David Pagel is an associate professor, curator, and art critic. He writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times.
His recent activities include:
Curatorial:
• "Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion," with Terrie Sultan and "Electric Mud," both for the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston
• "L.A. Now," at the Las Vegas Art Museum
• “Underground Pop,” at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY, where he is an adjunct curator. The 10-artist exhibition focused on the links between Pop and Folk Art in works that turn away from the increasingly homogenized character of global culture.
• “Softcore Hard Edge,” at the Art Gallery of Calgary, co-curated with Marianne Elder, an 18-artist exhibition on the legacy of California Hard Edge Abstraction
Publications:
• “Fast Times: Slow Looks,” in “Wendell Gladstone, D.O.A., S.O.S., ETC.,”
• “The Handmade Imagination of John Frame,” in “Three Fragments of a Lost Tale,” for The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens
• “Unassuming and Nutty,” in “Dion Johnson, New Paintings,” Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, Ohio
• “Cool Compassion: Steven Criqui’s Pop Pathos,” in “Steven Criqui: A Retrospective/Memorial,” for the University of California, Irvine
Interviews:
• Michael Brewster, Tom Eatherton, Ed Moses, and John White for “It Happened at Pomona: 1969-1973,” part of the John Paul Getty Museum’s “Pacific Standard Time”
In 2010 he achieved his five-year goal of riding his bicycle the distance equal to the circumference of the Earth, 24,902 miles. Among his many rides was "Breathless Agony 2010." He also builds fantastic dioramas.
M.A., Harvard University, Art History, 1987
B.A., Stanford University, Modern Thought and Literature, with Honors and Distinction in the Humanities, 1985
