LOS ANGELES, CA.- On Monday, May 14, the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) announced their 2011 Awards for Excellence, naming Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945–1980 (Getty Publications, $59.95, hardcover) Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue. Co-editor Andrew Perchuk, Deputy Director of the Getty Research Institute, was honored by the organization.

Complementing the region-wide exhibition initiative of the same name, Pacific Standard Time is a comprehensive and richly illustrated book that explores postwar American art from a new perspective: Southern California. The analysis of the L.A. art scene from the end of World War II until the beginning of the 1980s—the first in-depth scholarly survey of the region’s art—demonstrates the major role Southern California artists played in the twentieth century’s most influential art movements. Until recently that role had been overshadowed by New York-centric views of modernism, which tended to date the birth of Los Angeles’s art scene to the 1980s—suggesting that earlier decades were devoid of meaningful activity. This book sets the record straight.

Grounded in more than a decade of research and organized into five chapters, each augmented by lively sidebars, the book takes readers on a tour of an art world in constant formation. From well-known figures such as John Baldessari, Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, and Ed Ruscha to lesser-known artists working in painting, sculpture, ceramics, performance, and video art, the material covered is vibrant and diverse.

The story unfolds through the people, relationships, and ideas that defined the region’s artistic production. Photographs and rare materials from the Getty Research Institute and other archives bring the era to life, opening a window onto the emergence of hard-edge abstraction, ceramic sculpture, assemblage, pop art, conceptualism, performance art, and avant-garde practices that blurred boundaries and defied labels.

Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945–1980 is an indispensable resource that will fundamentally change the view of modern art in America.