On the Edge: Los Angeles Art from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection

BILLY AL BENGSTON Norcatur, 1987. Acrylic on canvas, 86 x 136"

By PETER FRANK August 25, 2024

Most art collectors, goes the adage, have a great ear for art. The collectors we know and revere are the ones who have a great nose. That nose leads them to the art their peers are ignoring, whether it’s the work of a solitary hermit or that of a whole movement, a genius loci or a genius location. Often stepping in to document and support a scene otherwise starved for attention, these patrons are like foster parents, not only backing but cultivating the artistic circles they identify with.

Joan Agajanian Quinn and her late husband Jack were such olfactory salonistas, hosting a continual parade of artists and their art through their lives and living spaces. Jack was a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles, glad to provide legal guidance and even assistance to his artist friends. Joan was, and remains, a kind of meta-socialite who does it for show and for fun and for educational purposes. Her long-time position as West Coast Editor for Interview magazine made her a crucial conduit between the LA and NY scenes. She showed New York that Los Angeles art was indeed a thing. And she showed Los Angeles that Andy Warhol was indeed a thing.

There are more than a few collectors in southern California who have accrued or are accruing well-chosen assemblies of Los Angeles art (and even a few who’ve done the same with and for art in San Diego, Santa Barbara, etc.) But the Quinn Family Collection goes back more than half a century, brims with choice examples of many now-vaunted artists, and doggedly maintains its geographic integrity separate from its other treasures (such as Polaroids by, yep, Andy Warhol). In effect, it is a survey ready to hit the road.

TOM WUDL Untitled, 1975. Mixed media, 21 5/8 x 26 5/8"

And hit the road it has. “On the Edge” began its venue-hopping back in fall 2021 at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, a handsome and gracious space (don’t underestimate Bakersfield!) which showed the collection selection to distinct advantage. The show, its contents modified, then hopped across the country to a two-year gig at the Armenian Museum of America in the Boston area. Joan’s family was prominent in California’s prewar Armenian community, and she continues to support the now much larger community’s cultural activity. She has also long championed the work of local Armenian-Americans like John Altoon, Chas Garabedian, and Aram Saroyan. She has also supported cultural institutions in post-Soviet Armenia itself.)

The current iteration of “On the Edge” occupies the Laguna Art Museum’s relatively cozy digs. There seem to be even more works on view than at Bakersfield, but this could be the jostling (but not crowding) effect of the close hanging. Or are there more large paintings? Or does it just seem like there are more large paintings? Anyone who’s been to the Quinn manse or even seen pictures of it over the years knows that a tight exhibition aggregation does justice to the Quinns’ lifestyle. If their bona fides aren’t secured by the consistently museum-level examples they own and display, the fact that their residence, shall we say, belongs to the art and they only sleep there marks them as True Collectors – Herb and Dorothy Vogel with more resources.

JOHN ALTOON Seaview Series, 1964. Ink and pastel on paper, 60 x 40"

Anyone with a taste for or even curiosity about southern California art of the last half century needs to see “On the Edge” in one of its venues. (Next and so-far last will be the Tucson Museum of Art, October 2025-February 2026.) Sculpture aficionados may be disappointed in the relative paucity of three-dimensional works on view, but not with the quality of these examples: objects by Lynda Benglis, Clare Falkenstein, George Herms, Robert Graham, Charles Arnoldi, tough and typical, do solids a solid in the show. But the big come-away lesson is in image vis-à-vis material: the Laguna selection spreads out between the abstract and figurative, the gritty and the shiny, the beautiful and the weird, allowing each artist’s universe to blossom right there in front of you. A huge Billy Al Bengston brings the planets into the room; a dark, agitated John Valadez brings the reality of jungle politics into your adjusting eyeballs.

Famously, Joan Quinn has long maintained a collection separate from that she accrued with Jack. This personal bouquet comprises umpty-ump portraits – or portrayals – of Joan. Joan does Joan and everybody else does, too. At this point the Joan Quinn Collection of Joan Quinns must number in the hundreds. It, too, has been excerpted for travel. The Laguna selection, modestly sized, is also especially well chosen, the raucous fun coursing through the very concept of such a collection here tuned low to a dry, almost deferential wit. Almost. 

On view at the Laguna Art Museum March 23 through September 2, 2024. WM