Gala Porras-Kim: The Weight of a Patina of Time

Art that questions the museum’s role in assigning meaning to cultural artifact

This thought-provoking volume focuses on a series of works by Gala Porras-Kim, whose research-based practice looks closely at the layered meaning of objects in the twenty-first-century museum. Her in-depth explorations of the uncertain histories of ancient objects reimagine their pasts while charting new possibilities for their present and future. The essays, written by curators, academics, and conservators, reflect on Porras-Kim’s affinity for fragments, conflicting histories, undeciphered texts, and other instances of uncertainty within the space of the museum. They also address the challenges of maintaining knowledge over centuries in shifting institutional contexts, and document Porras-Kim’s interventions into systems of classification and knowledge production.

Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984) is a Colombian-Korean American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles and London. Matthew H. Robb is chief curator at the Fowler Museum.