Eric Pals
Los Angeles, California
epalsla@gmail.com

Music

Eric Pals (D. E. Pals) is a lyricist and music co-producer, collaborating with musician Scott DL, who recorded with Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer Bruce Swedien (2012) and was a Kerrville Folk Festival, New Folk Finalist (2004, 2007). By 2021, Scott DL and Pals had released several singles under the moniker of Enlightenment Saloon. Scott DL’s Enlightenment Saloon, an 11-song album, was recorded at The Artisan Studio at Brucemore in Cedar Rapids, IA and released in 2023. Scott DL (composer) and Pals (lyricist) collaborated to write six of the songs on the album. In support of the album, Scott DL was backed by Gerard Estella (keyboards, guitar), Aurélie Berta (vocals), Jim Coates (guitar), Lincoln Ginsberg (bass), and Dave Nanke (drums, percussion) at venues including CSPS Hall (Cedar Rapids), Opus Concert Café (Cedar Rapids), and Hanson Auditorium (Manchester, IA).

Education

Pals joined the faculty of Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Cañada Flintridge, California in 2010. He taught Advanced Placement European History and Modern World History through 2023, and served as Chair of the Social Studies Department, 2013-2021. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of his students passed the College Board AP exams and became eligible for credit at universities across the country.

Pals earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1986, majoring in World Arts and Cultures. Following presentation of his senior colloquium thesis, The Songkran Festival at the Wat Thai of Los Angeles: A Study of Spatial Factors Affecting Social and Artistic Processes, he was invited to meet with UCLA dance ethnology professor Allegra Fuller Snyder, daughter of Buckminster Fuller. He was awarded a University Scholarship from 1984-86 and graduated Summa Cum Laude. Pals earned a Master of Arts in Education from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California in 1995. He wrote Arts World Wide: Visual Arts Curriculum for grades 10 to 12, which was published on the Web and listed on Yahoo in the Arts Education section for several years. He also held a Professional Clear Credential, Social Studies from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Beginning in 1987, Pals served as Coordinator, Modern and Contemporary Art Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), working for renowned curator Stephanie Barron. He participated in organizing several exhibitions including "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, in 1991-92 (traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin) (awarded Best Museum Exhibition, 1991 by the International Association of Art Critics, American Section) and Exiles and Émigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler in 1997. He coordinated the loan checklist and acquisition of photographs for the "Degenerate Art" exhibition catalogue, which received the George Wittenborn Book Award from the Art Libraries Society of North America in 1991.

Pals served as Production Administrator for "Degenerate Art", a film written and directed by David Grubin, and narrated by historian and author David McCullough, 1991-93. He secured educational and commercial licenses for all media in the film, which was broadcast nationally on PBS in 1993 and distributed on PBS Home Video, 1995-2004. He negotiated contracts for the film to be telecast on Bravo! in 1995 and the Ovation Arts Network in 1997. Awards for the film include the CINE Golden Eagle and the New York Festivals, Gold Medal.

In 1994, he was Editor and Programmer of the premiere edition of LACMA’s website, one of the first launched by a major art museum. News about the website was featured in articles in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and ARTnews. He wrote a grant proposal that was funded to establish multimedia resources in LACMA’s Art Research Library, and served as Project Manager, 1994-97. In 1995, he was Producer of Annette Messager on the museum’s website, which featured a multimedia interview of this contemporary French artist. From 1995-96, Pals served as Chair of the Information Technology Task Force, which conducted an assessment of the needs of users of information technology across the entire enterprise. Also at that time, he was a Judge for software application developer Fractal Design’s Digital Art Contest.

Interactive Media

Pals worked on additional interactive media projects from 1997 to 2004. He was Producer of Living with Kidney Disease for Starbright World, the first private social network, started in 1995 by filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Starbright World served to connect chronically ill teenagers with life-threatening medical conditions. Distributed on CD and as a Shockwave program, Living with Kidney Disease was a Software and Information Industry Association, CODiE Awards Finalist in 2002. He also provided technical direction for the Art Museum Network News website that was sponsored by Reuters in 2004.