Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery

08/17/2026

DCA and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery celebrate the extraordinary life and legacy of Betye Saar.

For more than six decades, Saar was an essential part of the cultural life of Los Angeles. Her art, generosity, imagination, helped shape generations of artists, Los Angeles, and beyond. 

Saar’s history with the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery began in 1964 with the 12th Annual All City Outdoor Art Festival. She returned to the Gallery in 1974 for 𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘴𝘵 ’74: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦, in 1976 for 𝘈 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘯 𝘓𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘑𝘳., and in 1981 for 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘔𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳, a collaboration with her daughters Alison and Lezley Saar titled 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴: 𝘈 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘮 𝘍𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴 (installation image above). 

Her connection to the Watts community, particularly through another DCA facility, the Watt Towers Arts Center Campus, was equally formative. As a young girl, Saar lived in Watts with her grandmother and was deeply inspired by Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers and the possibilities of transforming everyday materials into something extraordinary. This was a formative experience that shaped her artistic practice, particularly her use of a variety of discarded materials. Her lifelong relationship to the Campus as a supporter and exhibiting artist remains an important part of the artistic history of Los Angeles and the work of the DCA.

We are deeply grateful to Betye Saar for all that she gave to this city: her art, her curiosity, her humor, her generosity, and her unwavering belief in the transformative power of art and social change.

Thank you, Betye, for helping make Los Angeles a more vibrant, expansive, and creative city. Your presence, work, and spirit will continue to live on in the artists, communities, and institutions you helped shape.

Image: Betye Saar, Alison Saar, & Lezley Saar, 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴: 𝘈 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘮 𝘍𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴, The Magical Mystery Tour, 1980. Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs / Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.

08/12/2026

This Friday at LAMAG, 5:00-8:30 pm

Come be part of a live studio audience and see the magic behind the scenes when Telefantasy Studios, in cooperation with T.A.P.E. Los Angeles, stage a live taping of a science fiction soap opera here at LAMAG.

Witness the behind the scenes magic of an active television set where actors become characters in the ongoing saga set in Studio City.

With an all-star ensemble cast Ian McPherson, Chloe Coover, Vince Rossi, and Gabrielle DeCaro in a Teleplay by Kerryn McLaughlin  Directed by Jennifer Juniper Stratford

A Telefatasy Studios Production

08/11/2026

We would like to say a huge thank you to Heavy Manners Library for making our July Friday Art Nights exciting, instructive, and engaging! Our visitors thoroughly enjoyed the workshops your team facilitated, and we look forward to more in the future!

08/04/2026

Stop by our Friday Art Nights in August for a series of installations, vendor markets, tape swaps, and more, all presented by T.A.P.E. LA, with support from Whammy Analog Media and Telefantasy. Swipe to the second slide for this Friday's programming. Stay tuned for more info on future Friday night events!

06/27/2026

We are excited to announce that we will once again be partnering with Heavy Manners Library as part of our Friday Art Nights this summer! Starting next Friday, July 3rd, LAMAG will host Heavy Manners for a series of Friday night workshops. Swipe through to see what workshops are happening, then visit heavymannerslibrary.com/events for tickets and additional information. See you there! 

Clothed Figure Drawing - July 3rd, 5:00pm

Poetry Workshop and Reading - July 10th, 5:00 pm

Risograph Printing and Collage Night - July 17th, 5:00 pm

Paper-Mache Mask Making Workshop - July 24th, 5:00 pm

Clothed Figured Drawing - July 31st, 5:00 pm

06/18/2026

06/17/2026

Join us this Saturday for the FINAL day of Heavy Metal, Ivan Bridges: Infinite Game, and Rachel Bridges: I Am Not Your Filipina!
Additionally, Heavy Metal artist Barbra Berk will be performing from 2:00-4:00

The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery is open Thursday-Saturday, 11:00am - 4:00pm

LAMAG will be closed on Friday, June 19th, in observation of Juneteenth.

More info in bio or at lamag.org

06/17/2026

Heavy Metal Artist Spotlight Part 13

Miya Ando
(b. Los Angeles, CA)
Lives and works in New York

Kumo (Cloud) 07.27.2022 1:01 PM NYC, 2022
Ink on aluminum composite

Courtesy of the artist

Ando’s practice examines the intersection of nature, time, and impermanence. Through philosophical inquiry into natural cycles, she creates visual systems that give form to vanishing conditions such as seasonal shifts, atmospheric changes, and fading cultural memory. Materials such as indigo, metal, washi, and pigment are selected for their ability to transform over time. Phenomena like fog, moon phases, and rainfall are approached as temporal systems, rendered perceptible through sustained observation. With subtle gradations of color that seem lit from within, her paintings depict ephemeral elements — clouds, mist, rain, the moon — through materials that are anything but fleeting. In an era of ecological instability and accelerated digital experience, disappearance functions as a guiding principle.

Drawing from Japanese and American lineages, including formative years in a Buddhist temple, an apprenticeship with a metalsmith in Okayama, and her ancestry as a sixteenth-generation Bizen swordsmith, Ando translates natural and linguistic ephemera into form. Titles often reference untranslatable Japanese idioms, framing language as a structural element within the work.

06/13/2026

Heavy Metal Artist Spotlight Part 12

Claire Chambless
(b. 1989, Houston, TX)
Lives and works in Los Angeles

Player Non-Player, 2024
Synthetic "mars" hydroxyapatite, steel, resin, latex, and rope

Courtesy of the artist, Morán Morán, and Carlye Packer Gallery

Claire Chambless’s practice explores the unstable terrain where opposites such as light and shadow, interior and exterior, and truth and contradiction coexist. Drawing on ideas of Jungian shadow integration, her work invites viewers to consider how the boundaries we create within the self may be more porous than they appear.

Play is an important part of Chambless’s process. Known for her dollhouses, she treats them less as nostalgic objects than as psychological architectures and symbolic landscapes of the psyche. She incorporates materials such as hydroxyapatite, a calcium phosphate compound more commonly found in dental applications, which she enamels with epoxy resin. From a distance, her sculptures can appear minimal and abstract. Up close, their surfaces reveal cracks, seams, and fragments that suggest fragility and tension, reflecting how early frameworks of identity continue to shape the adult self. Player Non-Player acts as a skeletal frame in an embodied cognitive dissonance.

06/11/2026

“Caring for What You Create: Practical Preservation Tips,” was a half-day preservation workshop presented by LAMAG and Your Neighborhood Museum and facilitated by Makayla Rawlins, Carolina Benitez Squires, and Jenny Payan. The workshop introduced artists to practical conservation concepts, including conservation ethics, documentation, material aging, archival storage, and studio-based preservation strategies. It also included interactive mock-ups and examples that connected conservation practices to materials and situations artists may encounter in their own studios.

Participants came to the workshop with a wide range of prior experience. Some had formal or professional exposure to conservation through college coursework, internships, textile work, mural and object experience, or private practice apprenticeship. Others had only heard of conservation generally, while some had little to no direct experience. This range suggests that the workshop was able to support both beginners and participants with more advanced interest in the field. The artists who attended work with a broad range of materials. This variety reinforced the importance of artist-centered conservation education, especially for contemporary practices that often involve mixed media, experimental materials, and everyday studio storage challenges.

In summary, the workshop successfully introduced art conservation as a practical, approachable, and collaborative resource for artists. Participants valued the balance of ethics, documentation, material knowledge, and real-world examples. The feedback suggests strong interest in future programming that is more hands-on, community-oriented, and focused on helping artists apply conservation principles directly to their own work and studio practices.