On Saturday, November 7, 2026, friends and supporters from the art, film, fashion, and entertainment industries will gather at LACMA for its fifteenth annual Art+Film Gala. LACMA will honor artist Vija Celmins, one of the most respected artists of her generation whose detailed artworks explore the beauty and complexity of the natural world, alongside acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, whose visually striking and thought-provoking films—including the Dune series—have established him as one of the most influential directors working today. LACMA trustee Eva Chow and actor Leonardo DiCaprio will co-chair the event for the fifteenth consecutive year.
Past honorees of the LACMA Art+Film Gala include artists Mary Corse, Simone Leigh, Judy Baca, Helen Pashgian, Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, Betye Saar, Catherine Opie, Mark Bradford, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Barbara Kruger, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, and John Baldessari, and filmmakers Ryan Coogler, Baz Luhrmann, David Fincher, Park Chan-wook, Steven Spielberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, George Lucas, Kathryn Bigelow, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, and Clint Eastwood.
Proceeds from the LACMA Art+Film Gala will be used to support LACMA’s initiative to make film more central to the museum’s curatorial programming, while also funding LACMA’s broader mission. This includes exhibitions, acquisitions, and educational programming, in addition to screenings that explore the intersection of art and film.
The LACMA Art+Film Gala is once again made possible by Gucci’s longstanding and generous support.
For more information about tickets and table sales, contact artandfilm@lacma.org.
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About Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins has long been admired for her meticulous renderings of natural imagery, including ocean waves, desert floors, and night skies. Her paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints depict scenes that are too vast or mercurial to be fixed in the mind’s eye. She first became interested in representing the visible world during the early 1960s, when she began to paint the objects in her Los Angeles studio before turning her attention to photographs found in magazines and history books. By the end of the 1960s, she had set aside paint on canvas in favor of graphite on paper. When she began painting again in the 1980s, drawing and printmaking remained central to her art. Celmins has had one-person exhibitions at numerous museums, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Menil Collection in Houston. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996 and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997.
About Denis Villeneuve
Denis Villeneuve is an Academy Award®-nominated director, screenwriter and producer whose masterful world-building and unique visuals have established him as one of the premier filmmakers working today. He has built his career on films that blend cerebral storytelling with visceral cinematic experience, from Sicario, Blade Runner 2049, Prisoners and Arrival, which earned him a Best Director nomination. In 2021, DUNE: PART ONE earned six Academy Awards® and multiple guild and critics' awards. Its sequel, DUNE: PART TWO, expanded with bolder visual ambition and complexity, surpassing over $700 million worldwide and winning two Academy Awards®, with additional recognition from BAFTA, Critics’ Choice and major guilds. Villeneuve will conclude the trilogy with DUNE: PART THREE this December, reuniting its core cast. He is also set to direct the next James Bond film for Amazon MGM Studios.
Image credits: Vija Celmins, photo by Laurie Lambrecht; Denis Villeneuve, photo by Ethan Benavidez.