Blue Hour

About Blue Hour

Blue Hour supports AltaSea’s  Project Blue, which offers students a voice in supporting LA as the center of the Blue Economy through education, career opportunity, access to access to arts and culture. This year’s Blue Hour Guest Curator is American interdisciplinary artist, Kim Abeles whose artworks explore the environment, biography, geography and feminism.

Blue Hour Story

From Dame Helen Mirren introducing the inaugural Blue Hour in 2020 at the height of the pandemic at a mesmerizing drive in event with stunning visuals in front of the historic Battleship USS Iowa in the heart of harbor;  to a journey to the historic Korean Bell, beginning with a curated exhibition at AltaSea community partner Angels Gate Cultural Center, home to more than 50 artist studios; to The Warehouse, opening the doors to our historic 400,000 square foot campus, featuring world-renowned guest artists David LaChapelle, and, Taiji Terasaki in collaboration with Parley for the Oceans in an enthralling large-scale installation. Angels Gate Cultural Center artists & Otis College of Design contributed a stunning array of larger-than-life installations.

More Blue Hour Creators

• The debut of a pivotal section of renowned opera director Peter Sellars’ production of Mozart’s Idomeneo
• Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Artist-at-Sea Program Exhibition
• Refik Anadol, pioneer of rare digital art featuring his Bosphorus & Black Sea
• Mason Rothschild and Annie Sperling’s Deep Map, a unique art installation projected on to the USS Iowa using Esri ocean data.

Kim has curated an exhibition featuring installations, ceramics, video, glass, photography, sound, and painting by over 20 artists. Below is a sneak peak of 4 artists work this year.

Awards From Explorer to Innovation to NextGen

• Bob Ballard Among the most accomplished deep-sea explorers in the world, known for his discoveries of the sunken R.M.S. Titanic and numerous other shipwrecks around the world,
• Legend Sylvia Earle, known as “Her Deepness” for the record number of hours she spent exploring underwater, former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Time Magazine’s inaugural “Hero for the Planet”.
• Dawn Wright, chief scientist of ESRI, and the first black female to dive to the ocean floor
• Robert Downey, Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition, and Philippe Cousteau’s EarthEcho International
• Torrance teen Avantika Vijesh/ California Institute of the Arts/Walter Munk Foundation for the Oceans to Watt’s based nonprofit EECI, who leads an effort to train and mentor multicultural entrepreneurs and at-risk youth.

Check back soon for updates!