We are happy to announce that Public Fruit Theater is almost ready for public view!
Situated on the northwest corner of LACMA’s new park grounds, Public Fruit Theater
is near where old citrus groves once formed the Los Angeles landscape.
Public Fruit Theater is a piece we conceived of years ago, and we are so excited that it’s going
to be one of the cornerstones of LACMA’s new landscape.

In this incarnation of Public Fruit Theater, Marco Barrantes and Michelle Matthews of La Loma Development Company, pioneers in green building and the use of “Urbanite,” designed, engineered and constructed the amphitheater which surrounds one orange tree.
Find more info about La Loma on their website:
www.lalomadevelopment.com
Find out more about ‘Urbanite’: Sustainablog:The Recycled, Post-Industrial Green Building Material: Urbanite

The new area of the LACMA grounds behind ‘LACMA WEST,’ are being planted now and will be a beautiful park open to the public – we think an opening party will be in order soon!

Public Fruit Theater, Los Angeles, 2010
By Fallen Fruit (David Burns, Matias Viegener, Austin Young) in collaboration with La Loma Development (Marco Barrantes, Michelle Mathews).

This garden is a nostalgic monument to the orange trees that covered much of Southern California’s landscape for decades and were an integral part of our economy, agricultural history, and identity. It also brings into focus our precarious and often domineering relationship to nature. The dry-stacked broken concrete is a reminder that the streets and sidewalks of our neighborhoods cover what were once orchards.

Rather than looking at fruit trees as simply a source of food, Public Fruit Theater upholds the tree as a durational performance. Viewers complete the story through observation, witnessing the tree’s leafing out, blooming, and ripening of its fruit. Fruit trees that exist in public space present us with a question of ownership. Whose fruit is this, and who is the public? If the tree offers us fruit, what do we offer it? Where does the theater begin and the performance end?

Orange and Fairfax at LACMA. just near the site of Public Fruit Theater.

EATLACMA.org
LACMA.org
www.lalomadevelopment.com

EATLACMA was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible by a Museum and Community Connections Grant from MetLife Foundation.
Additional support was provided by the Ralph M. Parsons Fund and Paramount Citrus.