Art-Exhibitions-Current

Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity traces a century of transformation through more than 70 exquisite ensembles from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and America. It charts the evolution of Chinese women’s dress, from loose-fitting embroidered robes of the late Qing Dynasty to the sleek silhouettes of 1930s qipao and the globally iconic cheongsam of the 1960s. Vibrant colors, sumptuous silks, and intricate trims showcase the meticulous craftsmanship that is the hallmark...

For the inaugural exhibition in a series devoted to working with contemporary artists in the new W.M. Keck Foundation Gallery, LACMA presents Christina Quarles’s Now We're There (And We' Only Just Begun) (2023). Based in Los Angeles, Quarles is known for large-scale canvases that explore what it feels like to inhabit a body shaped by identity and lived experience. Now We're There (And We' Only Just Begun), recently acquired...

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.: In Between Stops features 12 benches designed by the Los Angeles–based artist installed along LACMA’s Kendall Concourse. A second-generation sign painter, Gonzalez draws on rotulismo mexicano—the tradition of Mexican hand-painted signage—to continue a craft increasingly displaced by digital graphics and urban clean-up efforts. His benches feature personal or socially conscious messages in place of typical bus stop advertisements and, at times, incorporate elements from LACMA’s history and collection, generating a dialogue...

The danse macabre (dance of death), a visual allegory of life’s impermanence depicted by lively dancing skeletons, was popularized in woodcut illustrations as early as the 14th century. Equal parts foreboding and whimsical, this ghoulish imagery was taken up by artists across Europe in the centuries that followed. By World War I, German Expressionist artists found relevance in the subject, deploying motifs of skulls, hourglasses, and personifications of Death to...

The human figure was Pablo Picasso’s favorite subject, and portraiture remained a constant throughout his career. Drawing from his personal life, he depicted lovers, friends, rivals, and himself in whichever pictorial language occupied him at the moment, from the fractured planes of Cubism to the expressive gestures of his late work.

This selection of works reveals how many of Picasso’s portraits operate in disguise. Rather than depicting his subjects directly...

SPIRITS is a year-long artwork designed to be experienced on your mobile browser. Irish artist john gerrard collected 96 plastic sandals and shoes from beaches across the world, each one carrying unknown stories of the people who wore them. By photoscanning the discarded objects into high-resolution “gaussian splats,” gerrard transforms them into sculptural forms, inviting the viewer to overlay them with oil slicks or ocean currents. The work unfolds across...

Inspired by breakthroughs in industry and technology, visual culture in the final quarter of the 19th century in France expanded well beyond the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and drawing to include advances in printmaking, photography, decorative arts, and fashion. Yet, 150 years later, French Impressionism single-handedly defines this period at American art museums. Unpacking the reasons why, Collecting Impressionism at LACMA offers a surprising narrative about the people and...

Eileen Cowin: Between Panic and Paradise presents the provocative photography and video of the Los Angeles–based artist who has explored romance and rivalry, the personal and the political, and the monotony and mystery of daily life, for more than 50 years. Often blurring the distinction between nonfiction and fiction, Cowin draws on cinema, literature, poetry, and painting to shape her photographic narratives. This survey highlights the artist’s work with experimental...

Reiko Sudō is a textile alchemist who, for more than 40 years, has pioneered innovative textiles that merge tradition with experimentation and handicraft with technology. Textile Alchemy: The Art of Reiko Sudō & NUNO provides an in-depth survey of the acclaimed Japanese designer’s work created with her textile collective NUNO, often in collaboration with independent artisans and workshops across Japan, and utilized by celebrated architects. The largest retrospective of Sudō’s textiles...

Between 1925 and 1985, Americans were offered an astonishing array of domestic utopias. Self-cleaning kitchens, plastic houses assembled in a day, push-button appliances, and desktop computers all shaped aspirations about how to live. Through architectural models, drawings, photographs, films, and objects ranging from sinks to television sets, Home of the Future traces how the American home of tomorrow was imagined, packaged, and sold—by whom, and for whom. While these visions...

Historically a site of women’s labor, the kitchen has also been the subject of their design research and cultural critique. The Kitchen and Its Discontents brings two influential kitchens from LACMA’s collection into conversation: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s 1926–30 kitchen for the New Frankfurt social housing program in Germany, and Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier’s 1948–50 kitchen for L’Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, France. These designers applied modern principles of efficiency and modularity...