LACMA

African Art
The arts of Africa are as diverse in appearance, material, and purpose as the peoples of the continent who created them. The works in the collection include body adornments, masks with bright paint and raffia, small figures of wood and ivory, bronzes, beaded crowns, and stools. African artists create dynamic, original, and imaginative pieces from materials available both locally and brought from distance areas.

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American Art
The American art collection is composed primarily of oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures that date from the colonial period to World War II. In addition, the holdings include representational works created after 1940 by artists who came to prominence earlier.

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Image © Malvina Hoffman

Art of the Ancient Americas
The heart of the collection of the art of the ancient Americas is a rich cross section of objects from the major civilizations of ancient Mexico. A significant portion of the collection, which was assembled by Proctor Stafford and acquired by the museum in 1986, represents the ceramic funerary offerings found in the tombs of the West Mexican states of Nayarit, Colima, and Jalisco. These ceramic sculptures appear to reflect the objects and activities of daily life and were made popular by such collectors as the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

New Galleries:The newly reinstalled galleries Latin American Art: Ancient to Contemporary open to the public on July 26, 2008. Located on the third floor of the Art of the Americas Building, the galleries feature numerous recent acquisitions of ancient American, Spanish colonial, modern, and contemporary art. The ancient galleries are designed by renowned artist Jorge Pardo, who has created an innovative and experimental environment that encourages visitors to look at these works in compelling new ways.

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Art of the Ancient Near East
LACMA’s collection of ancient Near Eastern art is composed of some two thousand objects that span a period of more than four thousand years and an area extending from the eastern Mediterranean to Pakistan, but with a particular focus on Iran. Objects in the collection, including cylinder seals, pottery, bronze horse-trappings, silver vessels, and a group of large Assyrian stone reliefs, bear witness to some of the major cultural achievements and historical events associated with the ancient Near East, such as the development of complex urban societies and the rise of great empires.

The core of the collection is based on the Nasli M. Heeramaneck collection of ancient Near Eastern art, which the museum acquired in 1976. It has since been expanded by gifts, purchases, and loans.

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Art of the Pacific
One of the most significant collections of Oceanic art assembled in the twentieth century, these objects are representative of the wide range of arts from the Pacific regions.  The collection's greatest strengths lie in the areas of Polynesia and Melanesia, and include objects from Micronesia and New Zealand.

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American Art
The American art collection is composed primarily of oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures that date from the colonial period to World War II. In addition, the holdings include representational works created after 1940 by artists who came to prominence earlier.

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Image © Malvina Hoffman

Chinese Art
LACMA began to acquire Chinese art in the 1920s, and the museum's collection took shape in the 1940s and 1950s. From the 1960s onward, holdings expanded from a core of Chinese ceramics to include Chinese paintings, ancient bronzes, jades, lacquer, and furniture.

The Chinese Art Gallery in the Ahmanson Building is currently closed for construction.

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Contemporary Art
LACMA's collection of contemporary art contains almost two thousand works from across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, created between 1945 and the present. A diverse range of media and forms are represented, including painting and sculpture, installation and conceptual art, and video and film.

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Image © Chris Burden

Costume and Textiles
LACMA has an encyclopedic collection of more than thirty thousand objects, representing more than one hundred cultures and two thousand years of human creativity in the textile arts. The collection is almost equally balanced between textiles and dress and is recognized worldwide for its depth and breadth.

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Decorative Arts and Design
The Decorative Arts and Design collection contains silver and other metalwork, ceramics, glass, and woodwork (mostly furniture). It is divided into three principal areas, European, American, and modern and contemporary, ranging in date from the medieval period (about 1200) to the present day.

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Egyptian Art
Ranging in date from the fourth millennium B.C. through the end of the Coptic period (seventh century A.D.), the approximately two thousand works of art in the museum's Egyptian collection present a broad overview of artistic production. The strengths of the collection include Predynastic stone palettes and vessels, Old Kingdom tomb reliefs, bronze figures of deities, and a 21st Dynasty sarcophagus.

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European Painting
The collection of European painting comprises works of art from the fourteenth through the early twentieth century. Ranging from paintings in oil on panel, canvas, and precious supports (e.g., onyx, copper), these works of art come primarily from Italy, France, Spain, the Low Countries (Holland and modern Belgium), Germany, Austria, England, and Switzerland. The followers of Caravaggio are well represented. The Ciechanowiecki Collection of French oil sketches is of particular interest.

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European Sculpture
LACMA’s European sculptures date from the classical period through the early twentieth century. The collection is renowned for its variety of media: alabaster, bronze, terra cotta, marble, wax, plaster, porcelain, wood, papier-mâché, limestone, and silver. The sculptures come primarily from Italy, France, Spain, the Low Countries (Holland and modern Belgium), Germany, Austria, England, and Switzerland. The collection of polychromed sculptures is especially notable, and the 19th century (including Rodin) is well represented. In addition, there are about 1,300 medals and plaquettes.

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German Expressionist Art (The Robert Gore Rifkind Center)
Expressionism, an international movement in the visual arts as well as in literature, film, and theater, flourished in Germany between 1905 and 1925. The artists championed idealist values and sought to break free from the traditional restrictions of bourgeois society. They were principally concerned with expressing emotion and inner psychological truth. The core of the collection is in the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies.

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Image © Ernst Kirchner

Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Art
LACMA has approximately seven hundred works of ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art, ranging in date from about 600 BC to AD 200. The collection is comprised of vases, sculptures, metalwork, and glass. Many of these were part of the famous 18th-century collection of Thomas Hope and were donated by William Randolph Hearst.

Coming Soon: Browse Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Art Collection and Collection Highlights

Islamic Art
LACMA houses one of the most significant collections of Islamic art in the world. Comprising more than 1,700 works, these widely diverse arts, from an area extending from southern Spain to Central Asia, trace the distinctive visual imagination of Islamic artists over a period of 1,400 years.

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Japanese Art
The Pavilion for Japanese Art is unique in America as a separate building dedicated to the display of Japanese Art within the complex of a large, encyclopedic museum. The pavilion houses the museum’s collection of Japanese works dating from around 3000 B.C. to the twentieth century.

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Korean Art
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. The collection grew gradually until 2000 when the museum acquired over 200 works of art from a very important collection in Los Angeles. Today LACMA’s Korean art collection is recognized as one of the most comprehensive outside of Korea and Japan. Highlights include wonderful examples of objects from the Three Kingdoms, Goryeo, and Joseon periods, with a particular emphasis on Buddhist and literati painting, ceramics, lacquer, and sculpture.

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Modern Art
LACMA’s collection of modern art includes more than 250 works, mostly paintings and sculpture from Europe (including Russia), with additional pieces from the United States and Mexico. In addition, the collection includes important paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Matisse, Schwitters, Magritte, and numerous other modern masters.

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Prints and Drawings
The collection of prints and drawings focuses on works of art on paper by western European and American artists and comprises about thirty thousand items. Chronologically the works range from some of the earliest examples of printing in the fifteenth century to contemporary graphics. Most celebrated painters who also made prints are represented in the collection; there is a special emphasis given to graphic works created since about 1960 by artists working in Southern California.

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South and Southeast Asian Art
LACMA's collection of Southeast Asian art includes art from Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Bronze Age and Iron Age objects from the Dongson culture of Indonesia and Vietnam and the Ban Chiang culture of Thailand are on view along with Buddhist and Hindu sculpture from all periods and regions. The collection of Sri Lankan art is one of the largest and most comprehensive outside Asia. Art of the Himalayan countries of Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan is also well represented.

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The Wallis Annenberg Photography Department
The Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, founded in 1984 through an endowment by the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, has a collection of approximately six thousand works. The collection maintains a primary emphasis on work produced internationally since 1940. In keeping with the encyclopedic nature of the museum, however, the department's holdings include examples of photographic art from the medium's invention in 1839 to the present.

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Image © Friedrich Seidenstücker