LOS ANGELES — The Corita Art Center (CAC) has announced its new location in the Arts District as well as its transformation into an independent nonprofit dedicated to preserving the legacy of “joyous revolutionary” Corita Kent, a nun, educator, activist, and artist who fused social justice, spirituality, and pop culture in her bold, vibrant artworks. The organization will receive a $5 million seed grant to be apportioned over the next five years from the Immaculate Heart Community (IHC) group under which the CAC was originally founded in 1997.
The new space will officially open on March 8, 2025 with an exhibition showcasing all 29 prints from Kent’s 1969 series a set of heroes and sheroes, which featured Civil Rights figures including Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez alongside images pulled from mass media and quotes from notable writers, musicians, and philosophers.
“There’s an ethos that she belongs to everyone,” CAC Executive Director Nellie Scott told Hyperallergic. “If our mission is to share her, how do we do that?” The Center was previously housed within the Immaculate Heart High School, which posed challenges to visitor access. Its gallery was located in what was essentially a hallway, a less-than-ideal viewing environment.
The new location, a stone’s throw from Hauser and Wirth gallery on Traction Avenue, is planning to welcome school groups once a week and open to the public one day at first, with the possibility of expanding those hours. In addition to the modest but well-proportioned gallery, the space houses a conference room and climate-controlled art storage room with flat files, ideal for hosting researchers, scholars, and other groups that the CAC partners with.
Sister Mary Corita, as she was also known, was 18 when she joined Immaculate Heart of Mary, an order of nuns in Hollywood. She taught art and became something of a celebrity, known for her iconic serigraphs and rebellious spirit and even gracing the cover of the Christmas 1967 issue of Newsweek. Many of her fellow nuns shared her ideas about social justice and church reform, leading to building tension and conflicts with the Archdiocese. Corita sought dispensation from her vows in 1968 and moved to Boston, while the religious order became the IHC, an ecumenical lay community still active today. When Kent died in 1986, she left her archives — 30,000 artworks, objects, and ephemera — to the IHC, which remained its caretaker for nearly 40 years.
“Not only is she a singular woman artist, but what makes this story so unique is this group of women saying, ‘We’re not going to forget her, we’re going to make sure this history continues,’” Scott said.
Scott sees the new CAC location as a space to not just celebrate Kent’s artwork, but to also highlight her activism and the lessons that can be applied to today’s issues. A set of heroes and sheroes was conceived as a traveling exhibition and made a stop at the University of Arkansas in 2022, where students organized voter registration and food drives around the show. Sheharazad Fleming, a creative director and graphic designer who serves as the CAC’s new board president, said she teaches Kent’s work in her classes on professional practice.
“I want students to know there’s a path to serve, that as we’re learning to be professional, there are ways we can show up for communities that are so much more enriching and impactful,” she told Hyperallergic.
In tribute to Kent’s extension of art into life, the CAC recently erected a billboard on Western Avenue just south of Santa Monica Boulevard with an image of her print “hope” (1965). Located at the northern end of East Hollywood’s new gallery district, it also is not far from the site of a billboard that Kent put up in 1984, emblazoned with the words “we can create life without war.”
Scott is excited about the potential and promise of the new location to share Kent with a wider audience and explore new ways to carry forth her pioneering ideas. “The space for us is an experimentation,” she said. Quoting Immaculate Heart College Art Department’s Ten Rules that Kent wrote, Scott added, “Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.”
