In Conversation: Rita Gonzalez
10 December 2025
Rita Gonzalez is the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She also heads the AMA Artist Award’s Curatorial Committee. We met with her to discuss the contemporary landscape for artists and what she looks for in the work of artist’s working today.
Why does the AMA Artist Award matter in today’s art landscape, particularly for artists navigating institutional and market structures?
Artists definitely need support in a time when larger numbers of emerging and mid-career artists are losing access to commercial galleries–with many of those galleries closing or partnering with other entities. I think of the many mid-career artists who have lost gallery representation because of the challenges that smaller galleries face in keeping the doors open. They are in need of modes of sustainability and ways in which they can navigate changes in the market.
How do initiatives like this bridge the gap between local artistic communities and global recognition?
Artists can do fairly well in a local context for a certain period of their careers but definitely need that exposure to a broader context. It enhances their own work and brings them into dialogue with different artistic contexts and audiences. Again, it is a challenge for emerging and mid-size galleries to travel far and wide to present their roster. We need more ways to enhance the possibilities of the movement and circulation of artists.
What do you look for in an artist’s body of work, conceptually, politically, or materially, that signals a distinct and evolving practice?
It’s really a combination of “all of the above” in terms of the distinctiveness of an aesthetic plus the languages of their work. Who are they hoping to engage? What is special or noteworthy about how they are in dialogue with art history, or history in general.
How do you assess risk-taking and experimentation in emerging art?
That’s a tough question as artists do feel the stress to sometimes create work for a particular context–gallery show, art fair, etc.
It’s a serious dilemma for artists who face juggling their own creative expression with the pressures they receive to make art that will appeal to a collector.
"Artists can do fairly well in a local context for a certain period of their careers but definitely need that exposure to a broader context. It enhances their own work and brings them into dialogue with different artistic contexts and audiences."
What movements or tendencies are shaping contemporary art in North America and beyond right now?
For a number of years, there has been a dialogue with craft–ceramics, textiles–that is engaged with particular legacies but also attempts to charge them with contemporary references. A number of artists who we were drawn to did that exact maneuvering through previous generations–a talking back that complicates art history. Artists are navigating not only the presentation of their own distinctive voice but also speaking back to previous generations.
How do you see the role of curators shifting in response to increased global exchange and digital platforms?
Curators are able to dialogue more fluidly because of digital platforms, conversational and critical. We can seek each other out on Instagram or other platforms when we sense affinities. I “follow” many curators online to see where they are traveling and what shows and artists they are visiting. It’s made a huge impact on the volume and range of artists that I know.
About Rita Gonzalez
Rita Gonzalez is the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she has curated Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement; Asco: Elite of the Obscure; Lost Line: Contemporary Art from the Collection; Agnès Varda in Californialand, and In Production: Art and the Studio System, among other exhibitions and programs. Gonzalez curated L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists, an exhibition that featured sixty gifts and marked the culmination of LACMA’s 50th anniversary year. From 1997–1999, she was the Lila Wallace Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. She was on the curatorial team for Prospect 3 New Orleans and part of the curatorial teams for the first Current L.A. Biennial in 2016 and the Gwangju Biennale in 2018.
