LOS ANGELES.- For too long, art historians, students and theorists have toiled apart from their colleagues at museums and galleries. No longer, at least not in Los Angeles.

Directed by art historian Richard Meyer of USC College, The Contemporary Project for the study of contemporary art, culture and criticism at USC takes an important first step toward cementing partnerships between university-based thinkers and the contemporary art world.

“There is an enormous amount of interest in contemporary art, arguably more than ever before in modern times. Yet much of what happens in the art world – the international biennial circuit, the marketing of blue-chip art, the specialized language of criticism – seems to close it off to broader public dialogue and participation,” Meyer said.

“I think there is a real desire to open things up and to break through the old divides between academia, the museum and the commercial art world,” he added.

Jointly sponsored by USC College and the USC Roski School of Fine Art, The Contemporary Project, announced this month, is overseen by an advisory committee that includes Dean Ruth Weisberg of USC Roski, art history department chair Eunice Howe of USC College, USC Fisher Museum director Selma Holo, and curators and directors of contemporary art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute, LAXART and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

“We all know that Los Angeles has become a center of artistic production, but it might be less clear that there are some brilliant minds here attempting to understand the dynamics that underlie the so-called art scene. The Contemporary Project will bring those minds together in exciting ways,” Holo said.

Other members of The Contemporary Project advisory committee include USC Public Art Studies Program director Joshua Decter, photographer and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart of USC Roski, history professor Vanessa Schwartz of USC College and colleagues from UCLA and the University of California, Irvine.

“It took a long time for art historians to acknowledge that contemporary art was part of what they were interested in studying,” said Schwartz, director of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate program at USC.

As Schwartz explained: “It’s very important to contextualize and give critical perspective that isn’t just about validating or saying, ‘This is good or bad,’ but about understanding, and the only way to understand is to hear from live artists about what they’re doing, which students can’t do with Leonardo.”

The Contemporary Project has several events planned for the forthcoming academic year. The first, in collaboration with LACMA, will be a public roundtable on the role of sports and masculinity in contemporary art on Oct. 16.

During the College Art Association conference in Los Angeles in February, The Contemporary Project will team with the USC Fisher Museum to host a Warhol Party coinciding with the opening of “Looking Into Andy Warhol’s Photographic Practice,” an exhibition of Warhol’s photographs.

The Contemporary Project also will host a two-day series of public dialogues at USC on March 27 and 28.

Panelists in “Contemporary Conversations” will include leading figures in the international art and museum worlds, including LACMA director Michael Govan, DIA Art Foundation and Centro Reina Sofio ( Madrid ) curator Lynne Cooke, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Venice Biennale curator Michael Taylor and artist Barbara Kruger, whose elevator installation is a permanent feature of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA.

“Because Los Angeles is so disparate and diverse, we have been missing a lot of conversations that need to be had among producers and consumers of the visual arts,” Holo said. “With this USC initiative, we hope to spark intense concentrated and collaborative inquiry to serve our students at USC and museums throughout the city.”