Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work

September 19, 2024 - January 19, 2025

As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science Collide, La Jolla Historical Society presents Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, a retrospective exhibition about the work of husband-and-wife team of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. Founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Helen and Newton were local San Diego artists for nearly four decades, where they developed their pioneering concepts of Ecological Art.

Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work is the first exhibition to focus on their California work, including nearly 20 projects produced between the late 1960s and 2000s. Responding to growing environmental awareness, the Harrisons pushed conceptual art in new directions, from their efforts to make topsoil—endangered in many places—to their transformation of a Pasadena debris basin into a recreational area. The couple agreed that they would only take on projects that benefited the ecosystem. California Work revisits the Harrisons’ groundbreaking ecological concepts through re-staged performance artworks, drawings, paintings, photography, collages, maps, archival documentation of large-scale installations, and unrealized proposals for real-world ecological solutions. The exhibition locations will examine the California works chronologically and thematically: Urban Ecologies, The Prophetic Works, Saving the West, and Future Gardens.

Urban Ecologies, presented at the La Jolla Historical Society, will trace the Harrisons’ collaborative practice during the late 1960s-1990s. Such iconic works as Making Earth, Survival Pieces, and California Wash will highlight the development and evolution of their ideas about ecosystems, and the discovery of different approaches to land reclamation and the restoration of canyons and watersheds. The viewers will also explore the Harrisons’ unrealized eco-urban projects, including San Diego Round, Horton Plaza, and Miramar Landfill, proposing how to restore the natural balance of compromised ecosystems in San Diego.

Curated by Tatiana Sizonenko

About Pacific Standard Time 2024

The third regional collaboration in the Getty series, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, will focus on the intersection of science and art with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world.

For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, visit:

Getty Announces PST Art and Science Collide

Getty PST Exhibitions - Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work

Web of Life Symposium, March 17-18, 2022

In preparation of the exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, an international group of ecological artists, writers, and scholars gathered in La Jolla to reflect on the theme “Listening to the Web of Life” (in Newton Harrison’s directive). Learn more and watch recordings of the symposium.