Alta Exhibition Maps Los Angeles Through Portraits and Voices
The Glendale show pairs art, science and memory.
GLENDALE, Calif. — Alta / A Human Atlas of a City of Angels begins with a face. Then it gives that face a voice.
The exhibition, now at ReflectSpace inside Glendale Central Library, brings together portraits, oral histories and ancestral DNA to tell a broader story about Los Angeles. The project features 100 Angelenos who have made an impact across Los Angeles County. It is on view May 9 through July 12, 2026.
Artist Marcus Lyon created the project in collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute. ReflectSpace says the exhibition uses personal narratives, portraiture and DNA data to explore migration, belonging and the changing human story of Los Angeles.
For Lyon, the project grew out of a frustration with traditional portraiture.
“I’ve been taking portraits all my life,” Lyon said. “But I was frustrated by how a portrait was the chapel of the viewer, that the audience took control of the narrative. So I decided I wanted to build a deeper project based on portraiture where the portrait sitters got a chance to tell their stories.”
He calls the project a human atlas. Not a map of streets. A map of lives.
The work connects art, science and storytelling. It also asks a civic question. Who builds a city? And who gets remembered?
“What we like to say about Human Atlas is that it’s an opportunity to change the future, to move the needle through art, science and storytelling,” Lyon said.
One of the people featured in the project is Marco Vargas. His work focuses on education technology and expanding access to emerging tools for young people.
For Vargas, the exhibition did more than place his portrait on a wall. It connected him to his family history. It also connected him to other people working to change Los Angeles.
“This project has really helped me better understand how connected we are as social change makers,” Vargas said. “I had an idea my family’s from Guatemala and migrated here to the United States. But I was very excited to see my Indigenous roots.”
Vargas said the project now lives inside his own educational work. He has used some of the profiles to create immersive virtual reality learning experiences.
“One of the awesome things that I was able to do with the Humanness Project is I turned some of the profiles into immersive learning experiences in virtual reality,” Vargas said.
The exhibition is part of the broader Human Atlas platform and was created as a social impact art project. The Alta project is also available in book, podcast, app and digital formats.
Lyon said the stories changed him too.
“If you are the product of every story that you’ve been told, then when you speak, you speak as a multitude,” he said. “Their gift is wisdom that I can take into my own life.”
Alta is about Los Angeles. But it is also about belonging. The people in the portraits come from different histories, families and parts of the world. Together, they tell one story.
A city is not just a place. It is the people who keep giving it meaning.