Displaying items by tag: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anniversary celebrations can easily turn vaguely sentimental, but the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is closing out its 50th year with a lineup of events more forward-looking than nostalgic. On November 7 the museum holds its annual Art + Film gala—hosted by trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio—honoring artist James Turrell and filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu and featuring a performance by Sam Smith. Now in its fifth year, the event raises funds to increase film-related exhibitions on such notables as David Hockney, Christian Marclay, Tim Burton, and German Expressionist filmmakers.

Half the fun of an actual rainstorm is that the deluge is unpredictable, a natural outburst whose duration is unknown and whose force fluctuates according to invisible conditions like wind and temperature. The "calm before the storm before the calm" injects a dimension of abstract narrative.

It tends to be messy and unruly.

In "Rain Room," the immersive installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that simulates a heavy downpour, the messiness is all cleaned up — smoothed out, unruffled and neatly organized for your 15 minutes of viewing pleasure. It's a Minimalist storm.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Living for the Moment: Japanese Prints from the Barbara S. Bowman Collection. The exhibition features over 100 prints of transformative promised gifts of Japanese works to LACMA, representing the work of 32 artists. Included are examples of rare early prints of the ukiyo-e genre (pictures of the floating world); works from the golden age of ukiyo-e at the end of the eighteenth century by Suzuki Harunobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, and Katsukawa Shunshō; and nineteenth century prints by great masters such as Utagawa Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and others.

Maurice Tuchman, the first full-time curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has donated his papers to the Getty Research Institute, the GRI is expected to announce Thursday.

Tuchman held the LACMA position from 1964 to 1994 and was responsible for mounting pioneering shows and projects, including the lauded Art and Technology program, which championed emerging light and space artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell and paired artists with Southern California technology companies from 1966 to 1971.

Elaine Wynn and Antony Ressler have been elected as the new board co-chairs of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, officials announced Thursday. They succeed Andrew Brandon-Gordon and Terry Semel, who will remain on the museum board with the title co-chairs emeriti.

Wynn joined LACMA's board of trustees in 2011 and is an active art collector. She was the reported buyer in 2013 of the $142.4 million Francis Bacon triptych painting of Lucian Freud — then a record sum for a painting sold at auction. 

In years to come, the general public will be able to say "Hello, gorgeous!" to a rarely seen John Singer Sargent portrait that has remained out of the public eye for much of its existence.

Barbra Streisand will be donating a Sargent painting from her private collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in recognition of the organization's 50th anniversary. "Mrs. Cazalet and Her Children Edward and Victor" is a triple portrait painting that depicts members of an aristocratic British family. It dates from 1900 to 1901.

"Gratitude is the theme of our 50th anniversary," Michael Govan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's chief executive, said at the media preview for the new exhibit "50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA's Anniversary."

The show, which is in member previews this week and opens to the public Sunday, follows a star-studded celebratory gala on April 18 that raised $5 million and featured a performance by Seal. The "50 for 50" exhibit showcases more than $675 million in gifted art from patrons including LACMA trustees Jane Nathanson and Lynda Resnick.

"There's nothing better than knowing that the big gala fundraiser is lasting in the form of '50 for 50,'" Govan said.

On Saturday, April 18, 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art celebrated the museum’s 50th anniversary at a special fundraising gala, co-chaired by LACMA trustees Ann Colgin, Jane Nathanson, and Lynda Resnick. The evening welcomed approximately 750 guests and raised $5 million, the proceeds of which will benefit the museum’s programming and acquisitions. LACMA’s 50th Anniversary Gala was sponsored by Christie’s.

In honor of the occasion, Mrs. Nathanson and Mrs. Resnick gifted significant works of art to the museum’s collection; in addition, the two trustees led a campaign encouraging other patrons to donate or bequeath major artworks to LACMA.

Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines and the owner of a famously massive shoe collection, turns out to have also briefly been in possession of an early 19th-century Goya canvas. The artwork somehow vanished from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), apparently never to be seen again, until much of the shoe queen's property was seized by the Philippine government in 2014.

When the museum initially acquired "The Marquesa of Santa Cruz as a Muse" from the Duke of Wellington dynasty in 1965, it was buzzy enough to earn a feature in "Time" magazine.

The major retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe's work that the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art promised four years ago when they jointly acquired some 2,000 images by the New York City photographer is set to open in 2016 in an exhibition at both museums.

The Getty's part will run March 15 to July 31, 2016; the LACMA dates are March 20 to July 31, 2016, the two museums announced Thursday. The co-curators are Paul Martineau of the Getty and LACMA's Britt Salvesen.