[11][12][13][14] Critics, including Roberta Smith and Christopher Knight, praised her scholarship on San Francisco Abstract Expressionism, De Forest, Richard Diebenkorn, and Bernice Bing, among others, as pioneering.

[25][3][26] Her exhibitions and writing often juxtaposed famous and lesser-known artists, establishing dialogues, interrelationships, and insights that served as correctives to dominant art historical narratives that left out significant figures, social groups, and regions.

[5][27][1] In her first decade, Landauer's curating and writing focused on diverse, under-recognized California artists and movements, from early and mid-century modernism to psychedelia to contemporary work.

[34][11][35] Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight called the exhibition catalogue a "little bombshell" that "demolished for good the old canard that Abstract Expressionism began in New York and radiated outward across the country".

[16][4] The first comprehensive museum survey of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism, it assembled paintings by Ronald Bladen, Corbett, Jay DeFeo, Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Sonia Gechtoff, Hassel Smith, Clyfford Still, and others, arguing that artists centered at the old California School of Fine Arts (renamed the San Francisco Art Institute) were hybridizing abstraction, Surrealism, and Expressionism simultaneously with others all across the country rather than responding to developments in the artistic center.

[24][41] "Pages of Sin" highlighted the work of the lesser-known Venice Beach scene artists, as well as others, such as William Everson, Bern Porter, and Kenneth Patchen; "Flashback" centered on book art, posters, paintings, and ephemera (e.g., printed LSD blotter paper) inspired by rock music and hallucinatory drugs in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love and included work by Bay Area-based designers Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, and Wes Wilson.

[24][42] As the Katie and Drew Gibson Chief Curator at the relatively young San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA), Landauer was given license to organize creative exhibitions, including "random encounters" with interspersed emerging-artist work, as well as historical and themed shows.

[2][43][44] She continued to champion California work, while widening her scope to include underrepresented groups, idioms, and riskier sociopolitical themes, which in part reflected the community's entrepreneurial spirit, independent thought, and openness.

[47][27] Circling in time, the show presented an evolving dialogue of diverse artists (e.g., Edward Kienholz, Peter Saul, Robert Therrien, Wayne Thiebaud), ideas, and traditions.

[15][6] "Eye Fruit" offered the first retrospective on Williams's career, introducing the art world to a Bay Area artist often deemed unclassifiable; Hyperallergic described him as "the very distillation of authentic self-expression" and named the show one of its "Best of 2017.