immediately," Ellegood writes in the exhibition's catalogue, "this provocative and timely subject matter would make a compelling contribution to PST ART." For Scientia Sexualis, the curators have gathered an extraordinary and expansive group of artists whose works investigate not only our most intimate and formative experiences with science, medicine, the body, and so much more, but our very understanding of ourselves.

Scroll down and get to know more about this incredible curatorial duo! And don’t miss the opportunity to hear from Doyle and Vaccaro about the exhibition in a public conversation moderated by ICA LA Senior Curator, Amanda Sroka, on Saturday, October 5 at 4pm to kick off our OPEN HOUSE. Details below!

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Team ICA LA

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Jennifer Doyle holds a Ph.D from Duke University and is Professor of English and Cooperating Faculty in Art at the University of California, Riverside. She is a queer theorist, art critic, and sportswriter whose research focuses on art, sport, artist engagement with medical history, and artist collaboration with laboratory sciences. She is the author of Shadow of My Shadow (Duke University Press, 2024); Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2013); and Campus Sex/Campus Security (Semiotext(e), 2015). From 2015-2017, she curated a series of feminist performances for The Broad Museum, “Tip of Her Tongue.” She also organized Nao Bustamante: Soldadera for the Vincent Price Art Museum (2015) and I Feel Different (2009-10) for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Doyle is a member of the Board of Directors for Human Resources Los Angeles. She is the recipient of an Arts Writers Grant and was the 2013-2014 Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of the Arts, London.

Jeanne Vaccaro is a scholar curator whose writing and social practice trace the idiosyncrasies of the archive to activate liberation histories and coalitions. She holds a Ph.D in Performance Studies from New York University and is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Museum Studies at the University of Kansas. She was a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and inaugural scholar-curator at the ONE Archives, where she organized the exhibition Foucault on Acid. Other exhibits include Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics (Cooper Union), Curriculum: Spaces of Learning and Unlearning (efa Project Space), and Xandra Ibarra: nothing lower than I (Human Resources Los Angeles). Jeanne is the Arts & Culture Editor of the Transgender Studies Quarterly and her scholarly writing is published in GLQ, the Journal of Modern Craft, Radical History Review, Social Text, and Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. Her forthcoming book, Handmade: feelings and textures of transgender, was awarded the Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Jeanne is on the Advisory Board of The Center's LGBT Archives and co-founder of the NYC Trans Oral History Project, a community archive in partnership with the New York Public Library.

DIG DEEPER

Get to know more about what Doyle and Vaccaro are up to outside of their work on Scientia Sexualis

Sunset Spectacular Billboard (Ongoing)
Curated by Jeanne Vaccaro

For the past few years, Jeanne Vaccaro has been curating public art for the city of West Hollywood on the Sunset Spectacular moving image billboard. Past installations have featured the work of Aimee Goguen, Eve Fowler, Nao Bustamante, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo. Currently on view is Long Low Line (Fordland) by Los Angeles-based artist Danielle Dean. Vaccaro also recently published an essay on the work of trans photographer Loren Rex Cameron for X-TRA.

Shadow of My Shadow (2024)
by Jennifer Doyle

Fall 2024 brings the publication of Shadow of My Shadow, Jennifer Doyle's book addressing the cycles of paranoia and grievance, displacement and disavowal that characterize harassment cultures. Mark your calendars for a book release event including a reading and reception at HRLA on Thursday, October 24 at 7pm. More details here. 

Open House - October 5, 2024

3:00PM-4:00PM:

ICA LA members are invited to experience a private walkthrough of Scientia Sexualis led by guest curators Jennifer Doyle and Jeanne Vaccaro. RSVP to [email protected] to confirm your attendance.
Not a member yet? Join now!

4:00PM-5:00PM:

Doyle and Vaccaro join Amanda Sroka, ICA LA Senior Curator, in conversation to introduce Scientia Sexualis-an ambitious group survey of contemporary artists whose work confronts, dissolves, and reimagines sex and gender within the scientific apparatus.

5:00PM-7:00PM:

Join us for the public opening reception for Scientia Sexualis featuring tacos by Simón, cocktails by Post Meridiem Spirits, and a DJ set by gfunktrece. DJ and sound provided by dublab soundsystem.

RSVP