Los Angeles County Museum Of Art
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an
art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own Collection (artwork), collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. A ...
located on
Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...
in the
Miracle Mile Miracle Mile may refer to: Places in the United States * Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, a district of Los Angeles * Miracle Mile (Coral Gables), a shopping area in Coral Gables, Florida * Miracle Mile (Manhasset), New York, a premium sh ...
vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the
La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...
(George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961, splitting from the
Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large coll ...
. Four years later, it moved to the Wilshire Boulevard complex designed by
William Pereira William Leonard Pereira (April 25, 1909 – November 13, 1985) was an American architect from Chicago, Illinois, who was noted for his futuristic designs of landmark buildings such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. Remarkably pro ...
. The museum's wealth and collections grew in the 1980s, and it added several buildings beginning in that decade and continuing in subsequent decades. In 2020, four buildings on the campus were demolished to make way for a reconstructed facility designed by
Peter Zumthor Peter Zumthor (; born 26 April 1943) is a Swiss architect whose work is frequently described as uncompromising and minimalist. Though managing a relatively small firm, he is the winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize and 2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal. E ...
. His design drew strong community opposition and was lambasted by architectural critics and museum curators, who objected to its reduced gallery space, poor design, and exorbitant costs. LACMA is the
largest Large means of great size. Large may also refer to: Mathematics * Arbitrarily large, a phrase in mathematics * Large cardinal, a property of certain transfinite numbers * Large category, a category with a proper class of objects and morphisms (o ...
art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually. It holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series.


History


Early years

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the
Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large coll ...
, founded in 1910 in Exposition Park near the
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
. Howard F. Ahmanson, Sr.,
Anna Bing Arnold Anna may refer to: People Surname and given name * Anna (name) Mononym * Anna the Prophetess, in the Gospel of Luke * Anna (wife of Artabasdos) (fl. 715–773) * Anna (daughter of Boris I) (9th–10th century) * Anna (Anisia) (fl. 1218 to 1221) ...
and
Bart Lytton Bart Lytton (born Bernard Shulman; October 4, 1912 – June 29, 1969) was an American financier, Democratic Party fundraiser and philanthropist largely remembered for his flamboyance. A self-made man, he was a founder of one of the largest savings ...
were the first principal patrons of the museum. Ahmanson made the lead donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the
National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
.


William Pereira Buildings

The museum, built in a style similar to
Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
and the
Los Angeles Music Center The Music Center (officially named the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County) is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. Located in downtown Los Angeles, The Music Center is composed of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion ...
, consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and the Lytton Gallery (renamed the Frances and
Armand Hammer Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 – December 10, 1990) was an American business manager and owner, most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran from 1957 until his death. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, ...
Building in 1968). The board selected LA architect
William Pereira William Leonard Pereira (April 25, 1909 – November 13, 1985) was an American architect from Chicago, Illinois, who was noted for his futuristic designs of landmark buildings such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. Remarkably pro ...
over the directors' recommendation of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
for the buildings. According to a 1965 ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million.Doug Stevens (April 10, 2015)
LACMA then, now and in the future
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
Construction began in 1963, and was undertaken by the Del E. Webb Corporation. Construction was completed in early 1965. At the time, the
Los Angeles Music Center The Music Center (officially named the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County) is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. Located in downtown Los Angeles, The Music Center is composed of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion ...
and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles. When the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, but they were filled in and covered over when tar from the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits began seeping in.


1980s

Money poured into LACMA during the boom years of the 1980s, a reportedly $209 million in private donations during director Earl Powell's tenure. To house its growing collections of modern and contemporary art and to provide more space for exhibitions, the museum hired the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates to design its $35.3-million, 115,000-square-foot
Robert O. Anderson Robert Orville Anderson (April 12, 1917 – December 2, 2007) was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist who founded Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). Anderson also supported several cultural organizations, from the Los Angele ...
Building for 20th-century art, which opened in 1986 (renamed the Art of the Americas Building in 2007). In the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new partially roofed central court, nearly an acre of space bounded by the museum's four buildings. The museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect
Bruce Goff Bruce Alonzo Goff (June 8, 1904 – August 4, 1982) was an American architect, distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma and elsewhere. A 1951 ''Life Magazine'' article stat ...
, opened in 1988, as did the
B. Gerald Cantor Bernard Gerald Cantor (December 17, 1916 – July 3, 1996) was the founder and chairman of securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Career Cantor's parents were Rose (née Delson) and Julius Cantor, Jewish immigrants from Belarus. Born in the Bronx ...
Sculpture Garden of
Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
s. In 1999, the
Hancock Park Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The park's destinations include the La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, which display ...
Improvement Project was complete, and the LACMA-adjacent park (designed by landscape architect
Laurie Olin Laurie Olin (born 1938, Marshfield, Wisconsin) is an American landscape architect. He has worked on landscape design projects at diverse scales, from private residential gardens to public parks and corporate/museum campus plans. Early life Olin g ...
) was inaugurated with a free public celebration. The $10-million renovation replaced dead trees and bare earth with picnic facilities, walkways, viewing sites for the
La Brea tar pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...
and a 150-seat red granite amphitheater designed by artist
Jackie Ferrara Jackie Ferrara (born Jacqueline Hirschhorn on November 17, 1929, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American sculptor and draughtswoman best known for her pyramidal stacked structures. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los A ...
. Also in 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent former May Company department store building, an impressive example of
streamline moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...
architecture designed by Albert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998.


Renzo Piano Buildings

In 2004 LACMA's Board of Trustees unanimously approved a plan for LACMA's transformation by architect
Rem Koolhaas Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a re ...
, who had proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new single, tent-topped structure, estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million.Suzanne Muchnic (December 3, 2002)
LACMA finds itself in two funding worlds
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
Kohlhaas edged out French architect
Jean Nouvel Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and ''Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has ob ...
, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities. Suzanne Muchnic (December 6, 2001)
L.A. Art Museum Decides to Radically Reshape Itself
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
The list of candidates had previously narrowed to five in May 2001: Koolhaas, Nouvel,
Steven Holl Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is a New York-based American architect and watercolorist. Among his most recognized works are the 2019 REACH expansion of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the 2019 Hunters Point Library in Q ...
,
Daniel Libeskind Daniel Libeskind (born May 12, 1946) is a Polish–American architect, artist, professor and set designer. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect. He is known for the design a ...
and
Thom Mayne Thom Mayne (born January 19, 1944) is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is a trustee and the coordinator of the Design of Cities p ...
. However, the project soon stalled after the museum failed to secure funding. In 2004 LACMA's Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by architect
Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (20 ...
. The planned transformation consisted of three phases. Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008. The renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned
graffiti art Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...
by street artists
Margaret Kilgallen Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (October 28, 1967 – June 26, 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist who combined graffiti art, painting, and installation art. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was ...
and
Barry McGee Barry McGee (born 1966) is an American contemporary artist. He is a well known graffiti artist, and a pioneer of the Mission School art movement. McGee is known by his monikers: Twist, Ray Fong, Bernon Vernon, and P.Kin. Life and education Barry ...
. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings. The BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) comprise the $191 million (originally $150 million) first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign. BCAM is named for Eli and Edy Broad, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign; Eli Broad also serves on LACMA's board of directors. BCAM opened on February 16, 2008, adding of exhibition space to the museum. In 2010 the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world. The second phase was intended to turn the May building into new offices and galleries, designed by SPF Architects. As proposed, it would have had flexible gallery space, education space, administrative offices, a new restaurant, a gift shop and a bookstore, as well as study centers for the museum's departments of costume and textiles, photography and prints and drawings, and a roof sculpture garden with two works by
James Turrell James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. Much of Turrell's career has been devoted to a still-unfinished work, ''Roden Crater'', a natural cinder cone crater located outside ...
. However, construction of this phase was halted in November 2010.Rachel Lee Harris (November 25, 2010)
Construction Has Halted at Los Angeles Museum
''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''.
Phase two and three were never completed. In October 2011, LACMA entered into an agreement with the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...
under which the Academy will establish its
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is a museum in Los Angeles, California constructed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which is devoted to the history, science, and cultural impact of the film industry. It is the f ...
, in the May building. The redesign and additions are designed by Renzo Piano as well. Construction of the renovated building is ongoing and the Academy Museum is set to open by 2021. The Grand opening was delayed by COVID-19.


Watts Towers

In 2010 LACMA partnered with the
City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs is the official Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest cit ...
in an effort to ensure the preservation of the
Watts Towers The Watts Towers, Towers of Simon Rodia, or ''Nuestro Pueblo'' ("our town" in Spanish) are a collection of 17 interconnected sculptural towers, architectural structures, and individual sculptural features and mosaics within the site of the artis ...
, offering its staff, expertise, and fundraising assistance. As of 2018, LACMA is working with Los Angeles County to develop a site at the Earvin "Magic" Johnson Park, which is close to Watts Towers.Deborah Vankin (July 3, 2018)
At LACMA, new urgency to finish raising $650 million for the new museum building
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.


South Los Angeles Wetlands Park site

In 2018, LACMA secured a 35-year lease on an 80,000-square-foot, city-owned former Metro maintenance and storage yard from 1911 in the South Los Angeles Wetlands Park area.


Zumthor proposal

Specifics about the third phase, which initially was to involve renovations to older buildings, long remained undisclosed. In November 2009, plans were made public that LACMA's director Michael Govan was working with Swiss architect and
Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...
laureate
Peter Zumthor Peter Zumthor (; born 26 April 1943) is a Swiss architect whose work is frequently described as uncompromising and minimalist. Though managing a relatively small firm, he is the winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize and 2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal. E ...
on plans for rebuilding the eastern section of the campus, the Perreira Buildings between the two new Renzo Piano buildings and the tar pits. Architecture firm
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...
collaborated with Zumthor on the building's design.Carolina A. Miranda (September 17, 2020)
What will LACMA's new building look like inside? Here are the long-awaited gallery plans
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
With an estimated cost of $650 million,Jori Finkel (June 24, 2014)
A Contemporary Design Yields to the Demands of Prehistory
''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''.
Zumthor's first proposal called for a horizontal building along
Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...
. It would have been wrapped in glass on all sides and its main galleries lifted one floor into the air. The wide roof would have been covered with solar panels. In a later concession to concerns raised by its neighbor, the Page Museum, LACMA had Zumthor alter the shape of his proposed building to stretch across Wilshire Boulevard and away from the
La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...
. In June 2014, the
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LACBOS) is the five-member governing body of Los Angeles County, California, United States. History On April 1, 1850 the citizens of Los Angeles elected a three-man Court of Sessions as their first ...
approved $5 million for LACMA to continue its proposed plans to tear down the structures on the east end of its campus for a single museum building.Mike Boehm (June 25, 2014)
Supervisor Molina starts new foundation to oversee Grand Park
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
Later that year, they approved in concept a plan that would provide public financing and $125 million toward the $600-million project. On April 8, 2019, the Zumthor-designed building was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The final approved building designed was scaled back from the original to , with gallery space shrinking from to . The new proposal also dropped the black form aesthetics, reducing it to a one-level, aboveground, glass-enclosed, sand-colored concrete building, to save costs. The design still calls for an arm above Wilshire Boulevard. Other than necessary mechanical systems and bathrooms, the building's entire second story will be devoted to gallery space. Arranged in four broad clusters around the building, each one of the twenty-six core galleries is designed in the form of a square or a rectangle at various scales. Other services, among them the museum's education department, shop and three restaurants, will be at ground level, as will a 300-seat theater in the section of the building on the southern side of Wilshire Boulevard. The total cost was estimated to be at $650 million, with LA county providing $125 million in funds and the rest raised by fundraising. LACMA raised $560 million by 2019 and $700 million by 2022. The re-designed final building was criticized by some local architects, including the ''Los Angeles Times'' editorial architect
Christopher Knight Christopher or Chris Knight may refer to: Film and television *Christopher Knight (actor) (born 1957), American actor * Christopher Knight (filmmaker), blogger and filmmaker * Chris Knight (''Neighbours''), fictional character in the soap opera '' ...
, calling the plans "half baked". Antonio Pacheco called the plans an "affront to L.A.’s architectural and cultural heritage." Especially criticized was the plan's reduction in gallery space. The plans raised significant controversy from Angelenos as well, prompting a "Save LACMA" campaign. Los Angeles City owns air rights above Wilshire, so the city council must give approval to the project, since part of the structure goes over the street. Demolition of the Pereira buildings began in April 2020. The demolition was completed in October of that same year. By 2021, construction slowed with the discovery of on-site fossil finds. In the meantime, the Zumthor building opening has been pushed back to 2024.


Exhibitions

In 1971, curator
Maurice Tuchman Maurice Tuchman (born November 30, 1936) is an American curator. He worked as the first curator of twentieth century art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where he organized several exhibitions which were influential in the development ...
's revolutionary "Art and Technology" exhibit opened at LACMA after its debut at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan. The museum staged its first exhibition by contemporary black artists later that year, featuring
Charles Wilbert White Charles Wilbert White, Jr. (April 2, 1918 – October 3, 1979) was an American artist known for his chronicling of African American related subjects in paintings, drawings, lithographs, and murals. White's lifelong commitment to chronicling the ...
, Timothy Washington and
David Hammons David Hammons (born July 24, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. Early life David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten ...
, then little known. The museum's best-attended show ever was " Treasures of Tutankhamun", which drew 1.2 million during four months in 1978. The 2005 "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" drew 937,613 during its 137-day run. A show of
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
masterpieces from the artist's eponymous Amsterdam museum is the third most successful show, and a 1984 exhibition of French Impressionist works is fourth. In 1994, "Picasso and the Weeping Women: The Years of Marie-Therese Walter and Dora Maar" opened to rave reviews and large crowds, drawing more than 153,000 visitors. Since the arrival of current director Michael Govan, about 80% of just over 100 featured temporary exhibitions have been of Modern or contemporary art while the permanent exhibitions feature work dating from antiquity, including pre-Columbian, Assyrian and Egyptian art through contemporary art. More recent exhibits, focusing on popular culture and entertainment, have also been well-received, both by critics and patrons. Exhibits devoted to the works of movie-directors
Tim Burton Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker and animator. He is known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as ''Beetlejuice'' (1988), ''Edward Scissorhands'' (1990), ''The Nightmare Before Christmas'' (1993), ...
and
Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
drew especially positive reactions and responses.


Collections

LACMA's more than 120,000 objects are divided among its numerous departments by region, media, and time period and are spread amongst the various museum buildings.


Modern and Contemporary Art

The Modern Art collection is displayed in the Ahmanson Building, which was renovated in 2008 to have a new entrance featuring a large staircase, conceived as a gathering place similar to Rome's
Spanish Steps The Spanish Steps ( it, Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti) in Rome, Italy, climb a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church, at the top. The monumental stairway ...
. Filling the atrium at the base of the staircase is Tony Smith's massive sculpture ''Smoke'' (1967). The plaza level galleries also house African art and a gallery highlighting the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. The modern collection on the plaza level displays works from 1900 to the 1970s, largely populated by the Janice and Henri Lazarof Collection. In December 2007, Janice and
Henri Lazarof Henri Lazarof (Bulgarian: Хенри Лазаров) (April 12, 1932 – December 29, 2013) was a Bulgarian-American composer. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, his formal musical training began in Israel under Paul Ben-Haim. After a short stint in Rome, ...
gave LACMA 130 mostly modernist works estimated to be worth more than $100 million. The collection includes 20 works by
Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
, watercolors and paintings by
Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
and
Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj;  – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...
and a considerable number of sculptures by
Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
,
Constantin Brâncuși Constantin Brâncuși (; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian Sculpture, sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century and a pioneer of ...
,
Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...
,
Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
,
Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
,
Louise Nevelson Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, ...
,
Archipenko Arkhypenko ( uk, Архипенко), also transliterated as Arkhipenko, Archipenko, is a Ukrainian-language family name of patronymic derivation from the Slavic first name Arkhyp/Arkhip (). The Belarusian-language version is Arkhipienka. The sur ...
, and Arp. The Contemporary Art collection is displayed in the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), opened on February 16, 2008. BCAM's inaugural exhibition featured 176 works by 28 artists of postwar Modern art from the late 1950s to the present. All but 30 of the works initially displayed came from the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad (pronounced "brode"). Long-time trustee Robert Halff had already donated 53 works of contemporary art in 1994. Components of that gift included
Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
,
Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
,
Sam Francis Samuel Lewis Francis (June 25, 1923 – November 4, 1994) was an American painter and printmaker. Early life Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California,
,
Frank Stella Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City. Biography Frank Stella was born in M ...
,
Lari Pittman Lari George Pittman (born 1952 in Glendale, California) is a Colombian-American contemporary artist and painter. Pittman is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Painting and Drawing at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. Early life ...
,
Chris Burden Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot'' (1971), where he arranged ...
,
Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...
, John Chamberlain,
Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...
, and
Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror- finish su ...
. It also provided LACMA with its first drawings by
Claes Oldenburg Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...
and
Cy Twombly Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Twombly is said to have influenced you ...
. ''Back Seat Dodge ’38'' (1964), by
Edward Kienholz Edward Ralph Kienholz (October 23, 1927 – June 10, 1994) was an American Installation art, installation artist and assemblage (art), assemblage sculpture, sculptor whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he ...
, is a sculpture portraying a couple engaged in sexual activity in the back seat of a truncated 1938 Dodge automobile chassis. The piece won Kienholz instant celebrity in 1966 when the
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LACBOS) is the five-member governing body of Los Angeles County, California, United States. History On April 1, 1850 the citizens of Los Angeles elected a three-man Court of Sessions as their first ...
tried to ban the sculpture as pornographic and threatened to withhold financing from LACMA if it included the work in a Kienholz retrospective. A compromise was reached under which the sculpture's car door would remain closed and guarded, to be opened only on the request of a museum patron who was over 18, and only if no children were present in the gallery. The uproar led to more than 200 people lining up to see the work the day the show opened. Ever since, ''Back Seat Dodge ’38'' has drawn crowds.


American and Latin American art

The Art of the Americas Building has American, Latin American, and pre-Columbian collections displayed on the second floor and temporary exhibition space on the first floor. Formerly known as the Anderson Building, the Art of the Americas Building comprises galleries for art from North, Central, and South America.Suzanne Muchnic (August 19, 2007)
Spreading the riches
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
.''
From 1972 to 1976,
Donelson Hoopes Donelson Farquhar Hoopes, Jr. (December 3, 1932 – February 22, 2006) was an American art historian and curator. Hoopes was a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American art, especially the work of Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Si ...
served as Senior Curator of American Art. LACMA's Latin American Art galleries reopened in July 2008 after several years renovation. The Latin American collection includes pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, Modern, and contemporary works. Many recent additions to the collection were financed by sales of works from an 1,800 piece holding of 20th century Mexican art compiled by dealer-collectors Bernard and Edith Lewin and given to the museum in 1997. The
pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
galleries were redesigned by
Jorge Pardo Jorge Pardo may refer to: *Jorge Pardo (artist) *Jorge Pardo (musician) (born 1955), Spanish musician *J. D. Pardo Jorge Daniel Pardo (born September 7, 1980) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Jack Toretto in '' F9'' (2021), as ...
, a Los Angeles artist who works in sculpture, design, and architecture. Pardo's display cases are built from thick, stacked sheets of medium-density fiberboard (MDF), with spacing of equal thickness in between the 70-plus layers. The laser-cut organic forms undulate and swell out from the walls, sharply contrasting to the rectangular display cases found in most art museums. The museum's pre-Columbian collection began in the 1980s with the first installment of a 570-piece gift from Southern California collector Constance McCormick Fearing and the purchase of about 200 pieces from L.A. businessman Proctor Stafford. The holdings recently jumped from about 1,800 to 2,500 objects with a gift of Colombian ceramics from
Camilla Chandler Frost Camilla may refer to: People * Camilla (given name), including a list of people with the name ** Camilla, Queen Consort (born 1947), wife of King Charles III Places * Camilla, Georgia, a city in the United States * Camilla Castle, an alternative ...
, a LACMA trustee and the sister of
Otis Chandler Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 – February 27, 2006) was the publisher of the ''Los Angeles Times'' between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler fami ...
, former ''Los Angeles Times'' publisher, and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer of Atlanta, whose family built the collection. A sizable portion of LACMA's pre-Columbian collection was excavated from burial chambers in Colima,
Nayarit Nayarit (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Nayarit ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit), is one of the 31 states that, along with Mexico City, comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 20 municipalities and its ...
and other regions around Jalisco in modern-day Mexico. LACMA boasts one of the largest collections of
Latin American art Latin American art is the combined artistic expression of South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, as well as Latin Americans living in other regions. The art has roots in the many different indigenous cultures that inhabited the ...
due to the generous donation of more than 2,000 works of art by Bernard Lewin and his wife Edith Lewin in 1996. In 2007 the museum signed an agreement with the Fundación Cisneros for a loan of 25 colonial-style works, later extended until 2017. The Spanish Colonial collection includes work from 17th and 18th century Mexican artists
Miguel Cabrera José Miguel Cabrera Torres (born April 18, 1983), nicknamed "Miggy", is a Venezuelan professional baseball first baseman and designated hitter for the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball (MLB). Since his debut in 2003 he has been a two-t ...
,
José de Ibarra José de Ibarra (1688–1756) was a New Spanish painter. He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1688, and died November 21, 1756 in Mexico City, in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Colonial Mexico).Katzew, p. 169,citing Eduardo Báez Macías, "Plan ...
, José de Páez, and Nicolás Rodriguez Juárez. The collection has galleries for
Diego Rivera Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...
and
Rufino Tamayo Rufino del Carmen Arellanes Tamayo (August 25, 1899 – June 24, 1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico.Sullivan, 170-171Ades, 357 Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, ...
. The Latin American contemporary gallery highlights works
Francis Alÿs Francis Alÿs (born 1959, Antwerp) is a Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist. His work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice. In 1986, Alÿs left behind his profession as an architect and relocated to Me ...
.


Asian art

The Hammer Building houses the Chinese and Korean collections. The Korean art collection began with the donation of a group of Korean ceramics in 1966 by Bak Jeonghui, then president of the Republic of Korea, after a visit to the museum. LACMA today claims to have the most comprehensive holding outside of Korea and Japan. The Pavilion for Japanese Art displays the Shin'enkan collection donated by Joe D. Price. In 1999 LACMA trustee Eric Lidow and his wife, Leza, donated 75 ancient Chinese works valued at a total of $3.5 million, including important bronze objects and prime examples of Buddhist sculpture. LACMA also has a rich collection of relics from India, mostly consisting of sculptures of Jain Tirthankaras, Buddha and Hindu deities. Many Paintings from India are also present in the LACMA. Elephant with Riders LACMA M.85.72.1 (1 of 6).jpg, Elephant with Riders, Uttar Pradesh, India, 3rd-2nd century B.C. File:Shrine with Four Jinas (Rishabhanatha (Adinatha)), Parshvanatha, Neminatha, and Mahavira) LACMA M.85.55 (1 of 4).jpg, Shrine with Four tirthankaras, 6th century WLA lacma Jain Goddess Ambika.jpg, Goddess Ambika in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 6th-7th century A Jain Family Group LACMA M.77.49.jpg, A Jain Family Group, 6th century File:Jina Mahavira (?) LACMA M.82.6.2.jpg, Jina Mahavira, circa 850 CE WLA lacma Jain Altarpiece with Parshvanatha Mahavira and Neminatha.jpg, Jain Altarpiece with Parshvanatha, Mahavira and Neminatha, 10th century Cosmic Form of the Hindu God Shiva (Sadashiva) LACMA AC1992.164.1.jpg, Cosmic Form of the Hindu God Shiva, India, 11th-12th century Dancing Ganesha, Lord of Obstacles LACMA M.86.126 (1 of 5).jpg, Dancing Ganesha, Lord of Obstacles, India, 16th-17th century A Relief with Mother Goddesses LACMA M.71.110.2.jpg, A Relief with Mother Goddesses, Bihar, India, 9th century Buddha Shakyamuni or the Bodhisattva Maitreya LACMA M.75.4.3 (1 of 2).jpg, Buddha Shakyamuni or the Bodhisattva Maitreya, Bihar, India, 8th century


Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art

The second floor of the Ahmanson Building has Greek and Roman Art galleries. A large portion of the museum's ancient Greek and Roman art collection was donated by
William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...
, the publishing magnate, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.


Islamic art

The museum's Islamic galleries include over 1700 works from ceramics and inlaid metalwork to enameled glass, carved stone and wood, and arts of the book from manuscript illumination to
Islamic calligraphy Islamic calligraphy is the artistic practice of handwriting and calligraphy, in the languages which use Arabic alphabet or the alphabets derived from it. It includes Arabic, Persian, Ottoman, and Urdu calligraphy.Chapman, Caroline (2012). '' ...
. The collection is especially strong in Persian and Turkish glazed pottery and tiles, glass, and arts of the book. The collection began in earnest in 1973 when the Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection was gifted to the museum by philanthropist
Joan Palevsky Joan Palevsky (February 23, 1926 – March 21, 2006), a former wife of Max Palevsky, was an investor and philanthropist who contributed to many charitable organizations during her lifetime and after. On October 30, 2006, it was announced that her ...
.


Decorative arts and design

In 1990
Max Palevsky Max Palevsky (July 24, 1924 – May 5, 2010) was an American art collector, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and computer technology pioneer. He was known as a member of the Malibu Mafia – a group of wealthy American Jewish men who donate ...
gave 32 pieces of
Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...
furniture to LACMA; three years later, he added an additional 42 pieces to his gift. In 2000, he donated $2 million to LACMA for Arts and Crafts works. He supplied about a third of the 300 objects displayed in a 2004–05 LACMA exhibit, "The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: 1880–1920" and in 2009, the museum presented "The Arts and Crafts Movement: Masterworks From the Max Palevsky and Jodie Evans Collection". With a single acquisition in 2009, LACMA became a major center for the study and display of 18th- and 19th-century European clothing when it bought the holdings of dealers Martin Kamer of London and Wolfgang Ruf of Beckenried, Switzerland—about 250 outfits and 300 accessories created between 1700 and 1915, including men's three-piece suits, women's dresses, children's garb, and a vast array of shoes, hats, purses, shawls, fans, and undergarments.


Permanent art installations

Los Angeles sculptor Robert Graham created the towering, bronze ''Retrospective Column'' (1981, cast in 1986) for the entrance of the Art of the Americas Building. A new contemporary sculpture garden was opened directly east of the museum's Wilshire Boulevard entrance in 1991, including large-scale outdoor sculptures by
Alice Aycock Alice Aycock (born November 20, 1946) is an American sculptor and installation artist. She was an early artist in the land art movement in the 1970s, and has created many large-scale metal sculptures around the world. Aycock's drawings and sculp ...
,
Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, c ...
, Henry Moore, and others. The centerpiece of the garden is
Alexander Calder Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his ...
's three-piece mobile ''Hello Girls'', commissioned by a women's museum-support group for the museum's opening in 1965. Situated in a curving reflecting pool, the mobile has brightly colored paddles that are moved by jets of water. The Ahmanson Building's atrium was remodeled to hold Tony Smith's ''Smoke'', which had not been displayed since its original 1967 presentation at Washington, D.C.'s
Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
. The massive black painted aluminum artwork is made up of 43 piers and is long, wide, and high. The newly fabricated work was initially on loan from the artist's estate, but in 2010, after several months of intense fundraising efforts, "the museum acquired the work for an undisclosed amount reported to exceed $3 million and ith an insurance valuation of'over $5 million. The purchase was "made possible by The Belldegrun Family's gift to LACMA in honor of Rebecka Belldegrun's birthday", per the museum. Eli and Edythe Broad contributed $10 million to fund the purchase of
Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...
's ''Band'' sculpture, on display on the first floor of BCAM when the building opened. Surrounding the BCAM building and LACMA's courtyard is a 100
palm tree The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees ...
garden, designed by artist Robert Irwin and landscape architect Paul Comstock. Some of the 30 varieties of palms are in the ground, but most are in large wooden boxes above ground. Directly in front of the new entrance to LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard, where Ogden Drive once bisected the 20-acre campus between Wilshire Boulevard and 6th Street, is
Chris Burden Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot'' (1971), where he arranged ...
's ''
Urban Light ''Urban Light'' (2008) is a large-scale assemblage sculpture by Chris Burden located at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The 2008 installation consists of restored street lamps from the 1920s and ...
'' (2008), an orderly, multi-tiered installation of 202 antique cast-iron
street lights A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. When urban electric power distribution ...
from various cities in and around the Los Angeles area. The street lights are functional, turn on in the evening, and are powered by solar panels on the roof of the BP Grand Entrance. Originally
Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror- finish su ...
' ''Tulips'' (1995–2004) sculpture was inside the Grand Entrance building and Charles Ray's ''Fire Truck'' (1993) was outside in the courtyard, both lent by the Broad Art Foundation. Both sculptures were removed after being on display for 3 months due to unexpected damage from patrons and wear. On February 2, 2007, Michael Govan, with Koons, revealed plans for a -tall Koons sculpture featuring an operational 1940s
locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...
suspended from a crane. The sculpture would be located at the entrance on Wilshire Boulevard, between the Ahmanson Building and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. By 2011, after "the fundraising climate soured and Koons’ California fabricator, Carlson & Co, went out of business after completing a $2.3-million feasibility study"Finkel, Jori
"LACMA's Michael Govan on Jeff Koons' locomotive, James Turrell retrospective"
, ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' Culture Monster blog, May 16, 2011 1:27 pm. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
and a $25 million estimated cost, Govan said "We don't have a final method of construction, and I don't have a final fundraising plan." Koons said they are now working with the German fabricator Arnold, outside of Frankfurt, to do an additional engineering study, and Govan says he has committed to spending half a million dollars for that study. The museum has ''J.B. Turner Engine'' (1986), a small Koons piece which was shown in the 2006–2007 " Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" exhibition. '' Levitated Mass'' by artist
Michael Heizer Michael Heizer (born 1944) is an American land artist specializing in large-scale and site-specific sculptures. Working largely outside the confines of the traditional art spaces of galleries and museums, Heizer has redefined sculpture in terms ...
is the latest project at LACMA. On December 8, 2011, this 340-ton boulder, wide and in height, was ready to leave its quarry in
Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...
, after months of postponements. It sits atop the 456-foot-long trench which allows people to walk under and around the massive rock. The move started on February 28, 2012, and completed on March 10, 2012. The art piece was opened on June 24, 2012, by Heizer, Los Angeles County Supervisor
Zev Yaroslavsky Zev Yaroslavsky (born December 21, 1948) is a politician from Los Angeles County, California. He was a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from District 3, which includes the San Fernando Valley, the Westside of Los Angeles and ...
, and Los Angeles City Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa (; né Villar Jr.; born January 23, 1953) is an American politician who served as the 41st Mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Villaraigosa was a national co-chairman of Hillary ...
.


Photography

The Wallis Annenberg Photography Department was launched in 1984 with a grant from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. It has holdings of more than fifteen thousand works that span the period from the medium's invention in 1839 to the present. Photography also is integrated into other departments. Although LACMA's photo collection encompasses the entire field, it has many gaps and is far smaller than that of the
J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...
. In 1992 Audrey and Sydney Irmas donated their entire photography collection, creating what is now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection of Artists' Self-Portraits, a large and highly specialized selection spanning 150 years. The couple donated the collection two years before a major exhibition of the collection was mounted at LACMA; the display included photos of and by artistic photographers ranging from chemist Alphonse Poitevin in 1853 to
Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-p ...
in 1988. Among other self-portraits in the collection were those of
Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
,
Lee Friedlander Lee Friedlander (born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fragm ...
, and
Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with tr ...
. Audrey Irmas continues to buy for the collection, but now all the additions are gifts to LACMA. In 2008 LACMA announced that the
Annenberg Foundation The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world. Some of the Foundation's core initiatives are the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcast ...
was making a $23 million gift for the acquisition of the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon collection of 19th- and 20th-century photographs. Among the 3,500 master prints are works by Steichen,
Edward Weston Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." ...
,
Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...
,
Eugène Atget Eugène Atget (; 12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) was a French ''flâneur'' and a pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to mod ...
,
Imogen Cunningham Imogen Cunningham (; April 12, 1883 – June 23, 1976) was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham was a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its dedication to t ...
,
Catherine Opie Catherine Sue Opie (born 1961) is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at University of California at Los Angeles. Opie studies the connections between mainstream and i ...
,
Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...
,
Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captio ...
, Ave Pildas and
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
. The gift also provided an endowment and capital to help build storage facilities for the museum's photographic holdings, leading to its photography department being renamed the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography. In 2011 LACMA and the
J. Paul Getty Trust The J. Paul Getty Trust is the world's wealthiest art institution, with an estimated endowment of US$7.7 billion in 2020. Based in Los Angeles, California, it operates the J. Paul Getty Museum, which has two locations—the Getty Center in the ...
jointly acquired
Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-p ...
’s art and archival material, including more than 2,000 works by the artist.


Film

LACMA's film program was founded by Phil Chamberlin in the late 1960s. In 2009 LACMA announced plans to cancel its 41-year-old film series, citing declining attendance and funding. The decision drew widespread criticism from cinephiles, including film director
Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
, who wrote an open protest letter that was published in the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''. In response, the museum expanded its movie offerings and partnered with Film Independent to launch a new series. In 2011 LACMA and the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...
announced partnership plans to open a movie museum within three years in the former May Co. building.


Acquisitions and donors


Individual donors

In 2014, LACMA received a $500 million donation of art from businessman
Jerry Perenchio Andrew Jerrold Perenchio (December 20, 1930 – May 23, 2017) was an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He was at one time the chairman and chief executive officer of Univision. Early life Perenchio was the grandson of Italian ...
. The 47-piece collection contains works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, René Magritte, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. LACMA executive director Michael Govan said it was the biggest gift in the museum's history, and ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' called it "conceivably one of the greatest art gifts ever, to any museum". Perenchio's donation, which becomes effective upon his death, occurs only if the museum completes construction of the new building designed by Peter Zumthor. The $54 million Resnick Pavillon was made possible by a $45 million gift from the philanthropists for whom it is named. On March 6, 2007, BP announced a $25 million donation to name the entry pavilion under construction as part of LACMA's renovation campaign the "BP Grand Entrance". The $25 million gift matches Walt Disney Co.'s 1997 gift for Disney Hall as the biggest corporate donation to the arts in Southern California. Previously, in 2006, LACMA had announced that the new entrance would be called the "
Lynda Lynda is a spelling variation of the feminine given name Linda. Notable people with the name include: People Arts and entertainment * Lynda Adams, later Hunt (1920–1997), Canadian diver * Lynda Baron (1939–2022), British television actress * L ...
and Stewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion", in honor of their $25 million gift. On January 8, 2008, Eli Broad revealed plans to retain permanent control of his roughly 2,000 works of modern and contemporary art in the independent Broad Art Foundation, which loans works to museums, rather than giving the art away. Broad, as recently as a year prior, had said that he planned to give most of his holdings to one or several museums, one of which was assumed to be LACMA. However, LACMA remains the "preferred" museum to receive works from the Foundation. Broad, previously vice chairman of LACMA's board of directors, financed the $56-million Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) building at LACMA; he also provided an additional $10 million to buy two works of art to be displayed in it. BCAM displayed 220 pieces borrowed from Broad and his Broad Art Foundation when it opened in February 2008. In 2001 LACMA was criticized for hosting a major exhibition of Broad's collection without having secured a promised gift of the works, an act that is prohibited at many prominent art institutions because it can increase the market value of the collection. In 2002 the
Annenberg Foundation The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world. Some of the Foundation's core initiatives are the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcast ...
gave the museum $10 million to establish a special endowment fund to support exhibitions, art acquisitions and educational programs at the discretion of its director. In recognition of the gift, LACMA named its leadership position the Wallis Annenberg directorship. In 2001 Wallis Annenberg endowed a curatorial fellowship program with a $1-million gift. In 1991, the foundation contributed $10 million to LACMA's endowment and in 1999 it donated $100,000 to provide arts education training for Los Angeles elementary school teachers. In 2001 the museum lost out on the modern art collection of Nathan and Marian Smooke, a former museum trustee and industrial real-estate developer whose heirs sold much of his collection at auction rather than donating it. In 1996 the museum suffered yet another serious blow when the
Gilbert Collection The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection is a collection of ''objets d'art'' formed by the English-born businessman Sir Arthur Gilbert, who made most of his fortune in the property business in California. After initially becoming interested i ...
of Italian mosaics and other decorative objects, promised as an eventual bequest, and parts of which had been on display for decades, was withdrawn. The would-be donor claimed that the Museum had reneged on a written agreement to provide more exhibit space for it. The collection is considered one of the finest in the world of its kind. Moreover, unlike the Hammer and Simon collections, it did not remain in the Los Angeles area but was removed to the United Kingdom.
Armand Hammer Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 – December 10, 1990) was an American business manager and owner, most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran from 1957 until his death. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, ...
was a LACMA board member for nearly seventeen years, beginning in 1968, and during this time continued to announce the museum would inherit his whole collection. Hammer's collection included works from
Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...
,
John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...
,
Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...
,
Gustave Moreau Gustave Moreau (; 6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence".Cassou, Jean. 1979. ''The Concise Encyclopedia of Symbolism.' ...
,
Edgar Degas Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...
, and
Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
. When LACMA was offered a collection of works by
Honoré Daumier Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...
, Hammer bought the works on the promise that he would give them to the museum. To LACMA's surprise, Hammer instead founded the
Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...
, built adjacent to Occidental's headquarters in Los Angeles. Between 1972 and 2020, the Ahmanson Foundation spent about $130 million to finance the museum's acquisitions of 99 artworks, including masterpieces like ''
Magdalene with the Smoking Flame ''Magdalene with the Smoking Flame'' (also titled in French ''La Madeleine à la veilleuse'', and ''La Madeleine à la flamme filante'') is a c. 1640 oil-on-canvas depiction of Mary Magdalene by French Baroque painter Georges de La Tour. Two v ...
'' by
Georges de La Tour Georges de La Tour (13 March 1593 – 30 January 1652) was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chia ...
, others by
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
,
Watteau Jean-Antoine Watteau (, , ; baptised October 10, 1684died July 18, 1721) Alsavailablevia Oxford Art Online (subscription needed). was a French painter and draughtsman whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as ...
and Bernini, and a suite of 42 French oil sketches. The donations were not made with any contractual stipulations that the works remain on view.Jori Finkel (February 25, 2020)
Major LACMA Donor Suspends Longtime Acquisition Program
''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''.
In 2020, the foundation suspended the acquisition program. In the early 1970s
Norton Simon Norton Winfred Simon (February 5, 1907 – June 2, 1993) was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was at one time one of the wealthiest men in America. At the time of his death, he had amassed a net worth of nearly US$10 billion. ...
, the chairman of Norton Simon, Inc., which owned Avis Car Rental, Hunt's Foods, Max Factor Cosmetics, Canada Dry Corp., and McCall's Publishing, among other interests, agreed to take the financial responsibility of the troubled Pasadena Museum of Art.
Norton Simon Museum The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds. Overview The Norton Sim ...
He subsequently donated his extensive collection to the new entity, now the Norton Simon Museum of Art. He had earlier made some indication of donating the work to LACMA. From 1946 to his death in 1951,
William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...
was LACMA's largest benefactor. He remains the largest donor to the museum in number of objects. His donations formed the museum's collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval and early Renaissance sculptures, and much of the collection of European decorative arts.


Art councils

Over the course of the LACMA's history, ten art councils—each supporting a specific area of the collection—have acquired or helped acquire nearly 5,000 works of art for the museum. The art councils comprise groups of art enthusiasts and professionals who pay a minimum of $400 a year in dues and organize projects to raise money for a favorite department. Founded in 1952, the Art Museum Council is LACMA's first volunteer support council and supports the whole of the museum's endeavors. The Modern and Contemporary Art Council, founded in 1961, is the longest-running support group for contemporary art at any museum in the country. In 1980, the museum's then active Black Historical Advisory Group, led by former trustee Robert Wilson, drove the museum to acquire Extended Forms (1975) by one of America's foremost sculptors Richard Hunt. In 1986 the Annual Collectors Committee weekends were started and have raised a total of $16 million for the purchase of 157 works, valued at $75 million. The Photographic Arts Council, founded in 2001, is the youngest of ten 10 support groups, offering its members visits to artists' studios and private collections, curator-led tours of exhibitions and lectures about the care and conservation of photographs.


Collectors Committee

Each year a distinguished group of donors contributes directly to the enrichment of LACMA's permanent collection through participation in the Collectors Committee, creating a fund to spend on art through purchasing tickets ranging between $15,000 and $60,000Deborah Vankin (April 27, 2014)
LACMA curators lobby for new pieces at Collectors Committee event
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
for the event. Once a year, the Collectors Committee members meet at the museum to hear acquisition proposals from the various curators. Each curator has roughly five minutes to plead their case to the patrons, who vote later that day at a black-tie gala event at the museum on which artworks should become the next acquisitions for the permanent collection. The 2012 gala raised more than $2.8 million. Since its inception in 1986, the event has brought some 170 works of art into the museum's collection.


LACMA Art + Film Gala

Inaugurated in 2011, the annual Art + Film Gala dinner features entertainment by international artists and is designed to help the museum shore up support from Hollywood leaders. Gala prices range from $5,000 for an individual gold ticket to $100,000 for a platinum table. The 2022 gala raised more than $5.1 million for the museum's operations and collections, up from approximately $4.5 million in 2018,Matthew Stromberg (November 4, 2018)
LACMA's Art + Film Gala blurs boundaries between the museum world and Hollywood
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
$4.1 million in 2013 and just under $3 million in 2011. Gala honorees have included Helen Pashgian and
Park Chan-wook Park Chan-wook ( ; born 23 August 1963) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. He is considered as one of the most prominent filmmakers of South Korean cinema as well as world cinema in 21st century. H ...
in 2022;
Betye Saar Betye Irene Saar (born July 30, 1926) is an African-American artist known for her work in the medium of assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, which eng ...
and
Alfonso Cuaron Alphons (Latinized ''Alphonsus'', ''Adelphonsus'', or ''Adefonsus'') is a male given name recorded from the 8th century (Alfonso I of Asturias, r. 739–757) in the Christian successor states of the Visigothic kingdom in the Iberian peninsula. ...
in 2019;
Catherine Opie Catherine Sue Opie (born 1961) is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at University of California at Los Angeles. Opie studies the connections between mainstream and i ...
and
Guillermo del Toro Guillermo del Toro Gómez (; born October 9, 1964) is a Mexican filmmaker, author, and actor. He directed the Academy Award–winning fantasy films ''Pan's Labyrinth'' (2006) and ''The Shape of Water'' (2017), winning the Academy Awards for Be ...
in 2018;
Mark Bradford Mark Bradford (born November 20, 1961) is an American visual artist. Born in Los Angeles, Bradford studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Recognized for his collaged painting works, which have been shown internationally, his practice al ...
and
George Lucas George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairm ...
in 2017;
Kathryn Bigelow Kathryn Ann Bigelow (; born November 27, 1951) is an American filmmaker. Covering a wide range of genres, her films include ''Near Dark'' (1987), ''Point Break'' (1991), '' Strange Days'' (1995), '' K-19: The Widowmaker'' (2002), ''The Hurt Locke ...
and Robert Irwin in 2016;
Alejandro González Iñárritu Alejandro González Iñárritu (; American Spanish: ; credited since 2016 as Alejandro G. Iñárritu; born 15 August 1963) is a Mexican filmmaker and screenwriter. He is primarily known for making modern psychological drama films about the hum ...
and
James Turrell James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. Much of Turrell's career has been devoted to a still-unfinished work, ''Roden Crater'', a natural cinder cone crater located outside ...
in 2015;
Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captio ...
and
Quentin Tarantino Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
in 2014;
Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
and
David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...
in 2013; the late
Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
and
Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...
in 2012; and
Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "''Doll ...
and
John Baldessari John Anthony Baldessari (June 17, 1931 – January 2, 2020) was an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lived and worked in Santa Monica and Venice, California. Initially a painter, ...
in 2011.


Deaccessioning

Along with other museums that have consigned works to auction in the past, LACMA has been sharply criticized for pruning its art holdings.Suzanne Muchnic (November 4, 2005)
LACMA art brings in $13 million
''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''.
In 2005, on the occasion of the expansion, reorganization and reinstallation of its collection in 2007, LACMA auctioned 43 works at
Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
. The works sold included paintings by
Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
,
Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
and
Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...
, sculptures by
Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
and
Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...
, and works on paper by
Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
and
Edgar Degas Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...
. The biggest sale of works by the museum since the early 1980s, it was expected to fetch $10.4 million to $15.4 million; it eventually resulted in a total of $13 million. Among the most valuable was a Modigliani portrait of the Spanish landscape painter Manuel Humbert, which sold for $4.9 million.


Programs

In 1966 Maurice Tuchman, then curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, introduced the Art and Technology (A&T) program. Within the program, artists like Robert Irwin and
James Turrell James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. Much of Turrell's career has been devoted to a still-unfinished work, ''Roden Crater'', a natural cinder cone crater located outside ...
were placed, for example, at the Garrett Corporation, to conduct research into perception. The program yielded an exhibition that ran at LACMA and traveled to
Expo '70 The or Expo 70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fair ...
in Osaka, Japan. It also contributed to the development of the
Light and Space Light and Space denotes a loosely affiliated art movement related to op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction originating in Southern California in the 1960s and influenced by John McLaughlin. It is characterized by a focus on perceptual ph ...
movement.


Management


Funding

Andrea Rich won praise for doubling the museum's endowment, to more than $100 million, and for increasing attendance and pursuing programs and acquisitions that might appeal to the varied segments of the city's diverse population, like Islamic, Latin American and Korean art. Rich resigned in part because of disputes with Eli Broad, including one over hiring a curator for the new Broad contemporary art center. In 2008, LACMA made a formal offer to merge with MOCA and to help that museum raise new money from donors. Per the Los Angeles County Code and various operating agreements, Museum Associates, a
nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
public benefit corporation organized under the laws of the state of California, manages, operates, and maintains the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2011, LACMA reported net assets (basically, a total of all the resources it has on its books, except the value of the art) of $300 million. That year, the museum's endowment grew from $99.6 million to $106.8 million. By issuing $383 million in tax-free construction bonds, the museum paid for its ongoing expansion and renovation, which has yielded the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion as well as other improvements. The
Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...
provides around $29 million a year, covering more than a third of the museum's operating expenses. LACMA typically raises around $40 million from donations and membership dues, which are accounted for as gifts, paying for almost half of LACMA's average expenses of about $92 million.


Attendance

Although attendance has grown in recent years, it still remained at 914,356 visitors in 2010. In 2011, around 1.2 million visitors went to LACMA, making it the first time the museum broke the one million mark. In 2015, attendance reached 1.6 million.


Directors

*Dr. Richard (Ric) F. Brown – 1961 – 1966 *Kenneth Donahue 1966 – 1979 *
Earl A. Powell III Earl Alexander Powell III (born October 24, 1943),"E ...
– 1980 – 1992 *Michael E. Shapiro – 1992 – 1993 *Between 1993 and 1995, Chief Deputy Director Ronald B. Bratton was handling financial and administrative activities and Stephanie Barron, chief curator of modern and contemporary art, was coordinating curatorial affairs. *
Graham W. J. Beal Graham W. J. Beal was the Director, President and CEO of the Detroit Institute of Arts, from 1999 to 2015. Background Beal was born in Stratford-on-Avon, England. He has degrees in English and Art History from the University of Manchester and t ...
– 1996 – 1999 *Andrea L. Rich – 1999 – 2005 *Michael Govan – 2006–present In 1996, LACMA's board of trustees decided that the traditional dual role of director as chief administrator/artistic director should be split, and appointed Andrea Rich as president and chief executive officer of the museum, while Graham W. J. Beal ran its artistic programs. As part of a 2005 restructuring, the president position was again made the second-ranking job in the institution. LACMA provides a home to the director. From that purpose, it has owned a
Hancock Park Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The park's destinations include the La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, which display ...
property since 2006. In 2020, Museum Associates acquired a house on a lot in
Mid-Wilshire Mid-Wilshire is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is known for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the Miracle Mile shopping district. Geography City of Los Angeles bounda ...
for $2.2 million.


Board of trustees

LACMA is governed by a board of trustees which sets policy and determines the museum's strategic direction. Board membership is one of the few concrete ways to measure philanthropy in the museum world. LACMA costs $100,000 to join; each board member commits to donating or raising at least another $100,000 a year for the nonprofit museum. The museum currently has over 50 active board members; 30 of them have joined since 2006, including
Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers List ...
, songwriter
Carole Bayer Sager Carole Bayer Sager (born Carol Bayer on March 8, 1947) is an American lyricist, singer, and songwriter. Early life and career Bayer Sager was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Anita Nathan Bayer and Eli Bayer. Her family was Jewish. She grad ...
, collector
Dasha Zhukova Darya "Dasha" Alexandrovna Zhukova (russian: Дарья "Даша" Александровна Жукова; born 8 June 1981) is a Russian-American art collector, businesswoman, magazine editor, and socialite. She is the founder of the Garage M ...
, TV journalist
Willow Bay Willow Bay (born Kristine Carlin Bay; December 28, 1963) is an American television journalist, editor, author, and former model. In 2017, she became dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism having earlier served as direct ...
, producer
Brian Grazer Brian Thomas Grazer (born July 12, 1951) is an American film and television producer and writer. He founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986 with Ron Howard. The films they produced have grossed over $15 billion. Grazer was personally nominated f ...
, Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Michael Lynton, and TV presenter
Ryan Seacrest Ryan John Seacrest (born December 24, 1974) is an American media personality and producer. He is the co-host of ''Live with Kelly and Ryan'', as well as the host of multiple media shows including ''American Idol'', ''American Top 40'', and '' ...
. Since 2015, the board has been co-chaired by
Elaine Wynn Elaine Farrell Wynn ( Pascal; born April 28, 1942) is an American billionaire businesswoman, philanthropist and art collector. She co-founded Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts with her former husband, Steve Wynn. She has supported education causes, ...
and
Tony Ressler Tony may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tony (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Gregory Tony (born 1978), American law enforcement officer * Motu Tony (born 1981), New Zealand international rugby leagu ...
. Notably,
Tom Gores Tom Gores (born Tewfiq Georgious, ar, توفيق جورجيوس; July 31, 1964) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the founder of Platinum Equity, a private equity firm headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In June 2011, Gores a ...
stepped down from his post as a board trustee in 2020, after advocacy groups Worth Rises and
Color of Change Color of Change is a progressive nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization in the United States. It was formed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to use online resources to strengthen the political voice of African Amer ...
had called for his removal over his investment in Securus Technologies.Nancy Kenney (October 10, 2020)
Tom Gores steps down from Lacma board after pressure over prison telecom ties
 ''
The Art Newspaper ''The Art Newspaper'' is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It covers news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments ...
''.


Selected paintings


Selected objects

File:Ashurnasirpal II and a Winged Deity LACMA 66.4.3 (2 of 2).jpg, ''Ashurnasirpal II and a Winged Deity'', Northern Iraq, Nimrud, gypseous alabaster, 9th century B.C. File:Dog with Human Mask LACMA M.86.296.154.jpg, ''Dog with Human Mask'', Mexico, Colima, slip-painted ceramic sculpture, 200 B.C. - A.D. 500 File:Standing Warrior LACMA M.86.296.86 (1 of 2).jpg, ''Standing Warrior'', Mexico, Jalisco, Slip-painted ceramic sculpture, circa 200 B.C.- A.D. 300 File:Funerary Sculpture of a Horse LACMA AC1997.137.1.jpg, ''Funerary Sculpture of a Horse'', China, Sichuan Province, Eastern Han dynasty, molded earthenware sculpture, 25-220 File:The Hindu God Vishnu LACMA M.76.19.jpg, ''Hindu God Vishnu'', Cambodia, Angkor, Pre Rup, sandstone, circa 950 File:WLA lacma Kannon Bosatsu.jpg, ''Kannon Bosatsu'', Japan, carved wood, 12th century File:Jar (Ping) with Dragon and Clouds LACMA 53.74.jpg, ''Jar (Ping) with Dragon and Clouds'', China, Hebei or Henan Province, Yuan dynasty, Cizhou ware, 1279-1368 File:Cranes LACMA M.2011.106a-b (2 of 20).jpg,
Maruyama Ōkyo , born Maruyama Masataka, was a Japanese artist active in the late 18th century. He moved to Kyoto, during which he studied artworks from Chinese, Japanese and Western sources. A personal style of Western naturalism mixed with Eastern deco ...
, ''Cranes'', Japan, pair of six-panel screens; ink, color, and gold leaf on paper, 1772 File:Ancestor Figure (moai kavakava) LACMA M.2008.66.6 (1 of 3).jpg, ''Ancestor Figure (moai kavakava)'', Easter Island (Rapa Nui), wood, bird bone, obsidian, and traces of pigment, circa 1830 File:Levitating mass at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (other view).jpg,
Michael Heizer Michael Heizer (born 1944) is an American land artist specializing in large-scale and site-specific sculptures. Working largely outside the confines of the traditional art spaces of galleries and museums, Heizer has redefined sculpture in terms ...
, '' Levitated Mass'', 2012


See also

*
La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...
and George C. Page Paleontology Museum, next door to Los Angeles County Museum of Art


References


External links

*
LACMA's permanent collection
Access to more than 80,000 works of art from the museum's permanent collection. Via this website, the museum also enables users to download and use, without any restrictions, high quality images of nearly 20,000 works of art they deem to be in the public domain.
Virtual tour of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
provided by
Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world. It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...
* {{authority control
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
Art museums and galleries in Los Angeles Museums in Los Angeles Museums of American art Asian art museums in California Contemporary art galleries in the United States Modern art museums in the United States Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles Wilshire Boulevard Egyptological collections in the United States Museums of ancient Greece in the United States Museums of ancient Rome in the United States Museums of Ancient Near East in the United States Mesoamerican art museums in the United States Outdoor sculptures in Greater Los Angeles Sculpture gardens, trails and parks in California Art museums established in 1961 1961 establishments in California Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Art museums established in 1965 1960s architecture in the United States 2000s architecture in the United States William Pereira buildings Renzo Piano buildings Postmodern architecture in California FRAME Museums Del E. Webb buildings