Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-81 will constitute the most comprehensive survey exhibition to date to examine the exceptional fertility and diversity of art practice in California between 1974 and 1980, a unique period in American history when the political and social roles of artists, the authority of institutions, and the "objecthood" of art were all being questioned. The years bracketing the exhibition represent the ignominious departure and auspicious arrival of two presidential leaders from California: Richard Nixon (1974) and Ronald Reagan (1980), respectively. The exhibition will argue that the rise of pluralism was the result not only of the collapse of established canons but also the proliferation of new and divergent genres, mediums, and modes of production that reached their apex in the mid- to late 1970s in California, where, in comparison to the East Coast, artists were free to pursue catholic interests in the absence of the dominating forces of art institutions, commercial venues, and critical discourses.

Organized by MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, will feature approximately 225 works by 120 artists, ranging from decorative art to representational painting, conceptual performance to spectacular public demonstration, and documentary video to staged photography. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring newly commissioned essays by Francis Colpitt, Thomas Crow, Charles Desmarais, Peter Frank, Schimmel, Kristine Stiles, and others; an annotated exhibition chronology; a selected bibliography; and a checklist of works in the exhibition.