PASADENA, CA.- The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) presents the fourth California Design Biennial, Action/Reaction, an exhibition that highlights the most significant and innovative designs being created in California. Great works of art are often inspired by challenges and adversity; this exhibition will focus on how California’s established and emerging designers are responding to current economic, political, and environmental challenges. In a departure from past California Design Biennial exhibitions, this exhibition will not feature a juried competition but will instead have a separate curator for each design category: industrial design, fashion, graphic, transportation and architecture. This is the first year that architecture is being included as a category.

The curators, all design experts, will place the work in a context for the viewer that facilitates a deeper and richer understanding of the design that surrounds them every day. Curators include Louise Sandhaus, graphic designer and California Institute of the Arts professor; Rose Apodaca, pop culture and fashion journalist, and former Women’s Wear Daily West Coast Bureau Chief; Stewart Reed, head of Transportation Design at Art Center College of Design; Frances Anderton, Los Angeles Dwell editor and host of KCRW's DnA: Design and Architecture; and Alissa Walker, freelance design journalist for publications such as Good, Fast Company, and Core77.

Organized and presented by the PMCA since 2003, the California Design Biennial showcases new directions in design, as well as exploring how design impacts and inspires our culture. While the exhibition focuses on work created in the past two years, it builds upon the unique history of California design for the past 100 years. From Greene and Greene to Charles and Ray Eames to the designers at Apple and Fuseproject, California has long been home to important designers who have changed the way we think about design and its function in our daily lives.

Americans today live in a world of transformation and upheaval, facing a national economic crisis and worldwide political uncertainties and are becoming increasingly attuned to environmental issues. The designs in California Design Biennial: Action/Reaction will address how designers are responding to these issues and how the products they create reflect the influences of our changing world.