LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze
September 8, 2021–March 20, 2022

ADMISSION:
Admission is free.

In accordance with the L.A. City Municipal Code Ordinance, beginning November 9 all eligible guests (currently 12+) will be required to show proof of vaccination. Those with medical or religious exemptions may present a negative COVID-19 test performed within 72 hours. Visitors 18+ must also show a valid photo ID. Children 11 and under are currently exempt from this mandate.

To help ensure the safety of vulnerable members of our community, including our youngest visitors and their families, CAAM continues to require face masks.

Go to caamuseum.org/visit for the most current requirements.

DESCRIPTION:
Artist LaToya Ruby Frazier works in photography, video, and performance to build visual archives that address industrialization, Rust Belt revitalization, environmental justice, healthcare inequity, family, and community history. Frazier’s work is exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and she is currently an assistant professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In The Last Cruze, Frazier chronicles the lives of workers at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which stopped production in 2019 after more than 50 years of operation. This shutdown presented Lordstown facility workers with limited choices: relocate, sometimes leaving behind family and support networks, or find work elsewhere—a familiar conundrum facing workers globally. Through 67 photographs, video, and an architectural installation that echoes the Lordstown assembly line, The Last Cruze extends Frazier’s longstanding commitment to visualizing how working-class people are impacted by industrial exploits, environmental injustice, and systemic racism.

A corresponding conversation series, The Last Cruze: Conversations on the Ground in L.A., will feature discussions with Frazier and other artists, architects, scholars, and activists exploring themes in Frazier’s work and their connections to activism locally. Please check back for details.

Related Event:
Industrial Residue in the Rust Belt: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Taylor Renee Aldridge in Conversation
Thursday, September 16, 2021, at 7 p.m. 
California African American Museum
For more info, click HERE.

Presented by the California African American Museum in partnership with USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative, the USC School of Architecture, and the USC Roski School of Art and Design.

LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze was organized by The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and curated by Karsten Lund and Solveig Øvstebø with support from Mirja and Ted Haffner, The Hartfield Foundation, the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul, and Mary Frances Budig and John Hass.

Photo: LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Last Cruze, 2019. Photograph by Useful Art Services.