- Artist or Maker
- Chris Burden
United States, Massachusetts, Boston, active California, 1946-2015 - Title
- L.A.P.D. Uniform
- Date Made
- 1993
- Medium
- Fabric, leather, wood, metal and plastic
- Dimensions
- 88 x 72 x 6 in. (223.52 x 182.88 x 15.24 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2000.151.1a-v
- Collecting Area
- Contemporary Art
- Curatorial Notes
Chris Burden’s work ranges from provocative performances of violence and endurance to explorations of civic infrastructure, including the Urban Light installation in the LACMA entrance plaza and Metropolis II on the first floor of this building. For this piece, Burden collaborated with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia to make thirty oversized replicas of the Los Angeles Police Department uniform, enlarged to fit an imaginary seven-foot, four-inch-tall officer. Produced in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, which was sparked by the acquittals of the four white LAPD officers charged with beating Black motorist Rodney King, the uniforms tower over the viewer in an expression of looming institutional authority.
Wall label, 2021.
- Selected Bibliography
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
Barron, Stephanie, S. Bernstein and I. S. Fort, with essays by Stephanie Barron, Sherri Bernstein, M. Dear, Howard N. Fox and Richard Rodriguez. Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Berkeley: University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.
