Art-Exhibitions-Past

Workflow is a project by Art + Technology Lab grant recipient Michael Mandiberg. The artist uses self-tracking technology to understand the changing definition of labor in the digital age. The endeavor has multiple components, including a one-year sonic installation, Quantified Self Portrait (Rhythms), in LACMA’s Pritzker Parking Garage elevators, and a three-channel video, Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance), which ran at LACMA’s Ray’s & Stark Bar from...

Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz is the first major retrospective of one of the most influential Los Angeles artists of the 1970s and 1980s. Arguably the first of the many Chicano artists whose artistic, cultural, and political motivations catalyzed the Chicano art movement in the 1970s, Almaraz began his career with political works for the farm workers’ causa and co-founded the important artist collective Los Four. Although he...

Ed Fella works at the intersection of art and design, using his personal projects to examine the conventions and idiosyncrasies of human communication. His meticulously hand-drawn lettering and poetic wordplay stake a claim for self-expression in design. As both a designer and educator, he has influenced a generation of students, encouraging them to think more broadly and to initiate independent bodies of work.

Free Work in Due Time centers on...

Form in Fragments: Abstraction in German Art, 1906–1925explores tendencies toward abstraction in German Expressionism, a movement that foregrounded representational approaches to art making. Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky, a founding member of the Expressionist artist’s group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), is typically credited with inventing a radical art of pure abstraction in 1911, becoming the first of several major artists across Europe to abandon the representation of objects, real or imagined...

Organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Home—So Different, So Appealing features U.S. Latino and Latin American artists from the late 1950s to the present who have used the deceptively simple idea of "home" as a powerful lens through which to view the profound socioeconomic and political transformations in the hemisphere. Spanning seven decades and covering art styles from Pop Art and Conceptualism to “anarchitecture” and “autoconstrucción,”...

Whereas European art often depicts nature as something to be feared—a place of wolves and specters—nature in Japanese art is respected, even revered, as an ideal retreat for those needing meditation or tranquility. Beginning in the Heian period (794–1185), nature developed into one of the most common themes in Japanese painting.

Japanese Paintings: A Walk in Nature features 24 paintings on scrolls and screens spanning four centuries (16th to 20th)...

An Irruption of the Rainbow: Color in 20th-Century Art looks at various ways that modern artists have used color in their work.  Artists began to experiment with color in the late 19th century, employing it not only descriptively but also scientifically, politically, formally, and to stimulate the senses. Paul Signac declared his allegiance to color theory, while Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer of abstraction, played with synesthesia. The Russian avant-garde artists...

Lovers stealing out for secret trysts under cover of stormy nights, visits to the monsoon retreats of holy men, and divine beings associated with sources of water and rain are among the pictorial subjects in this exhibition, which explores visual representations of the rainy season in India.

Typically arriving each June with dramatic cloudbursts and intense rainfall along the southern and northeastern reaches of the subcontinent, the monsoon is the...

The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts features 100 outstanding sculptures and eye-catching textiles that explore how the arts and their visual regimes enable transitions from one stage of life to the next and from one state of being to another. Works reflect culturally specific notions of visuality and celebrate artists as agents of insight and transformation. Iconic figures, masks, initiation objects, and reliquary guardians guide people to...

Tony Smith: Smoke has become a LACMA icon since its 2008 installation in the Ahmanson Building atrium, where it animates the transitional space between the museum’s east and west campus. In addition to being one of the largest sculptures ever conceived by Smith (and the largest conceived for an interior space), Smoke reflects the artist’s lifelong exploration of patterns found in organic life and represents a culmination of his work...

Chinese Ceramics from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, comprising works from LACMA’s permanent collection, presents an introduction to Chinese ceramics from c. 2500 BC (Neolithic period) to the 19th century. The exhibition explores Chinese cosmology, religion, history, and society through a survey of the technical development of Chinese ceramics; symbols and narratives embedded in the decoration of Chinese ceramics; and ceramics exported to Japan, Southeast Asia, the Near...

The first comprehensive retrospective of the work of László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) in the United States in nearly 50 years, this long overdue presentation reveals a utopian artist who believed that art could work hand-in-hand with technology for the betterment of humanity. Moholy-Nagy: Future Present examines the career of this pioneering painter, photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker as well as graphic, exhibition, and stage designer, who was also an influential teacher at...

Drawing on collaborative research by LACMA’s Conservation Center and the Art of the Ancient Americas Program, Revealing Creation: The Science and Art of Ancient Maya Ceramicsintegrates new insight gained from technical analysis of ancient Maya ceramic vessels with knowledge from Maya culture. This exhibition considers ancient Maya ceramic production as both art and science and highlights how artisans worked to emulate acts of primordial creation through their labor of...

James Turrell’s Light Reignfall is one of the artist’s Perceptual Cells—freestanding enclosed structures that provide an immersive experience for one viewer at a time. An individual wears special headphones and lies down on a narrow bed that slides into the spherical chamber; inside, a program of saturated light envelopes the viewer. The intense experience reveals the multidimensional power of light and the complexities of the human eye. Turrell's use of...

James Turrell, considered one of the most important artists of the Southern California Light and Space movement, was born in Los Angeles in 1943 and attended Pomona College, where he studied art, art history, mathematics, perceptual psychology and astronomy. He took graduate courses at the University of California, Irvine, and received a master's degree in fine art from Claremont Graduate School. Breathing Light is one of the artist's Ganzfeld pieces...

Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera were contemporaries, erstwhile competitors, equally ambitious and prolific as artists, internationally famous, and well aware of their larger-than-life personalities. Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time presents moments of intersection in the formation of modernism both in Europe and Latin America, and asks how these towering figures of the twentieth century engaged with their respective ancient Mediterranean and Pre-Columbian worlds. The exhibition compares their artistic trajectories...

In April 2016, ScanLAB Projects traveled to the Yosemite Valley and used terrestrial 3D scanners to replicate the early photographic expeditions of Eadward Muybridge and Ansel Adams. The technology is a form of active imaging that captures dense, 3D data about object surfaces and is envisioned by the artists as the “camera of the future.” The valley’s vast setting, rugged landscape, and water features posed numerous challenges, pushing the equipment...

Long acknowledged in Southern California as one of the most important artists of the postwar period, John McLaughlin (1898-1976) created a focused body of geometric paintings that are entirely devoid of any connection to everyday experience, inspired by the Japanese notion of the void. Using a technique of layering rectangular bars on adjacent planes of muted color, McLaughlin creates works that provoke introspection and, consequently, a greater understanding of one’s...

Since LACMA’s establishment, living artists have played an instrumental role in understanding the museum’s encyclopedic collection through a contemporary lens. L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists features a selection of works given to the museum for its 50th anniversary, as part of an unprecedented campaign led by artist Catherine Opie. Featuring over sixty gifts, the exhibition includes additions to the collection by Edgar Arceneaux, John Baldessari, Uta Barth, Larry Bell...

Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach brings to Los Angeles some of the greatest achievements of German Renaissance art. The period under consideration (1460–1580) was marked by profound changes in thought, philosophy, science, and religion, which in turn transformed the work of many artists of the day. Artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein...

Toba Khedoori explores the artist’s nuanced and powerful body of work. Born in Sydney, Australia in 1964, Khedoori has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 1990. Her early works are notable for their precise draftsmanship and for their use of negative space—often at a very large scale.

Khedoori frequently depicts architectural forms from distanced perspectives, rendering commonplace objects and spaces familiar yet decontextualized. In recent years, she has transitioned...

Beyond Bling showcases an extraordinary assemblage of contemporary studio jewelry from the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. The exhibition, which features a selection of 50 works from the gift of over 300 pieces from collector Lois Boardman, explores the use of nontraditional materials and techniques, the ways jewelry can communicate personal or political messages, and the medium's potential to shock and delight. The collection is the first of its kind...

Random International’s Rain Room (2012) is an immersive environment of perpetually falling water that pauses wherever a human body is detected. The installation offers visitors an opportunity to experience what is seemingly impossible: the ability to control rain. Rain Room presents a respite from everyday life and an opportunity for sensory reflection within a responsive relationship.

Founded in 2005, Random International is a collaborative studio for experimental practice. They use...

CARtoons magazine, the most popular and longest-running publication dedicated to automotive cartooning, proclaimed itself “the only humor magazine in the world for the lovers and owners of cars.” Produced in Los Angeles between 1959 and 1991, the magazine featured rollicking stories about hot-rods, drag-racing, muscle cars, makes and models from Chevys and Mustangs to Corvettes, and even imaginary and fantastic vehicles. CARtoons is a spirited documentation of American car culture...