Pasadena Museum Of California Art

"This year alone, more data will be generated than in the cumulative history of humanity," says Dan Goods. "Stuff is being collected in all sorts of interesting forms and piling up somewhere. What do we do with it?" It's an apt question for the Too Much Information Age, and to address the query, Goods and co-curator David Delgado have rounded up a collection of geek-friendly installations on display through April 12 at Pasadena Museum of California Art's "Data + Art" exhibition.

Jessica Rath's project “Take Me to the Apple Breeder” at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, begins with a fundamentally captivating subject: the metaphor-rich science of apple cultivation. After coming across a mention in a book of the USDA's Plant Genetics Resource Unit at Cornell University, where endangered varieties of apples are preserved and clones crossbred to produce new varieties, Rath made several visits to the center over the course of three years and presumably learned a great deal about apples.

'Beyond Ultraman': An article in Thursday's Calendar Weekend about the art toy show "Beyond Ultraman" stated that it is a visiting exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and is being presented by the Los Angeles Toy, Doll and Amusements Museum. In fact, the show is a joint exhibition by both museums at the Pasadena site.

In 1933 America was staggering through the Great Depression, and Angelenos Jake Zeitlin and Delmer Daves organized a small group to support an artist they believed in, Paul Landacre. Each contributed $100 a year - that went a long way in those days - which awarded them a new print every month. Zeitlin ran an antiquarian book store, which included a small art gallery, and Daves was a budding Hollywood writer who would later direct the film noir classic "Dark Passage" (1947) and the original "3:10 to Yuma" (1957)

"My art says that we are still here and the world doesn't look so bad after all," says Timothy J. Clark, host of PBS' "Focus on Watercolor" and the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (pictured, detail of 1998's "Artist on the Hill"). On Saturday, Clark and guest curator Jean Stern will lead a walk through the show's 35 drawings, watercolors and oil paintings. 2 p.m. Sat., $6. Show ends April 13. www.pmcaonline.org

The way Herb Alpert sees it, his sculptures are "visual music." They are songs to be listened to, just like anything the famed trumpeter ever recorded with his Tijuana Brass. Beginning this week, anyone wanting to take a listen to Alpert's sculptures will have three opportunities. Twenty-six of his "spirit totems" are on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Watercolorist Milford Zornes keeps coming back to Southern California even though his father once accused him "of having no ambition other than to go someplace," he says. The Claremont resident is indeed a fanatical traveler, schlepping his easel to such places as Uganda, India and Cuba. But Zornes' heart has always led him back to the region he has called home since 1925. In January, Zornes, who still paints, celebrated his 95th birthday.

The images are familiar yet hard to place: A parking meter and street lamp framed against a blank wall. A wood fence overrun by a climbing vine. A freeway ramp slicing through a cloudless azure sky. These carefully wrought Modernist visions of Los Angeles are so iconic and contemporary-looking that it's hard to believe they were painted half a century ago by transplant Edward Biberman. Never heard of him? Not to worry. The Pasadena Museum of California Art exhibit "Edward Biberman's L.A."

EVENTS The Pasadena Museum of California Art is turning 10 years old and to celebrate it's throwing a party for the people featuring a free beer garden, hands-on workshops, live performances, food trucks including Nom Nom, Cool Haus and Pie and Burger, and an old-fashioned birthday cake. Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 East Union St., Pasadena. 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sat. Free. (626) 568-3665; http://www.pmcaonline.org.

A century ago, the California Art Club was launched by a handful of European émigrés and plucky Americans who decided to make creativity their calling.  In those days, being an artist was not so fashionable a profession, but the founders included many now considered the greats of early California art such as Franz Bischoff, Hanson Puthuff and William Wendt.  In this post-Modern era, the club's emphasis on representational style and academic subject...

Anyone who has driven around Los Angeles in the last 50 years knows Millard Sheets' art, even if they don't know his name. For Home Savings of America, he designed the distinctive white marble branch banks and their artistic decorations, sometimes collaborating with others, starting in 1952. (Many of those buildings became branches of Washington Mutual and now Chase bank.) The stripped classicism of the architecture is enlivened by Sheets' specialty: stylized mosaic murals and wall reliefs.

After seeing "Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart," showing at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through Jan. 31, one may wonder why Gearhart isn't better known. Back in the 1930s, at the height of her career, she became one of the top color-block printmakers in America, displaying her work at the Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as at numerous shows on the West Coast. Even if her fame faded in the East, where her mountainous landscapes may not have resonated as much, one would expect her continued popularity in California, where she lived and worked until her death in 1958 at age 89. Over the course of her 30-year career, this Pasadena artist -- one of three sisters, none of them married, all of them teachers in the public school system, all of them artists and travelers -- became her own compelling, uplifting portrait of female achievement and independence.

"This year alone, more data will be generated than in the cumulative history of humanity," says Dan Goods. "Stuff is being collected in all sorts of interesting forms and piling up somewhere. What do we do with it?" It's an apt question for the Too Much Information Age, and to address the query, Goods and co-curator David Delgado have rounded up a collection of geek-friendly installations on display through April 12 at Pasadena Museum of California Art's "Data + Art" exhibition.

"My art says that we are still here and the world doesn't look so bad after all," says Timothy J. Clark, host of PBS' "Focus on Watercolor" and the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (pictured, detail of 1998's "Artist on the Hill"). On Saturday, Clark and guest curator Jean Stern will lead a walk through the show's 35 drawings, watercolors and oil paintings. 2 p.m. Sat., $6. Show ends April 13. www.pmcaonline.org

Five years after art collectors Robert and Arlene Oltman purchased a piece of property in downtown Pasadena with the vague idea of building a residence for themselves in a mixed-use facility, their dream is becoming a reality. But they won't be living above a boutique or restaurant, like a growing number of urban dwellers. Instead, they are moving into the top floor of a three-story building that houses the new Pasadena Museum of California Art.

EVENTS The Pasadena Museum of California Art is turning 10 years old and to celebrate it's throwing a party for the people featuring a free beer garden, hands-on workshops, live performances, food trucks including Nom Nom, Cool Haus and Pie and Burger, and an old-fashioned birthday cake. Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 East Union St., Pasadena. 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sat. Free. (626) 568-3665; http://www.pmcaonline.org.

'Beyond Ultraman': An article in Thursday's Calendar Weekend about the art toy show "Beyond Ultraman" stated that it is a visiting exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and is being presented by the Los Angeles Toy, Doll and Amusements Museum. In fact, the show is a joint exhibition by both museums at the Pasadena site.