SMITHSONIAN AWARDS ELDREDGE PRIZE TO CéCILE WHITING FOR BOOK ON LA POP ART

Cécile Whiting, a professor of art history at UC Irvine, has won the 2009 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art for her book Pop LA: Art and the City in the 1960s. The Los Angeles Times reports that the prize, accompanied by a three-thousand-dollar award, is given out by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Art-related books published in the last three years are eligible for consideration.

Whiting, who previously taught at UCLA for fifteen years, said the idea for her book originated from a previously published work that focused on Pop art in New York. “I wanted to shift toward LA and explore how artists became fascinated with the city and how they worked to create an image of it,” the author told the Times.

She said that her book is intended to fill in historical background about the Pop-art movement and to bring attention to artists who haven’t received adequate recognition, such as Llyn Foulkes, Noah Purifoy, and the feminist artists of LA’s Women’s House.

A related piece by Whiting, written for Artforum.com’s film column in June 2008, can be found here.