The Museum of Contemporary Art

The Museum of Contemporary Art Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from The Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Museum, 250 S Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA.
(10412)

Help us reach our goal. Donate to the MOCA Fund for Education today! As MOCA’s fiscal year closes, now is the moment to ...
06/23/2026

Help us reach our goal. Donate to the MOCA Fund for Education today! As MOCA’s fiscal year closes, now is the moment to give. Every gift to the MOCA Fund for Education will be matched dollar for dollar—up to $30,000—through June 30. Thanks to the generosity of Kristen Boggs Jaeger and Jeff Jaeger, The David & Linda Shaheen Foundation, and Berry Stein, your gift today will go twice as far in supporting MOCA’s education programs.

Learn more: moca.org/support/moca-fund-for-education

"Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death" is a video work by artist, director, and award-winning cinematographer Arthu...
06/19/2026

"Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death" is a video work by artist, director, and award-winning cinematographer Arthur Jafa. "Love Is The Message" is a masterful convergence of found footage that traces African-American identity through a vast spectrum of contemporary imagery. From photographs of civil rights leaders watermarked with “Getty Images” to helicopter views of the LA Riots to a wave of bodies dancing to “The Dougie,” the meticulously edited 7-minute video suspends viewers in a swelling, emotional montage that is a testament to Jafa’s profound ability to mine, scrutinize, and reclaim media’s representational modes and strategies. Alongside segments of familiar Black icons and historic events are also scenes featuring lesser known figures: anonymous bodies in various states of elation and despair. Excerpts from Jafa’s own stunning documentary film, "Dreams are Colder than Death," (2012) inflects a personal dimension to imagery mostly drawn from news media, television and the Internet. In this pointed inclusion, Jafa discloses both his vulnerability and authority as an artist—what it means to contribute to the vast and complex terrain of Black representation. While "Love Is The Message" poignantly embodies the artist’s desire to create a cinema that “replicates the power, beauty and alienation of Black Music,” it is also a reminder that the collective multitude defining Blackness is comprised of singular individuals, manifold identities and their unaccountable differences.



Image credit:

Insstallation views of "Arthur Jafa: Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death," April 2–June 12, 2017 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photo by Brian Forrest.

“I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.” - John BaldessariBorn on this day...
06/17/2026

“I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.” - John Baldessari

Born on this day John Baldessari stands as one of the defining figures of West Coast conceptual art, as well as a deeply influential teacher. Starting in the mid-1960s, he pushed beyond conventional artistic forms, building a body of work over the following five decades that spans painting, photography, prints, film, video, installation, and sculpture, all marked by a distinctive wit and inventiveness. By drawing on found and appropriated imagery, Baldessari raised pointed questions: who or what holds authority and authorship over an image, where the lines between mediums actually fall, how words and pictures relate to one another, and how meaning shifts depending on the context in which an image appears.

Image credit:
John Baldessari, "Two Highrises (With Disruptions) / Two Witnesses (Red and Green)," 1990. Color photographs and vinyl paint. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Gift of the artist.

Nicole Eisenman rose to prominence in the early 1990s for bold, sexually charged images featuring feminist themes and ab...
06/17/2026

Nicole Eisenman rose to prominence in the early 1990s for bold, sexually charged images featuring feminist themes and abundant references to art history and pop culture. She has remained central to discussions about q***r and feminist practices.

In "Another Green World," 2015, Nicole Eisenman depicts party goers in various states of repose after a seemingly raucous scene. Two men slow dance while other figures eat, drink, converse, lounge, cuddle, kiss, and prop each other up. Many of the characters have indeterminate age, gender, and ethnicity. This stirring depiction of leisure contains moments of love, friendship, and contemplation. The work shares its title with the 1975 Brian Eno album, which the figure near the center of the canvas peruses. Armed with a sharp wit and keen awareness of art history - namely 19th-century leisure activities, baroque group portraits, and classical bacchanalia - Eisenman offers viewers a playful but exacting take on the contemporary moment.




Image credit:

Nicole Eisenman, "Another Green World," 2015. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition and Collection Committee.

Lyle Ashton Harris is a visual artist who investigates the politics of race, gender, and sexuality through the mediums o...
06/14/2026

Lyle Ashton Harris is a visual artist who investigates the politics of race, gender, and sexuality through the mediums of photography, collage, installation, and performance art.

Harris obtained an MFA in photography and media from the California Institute of the Arts. During his time there, he further cultivated his interests in representation, identity construction, performance, and cultural narratives, befriending artists and cultural critics such as Marlon Riggs, bell hooks, and Isaac Julien along the way.

During the late 1980s and continued into the early 2000s, Harris let the camera act as his memory as he chronicled life as a young, Black, gay artist. It became a daily ritual, almost a reminder of being alive. He committed himself to shoot real life and fantasy, togetherness and isolation.




Image credits:

Lyle Ashton Harris, "Lyle, Gay Pride Parade, San Francisco, 1989," 2015. Chromogenic print. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Gift of the artist in honor of Dr. Leon and Rose Marie Banks. ©Lyle Ashton Harris.

David Hockney (1937-2026), one of the quintessential artists of the contemporary period, has died. Though Hockney hailed...
06/12/2026

David Hockney (1937-2026), one of the quintessential artists of the contemporary period, has died. Though Hockney hailed from Yorkshire, England, his colorful, iconically cool imagery helped define a Southern California aesthetic. Noted for his keen social observation, portraiture, and experiments in landscape, Hockney was a pioneer of the Pop mode in LA, his canvasses both exuberant and crisply of their time. His legacy can be felt by generations of artists internationally, among them Henry Taylor, Elizabeth Peyton, Thomas Eggerer, Brian Calvin, and Jonas Wood. In 1990-1991, MOCA presented "David Hockney Photoworks Retrospective," which delved into Hockney's use of the medium, and the museum counts seven of the artists works in its collection. Hockney was a longtime and generous supporter of MOCA, and we extend our condolences to his family and friends.

Image credit: Hockney pauses in front of "The Grand Canyon Looking North II, September 1982," part of the "David Hockney Photoworks Retrospective" at MOCA, 2001. Credit: AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes | © AP 2001.

Josh Kline's "Climate Change" on view at Grand Avenue June 2024–January 2025, was both an exhibition and a total work of...
06/10/2026

Josh Kline's "Climate Change" on view at Grand Avenue June 2024–January 2025, was both an exhibition and a total work of art–an ambitious, immersive suite of science-fiction installations that imagined a future sculpted by ruinous climate crisis and the ordinary people destined to inhabit it.

Josh Kline and "Climate Change" are featured in Art21's "Human Nature" premiering today.

Watch here > https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s12/josh-kline-in-human-nature/

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Reynaldo Rivera took personal photos of the LA that he lived in and knew: a world of che...
06/07/2026

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Reynaldo Rivera took personal photos of the LA that he lived in and knew: a world of cheap rent, house parties, subversive fashion, underground bands, and a handful of Latino gay and transvestite bars: Mugi’s, The Silverlake Lounge, and La Plaza. Most of these bars are long closed and many of the performers have died. But in Rivera’s photographs, these men and women live on in a silvery landscape of makeshift old-style cinematic glamour, a fabulous flight from unacceptable reality.




Image credits:

Reynaldo Rivera, "Gaby and Melissa, La Plaza," 1993. Inkjet print. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Purchase with funds provided by the Drawings and Photography Committee. Image courtesy of the artist and Reena Spaulings Fine Art, NY/LA.

Got Sunday plans?! Join us this Sunday for our all-ages Sunday Studio inspired by the current exhibition "The Expanding ...
06/06/2026

Got Sunday plans?! Join us this Sunday for our all-ages Sunday Studio inspired by the current exhibition "The Expanding Field: MOCA's Collection from the 1940s to 1970s." There will be so many wonderful activities to do!

Sunday, June 7, 2026
noon–3pm
MOCA Grand Avenue

Learn more and RSVP: https://www.moca.org/program/sunday-studio-the-expanding-field

Address

250 S Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
90012

Telephone

+12136266222

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Museum of Contemporary Art posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category