While LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) undergoes some exciting redevelopment, the beloved museum is still home to many impressive exhibitions. Our LAArtParty staff voted on their LACMA Favorite Exhibitions – enjoy our staff picks!
LACMA Favorite Exhibitions
Of course it is the last week of Ed Ruscha’s retrospective on view BCAM, Level 2. The exhibition includes his early works produced while traveling through Europe, his installations—such as the Chocolate Room and the Course of Empire presented at the Venice Biennale in 1970 and 2005, respectively—and his ceaseless photographic documentation of the streets of Los Angeles beginning in 1965. If you have yet to see it, get there soon as it closes on October 6, 2024.
When you arrive you won’t be able to miss Ai Weiwei’s installation Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in Zev Yaroslavsky Plaza. This installation references a long and ongoing story of cross-cultural exchange and collision between China and the West, beginning with a mid-18th century fountain at Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. The fountain, commissioned by Emperor Qianlong and designed by Jesuit priests promoting Catholicism in China, was used to tell time: 12 zodiac animal sculptures each spouted water for two hours (or one shichen) each day.
Installation photograph, Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the Yuz Foundation; © Ai Weiwei Studio, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
During the Second Opium War in 1860, the waterspouts were looted from Yuanmingyuan by French and British forces. Over the past 35 years, a number of the original waterspouts have appeared in auctions. This included a 2009 auction that spurred controversial repatriation efforts and discussions of ownership, due to the European origin of the original designers. At present, seven of the original waterspouts have been located and returned to China, while the locations of the other five remain unknown.
Band Richard Serra
Ongoing – In BCAM, Level 1: Here you can find another stunning exhibition by Richard Serra. Band (2006) may qualify as Richard Serra’s magnum opus, representing the fullest expression of the formal vocabulary proffered by his monumental steel arcs and torqued ellipses of the 1980s and 1990s.
“Band,” Richard Serra, 2006, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Eli and Edythe L. Broad, © Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Among the most formally elegant and technically complex works of Serra’s oeuvre, this sculpture took him two-and-a-half years to develop. At 12 feet high and more than 70 feet long, the work is vast even by Serra’s monumental standard. Careening aesthetically between bravado and elegance, Band bespeaks the ambitiousness of Serra’s artistic vision and his commitment to its physical realization.
We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art
On view through September 15, 2025, Resnick Pavilion: We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art. Mesoamerican artists held a cosmic responsibility – as they adorned the surfaces of buildings, clay vessels, and much more with color, they (quite literally) made the world. The power of color emerged from the materiality of its pigments as well as the skilled hands that crafted it. The communities then brought their knowledge to the work, and imbued it with meaning. Color mapped the very order of the cosmos, of time and space. By engineering and deploying color, artists wielded the power of cosmic creation in their hands.
We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art explores the science, and art, of color in Mesoamerica. Histories of colonialism and industrialization in the “color-averse” West have minimized the deep significance of color in the Indigenous Americas. This exhibition follows two interconnected lines of inquiry—technical and material analyses, and Indigenous conceptions of art and image—to reach the full richness of color at the core of Mesoamerican worldviews.
Also in the Resnick Pavilion to see Josiah McElheny’s dramatic Island Universe as well.
Visit LACMA’s website for more info about additional exhibitions along with hours, admission, etc.
Where: LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., LA 90036
Phone: (323) 857-6000
Website: https://www.lacma.org/
