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10/17/2026

Happy Birthday, Kerry James Marshall!

"Kerry James Marshall: Mastry" at MOCA Grand Avenue in 2017 was Marshall's first major retrospective in the US, and included nearly 80 paintings, all of which contain images of Black subjects going about their daily business, presented with utter equality and humanity.

This clip is from a video shot in his studio in Chicago in which Marshall discusses his career, his strategies to circumvent institutional inequality, and his mission to diversify the cultural representations that are prioritized and historicized by the museum and art history canon.

Watch the full video here: https://bit.ly/4i0gtTj

10/14/2026

ICYMI: Democracy Sessions: Oliver Leith, "Garland" had its US premiere at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Sat, Oct 4, 2026.

Presented by MOCA and Wild Up, "Garland" is a large-scale work for orchestra and community chorus that features 130 performers arranged in a spectacular procession of music, movement, and sound. Originally commissioned by Bold Tendencies, UK, and created for their multi-story car park, the site-responsive piece transformed The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA into both a stage and an instrument, with scale, architecture, and atmosphere becoming inseparable from the performance itself.

Democracy Sessions: Oliver Leith, Garland is presented as part of Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs.

Video credit:

Jeremy Eichenbaum, Los Angeles Video Club

10/14/2026

ICYMI: Democracy Sessions: Oliver Leith, "Garland" had its US premiere at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Sat, Oct 4, 2026.

Presented by MOCA and Wild Up, "Garland" is a large-scale work for orchestra and community chorus that features 130 performers arranged in a spectacular procession of music, movement, and sound. Originally commissioned by Bold Tendencies, UK, and created for their multi-story car park, the site-responsive piece transformed The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA into both a stage and an instrument, with scale, architecture, and atmosphere becoming inseparable from the performance itself.

Democracy Sessions: Oliver Leith, Garland is presented as part of Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs.

Wild Up

Video credit:

Jeremy Eichenbaum, Los Angeles Video Club

Julian Charrière works in remote, liminal locations to explore humanity’s changing relationship with nature. Climbing ic...
10/13/2026

Julian Charrière works in remote, liminal locations to explore humanity’s changing relationship with nature. Climbing icebergs in Iceland, photographing deep sea divers in aquatic caves in Mexico, hiking glaciers in North Greenland, and documenting the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the vast abyssal plain in the central Pacific Ocean, Charrière creates work that invites us to reflect on the urgent realities of climate change and environmental degradation while meditating on nature’s powerful, raw beauty.

Charrière, co-recipient with artist Cecilia Vicuña of MOCA's inaugural Schmidt Environment and Art Prize, has his first solo museum exhibition in LA, opening on November 15, 2026, at MOCA Grand Avenue.

The Schmidt Environment and Art Prize is a juried award supporting artists whose practices engage critical intersections of art, architecture, design, climate, conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice.

🔗 https://www.moca.org/exhibitions/julian-charriere

Image credits:

Julian Charrière, "The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories III," 2013. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026.

Julian Charrière, "Where Waters Meet [2.33 atmospheres]," 2019. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026.

Julian Charrière, "Midnight Zone," 2024. Film still. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026.

10/08/2026

Kahlil Joseph’s “m.A.A.d,” is a double screen projection that is a lush portrait of contemporary LA. The camera sinuously glides through predominantly Black neighborhoods, pausing to capture quotidian moments that are suffused with creativity, joy, and sadness. The split screen divides the viewer’s attention, and alludes to the history of auteur cinema, a form of filmmaking pioneered by French director Jean Luc Godard, which sacrificed linear narrative for experimentation with the formal and political possibilities of filmmaking. “m.A.A.d” extends this tradition of formal experimentation by crossing the wires of music videos, amateur film footage, and moments of magical realism. The two-part projection may also slyly evoke philosopher W.E.B. Dubois’s early twentieth century concept of “double consciousness,” a psychological description of Black life in America. The film’s verbally dense and thick booming soundtrack, provided by Kendrick Lamar, adds yet another layer to this prismatic account of contemporary life in LA.

“m.A.A.D.” is currently on view in “In These Times: Recent Acquisitions at MOCA,” at MOCA Grand Avenue. Now through Jan. 3, 2027.

Image credit: Kahlil Joseph, “m.A.A.d,” 2014. Double screen projection. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Gifr of the artist.

New exhibition alert! We are proud to announce the upcoming exhibition "Julian Charrière: Deep End," the French-Swiss ar...
10/05/2026

New exhibition alert! We are proud to announce the upcoming exhibition "Julian Charrière: Deep End," the French-Swiss artist’s first solo museum show in LA. One of two inaugural Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize exhibitions presented at MOCA Grand Avenue this fall, "Julian Charrière: Deep End" is on view from Nov 15, 2026–June 6, 2027 alongside Cecilia Vicuña’s "Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water". Together, they reflect the Prize’s commitment to artists working at the intersections of art, climate, and environmental justice.

The works on view in "Deep End" will explore the fragility and resilience of planetary water systems, engaging with the complexity of the sea, not merely as a regenerative carbon sink and habitat, chemical marker of climate change, liminal site of imagination, or merely resource threatened by extraction, but as a vast biogeological system in which we are inextricably entrenched.

🔗 https://www.moca.org/exhibitions/julian-charriere
📅 Nov 15, 2026–June 6, 2027
📍MOCA Grand Avenue
🎟️ FREE admission

Exhibition partners include the , an initiative of and , and DeepSea as technology partner.

Image captions:

Julian Charrière, "Midnight Zone" (still), 2024, 4K video. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2026.

Julian Charrière, “The Gods Must Be Crazy," 2019. Installation view, "Midnight Zone," Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2025. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2026. Photo by Jens Ziehe.

Julian Charrière, "Pure Waste," 2021. Video still. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2026.

Julian Charrière, "Midnight Zone," 2025. Installation view, "Midnight Zone," Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2025. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2026. Photo by Jens Ziehe.

Painter, designer, filmmaker, and sculptor Sawako Goda emerged in the 1960s alongside a generation of other internationa...
10/01/2026

Painter, designer, filmmaker, and sculptor Sawako Goda emerged in the 1960s alongside a generation of other internationally recognized Japanese avant-gardists inspired by the milieu of postwar Japan. Though she first gained recognition for her Junk Art assemblages of damaged found objects, she later dedicated herself to drawing and painting, incorporating references to American pop culture, European art history, and—after a life-changing trip to Gabal Takouk, a Nubian village in Egypt—ancient Egyptian iconography and mysticism. Her "Automatism Series: Toe Sensation" drawings (1991–1993) were produced after this trip and channeled the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing to invoke the ineffability of spirituality and express the bodily unconscious. Thus, rather than using her hands, Goda created these abstractions by pressing pencils between her toes, allowing her legs to dictate the drawings' movement and form.

Learn more about Sawako Goda at MOCA Grand Avenue this Sat, Oct 3, 2026 at 11:30am during "In Session: Sawaka Goda."

📅 Sat, Oct 3, 2026
⏰ 11:30am
📍 MOCA Grand Avenue
🎟️ FREE with RSVP
🔗 https://www.moca.org/events/in-session-sawako-goda

Both artworks are currently on view in "In These Times: Recent Acquisitions at MOCA," through Jan 23, 2027.

Image credits:

Sawako Goda, ""Automatism Series: Toe Sensation," 1993. Pastel crayon on paper. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Purchase with funds provided by the Drawings and Photography Committee. ©The Estate of Sawako Goda. Image courtesy Nonaka Hill Gallery.

We’re excited to announce that Jonathan Abbott has been appointed CEO & Maurice Marciano Director of MOCA.A nationally r...
09/25/2026

We’re excited to announce that Jonathan Abbott has been appointed CEO & Maurice Marciano Director of MOCA.

A nationally recognized leader in public media, Abbott brings to MOCA a commitment to the role of arts, culture, and education in strengthening communities and helping people understand the world around them. Abbott most recently served for fifteen years as President and CEO of GBH, the country’s largest producer of multiplatform content for PBS, partner to NPR and PRX, and the organization behind such celebrated programs as FRONTLINE, NOVA, American Experience, and Masterpiece.

Abbott said: “MOCA has always stood for artists and ideas, and for the power of contemporary art to challenge assumptions and open up new ways of seeing the world. I want to help bring broader support and audiences to work that is urgent and thought-provoking. Los Angeles is one of the world’s most vibrant cultural centers, with an extraordinary sense of possibility. I grew up thinking of cultural institutions as public places that belonged to everyone. MOCA was built here by artists and civic leaders, and I’m energized by the opportunity to help it remain deeply of this community and for this community.”

Welcome, Jonathan!

Photo by Owen Kolasinski for MOCA

09/23/2026

Democracy Sessions presents the US Premiere of Oliver Leith's "Garland," a large-scale work for orchestra and community chorus featuring 130 performers arranged in a spectacular procession of music, movement, and sound. Alongside the orchestra and massed voices, Leith constructs a sonic world from handmade instruments and everyday materials–tuned corrugated plastic straws, whirly tubes, button whistles, planks of wood, ceramic shards, carts, bicycles, scaffolding poles, and a horse connected to the chorus by a garland of bells.

Democracy Sessions is presented by MOCA and Wild Up.

📅 Saturday, October 3, 2026
⏰ 3pm and 6pm
📍 The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
🎟️ https://www.moca.org/events/democracy-sessions-oliver-leith-garland

Democracy Sessions: Oliver Leith, "Garland," is presented as part of Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs.

Image credit:

Oliver Leith, "Garland," at Bold Tendencies, 2025. Courtesy of Bold Tendencies. © Dan John Lloyd.

It's officially the first day of fall and a balmy 80° in downtown LA.Image credit:John Pfahl, "Autumn at Crupp’s Eddy," ...
09/22/2026

It's officially the first day of fall and a balmy 80° in downtown LA.

Image credit:

John Pfahl, "Autumn at Crupp’s Eddy," 1985. Color coupler prints. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Photography Collection.

Opening today: TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS at MOCA Grand Avenue. “Alexander ApóstolRegime: Dramatis Personae”Sept. 20, 2026-Jan....
09/20/2026

Opening today: TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS at MOCA Grand Avenue.

“Alexander Apóstol
Regime: Dramatis Personae”
Sept. 20, 2026-Jan. 3, 2027

“In These Times: Recent Acquisitions at MOCA”
Sept. 20, 2026-Jan. 3, 2027

Learn more at MOCA.org

Have you heard? This is the LAST weekend to see "The Expanding Field: MOCA's Collection from the 1940s to 1970s" at MOCA...
09/19/2026

Have you heard? This is the LAST weekend to see "The Expanding Field: MOCA's Collection from the 1940s to 1970s" at MOCA Grand Avenue. Works on view include "Hear (Self-Portrait)," 1973, by Robert Arneson. Arneson was a leader of the so-called Funk movement and is known for his extroverted, often irreverent portrayals. Arneson championed and developed glazed ceramics as a viable sculptor’s medium, creating strictly nonutilitarian objects from potter’s clay.

"The Expanding Field" closes Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026.

09/17/2026

Today, Sept. 17, is the Feast Day of Hildegard von Bingen, a mystic, healer, artist, scientist, composer, poet, writer, philosopher, theologian, and German Benedictine abbess. Von Bingen was born in 1098 in Bermersheim vor der Höhe in the Holy Roman Empire and was canonized in 2012..

Multidisciplinary artist Devendra Banhart premiered his music video for "Für Hildegard Von Bingen" on MOCAtv in 2013. The video, starring Jodie Turner-Smith, was directed by Isaiah Seret and written by Seret and Banhart.

🔗 Click the link in bio to watch the full video.



Discover TWO new exhibitions this weekend at MOCA Grand Avenue."Alexander ApóstolRegime: Dramatis Personae"Opening Sept ...
09/16/2026

Discover TWO new exhibitions this weekend at MOCA Grand Avenue.

"Alexander Apóstol
Regime: Dramatis Personae"
Opening Sept 20, 2026

"In These Times: Recent Acquisitions at MOCA"
Opening Sept 20, 2026

Want exclusive, early access? Become a MOCA Member today and receive an invite to the Member Preview Day this Saturday, Sept 19, 2026. Learn more: moca.org/membership

Image credits:

Alexander Apóstol, "Regime: Dramatis Personae (detail)," 2017. Chromogenic print. © Alexander Apóstol. Courtesy of the artist.

Yolanda López, "Las Santas Locas, from the series Life in the Mission," 1979/2021. Digital print from black-and-white photograph. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Purchase with funds provided by the Drawings and Photography Committee. © 1979/2021 Yolanda López.

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