Neptune’s Closet (2023)
Created at the UCLA graduate art studios, Neptune’s Closet is a suite of artifacts on loan from archival collections, photographs, sound recordings, glass sculptures for saliva-seeded cider fermentation, and a film about the secret society and private natural history museum in Late Victorian Long Beach, California. The initiatory secret society was raided by the police in 1914, following an elaborate undercover sting operation that saw journalists and private investigators embedded in the clandestine organization.
This thesis exhibition research into this under-studied microhistorical case was generously supported by a Fulbright Award in Fine Art (Canada-USA), and with loans and exhibition support from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: Department of Malacology and Department of Conservation, the San Diego Natural History Museum: Archives, and Department of Marine Invertebrates, the ONE Archives, the Natural History Museum of San Diego and the Historical Society of Long Beach.
Exhibitions