(Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood. Photo courtesy of Wayne Shimabukuro)
The City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division unveiled its newest art exhibit, Adelaide Drive: Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy on Saturday, April 14, 2018 at the West Hollywood Library, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard. The exhibit features images of the famous couple taken over the course of several decades by photographer Wayne Shimabukuro. The installation also features five original portraits by Don Bachardy. The exhibit runs through Wednesday, October 17, 2018.
Christopher Isherwood, the famous novelist, and Don Bachardy, a respected portrait artist, were a couple for more than 30 years and lived together on Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica, which provided the inspiration for the name of the exhibition. Isherwood is best known for The Berlin Stories which were two semi-autobiographical novellas adapted into a play (I Am a Camera) and then into a film of the same name, before becoming the acclaimed Broadway musical Cabaret (1966). His novel, A Single Man, was adapted by Tom Ford into a film of the same name in 2009 starring Colin Firth. Isherwood was diagnosed with cancer in 1981, and died in 1986 at his Santa Monica home at age 81.
Don Bachardy’s works reside in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum of Art in San Francisco; the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.; and the National Portrait Gallery in London; among many other places. Six books of his works have been published and he was the subject of the Terry Sanders documentary, The Eyes of Don Bachardy. He collaborated with Isherwood on Frankenstein: The True Story (1973).
Wayne Shimabukuro has been photographing the artists of the Los Angeles region for more than 30 years. While he started his career by casually taking portraits of his art school friends and teachers in the early 1970s, he eventually morphed into taking hundreds of photographs of artists from the L.A. area. His work is included in numerous collections, including The Robert V. Fullerton Museum of Art at California State University, San Bernardino; The Getty Research Institute; the Huntington Library and Art Gallery; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The exhibit is part of the City of West Hollywood’s One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival which celebrates LGBTQ pride through the arts and runs from May 22, 2018 through June 30, 2018. This year’s theme is I Remember. For additional information, please visit www.weho.org/pride.
The Adelaide Drive: Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy exhibit will be on view at the West Hollywood Library, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard, during regular library operating hours — M-Th (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.); Fr-Sa (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.); Su (12 p.m. to 4 p.m.); closed holidays and June 8-10 — through Wednesday, October 17, 2018.
For more information on this exhibit and the work of the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division, please visit www.weho.org/arts.
