codylee.co | art, architecture, museums, visual culture
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles has acquired a work of performance art by the multimedia artist Xu Zhen. Titled In Just a Blink of an Eye, it is only the second performance for MOCA’s permanent collection of some 7,000 works of postwar art.
At the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, a massive installation by Ólafur Elíasson creates an immersive experience that, unusually these days, encourages visitors to take their time inside the space.
During the Hellenistic period – from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the establishment of the Roman Empire in 31 BC – Greek power and cultural influence were at their peak throughout the Mediterranean and Macedonia. The vast empire was controlled by dozens of generals and rulers, and a new market for portraits was formed with the development of bronze as a primary artistic medium.
Recently, we have been enamored with landscapes and water. Here’s a thematic roundup with two exhibitions that we’re sorry to have missed, and two that we plan to see soon.
It’s the first day of summer. Art Basel has concluded, but the art world doesn’t stop. There is much to see, so we outlined our top picks for summer exhibitions.
We gave an overview of Paris Photo Los Angeles last week in anticipation of its third edition this weekend. The weather was characteristically perfect and the satellite edition of the Paris fair now seems established in LA. The feeds were full of Paris Photo Los Angeles for an entire week before early Instagrams began to appear from the Venice Biennale.
Paris Photo Los Angeles returns to Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood from May 1 to 3. In its third edition this year, Paris Photo LA includes 70 galleries with works by 265 artists. Exhibitors come from 17 countries and also include 9 publishers and specialized art book dealers.
Last summer we explored designs and plans for The Broad: codylee.co/the-broad.
As the project nears completion, we had an exclusive sneak peek on February 15 in advance of the museum’s September 20 opening.
We recently explored LACMA’s new campus plans – codylee.co/lacma.
In short, architect Peter Zumthor has designed a massive new pavilion to replace a dysfunctional set of older buildings. However, officials from the Page Museum identified that Zumthor’s new building could encroach upon and damage the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits, which are an active paleontological research site with important deposits of Ice Age-era fossils.
Today, revised designs show Zumthor’s amoeba-like building sparing the tar pits and instead spreading across Wilshire Boulevard. This is insane bold.
The Petersen Automotive Museum first opened in 1994 in a former department store building at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, across the street from LACMA and the forthcoming Academy Museum. It is one of the largest automotive museums in the world with a collection of more than 300 vehicles and other objects relating to the history of automobiles. Last summer, the Petersen announced a capital project to redesign its building to mark its 20th anniversary in 2014.
Continue reading “New Museum in LA: Petersen Automotive Museum”
At the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, on the southwestern edge of LACMA’s campus, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is constructing the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The project is led by Renzo Piano—the starchitect of LACMA’s adjacent Broad and Resnick pavilions—and will include a renovation of the landmarked May Company Building.
Continue reading “New Museum in LA: The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures”
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the Western United States with more than 120,000 works in its permanent collection and more than 1 million visitors annually. Its collection is encyclopedic, its programs are exemplary, and its leadership is solid, but LACMA’s mid-Wilshire campus is a hot mess.
Eli Broad has been a primary benefactor of the LA art world for decades. He was the founding chairman of MOCA in 1979 and is a lifetime trustee. In 2008, The Broad Foundation gave MOCA a $30 million bailout after its endowment had been depleted. Broad is also a lifetime trustee at LACMA, where The Broad Foundation gave $60 million for the Renzo Piano-designed Broad Contemporary Art Museum building. In total, the Broads have given over $800 million to LA’s art institutions.
Simultaneously, the Broads and The Broad Art Foundation have developed a combined art collection of nearly 2,000 important modern and contemporary works. So, Eli Broad is building a new museum.
Los Angeles. We use superlatives to describe its population, economy, climate, and traffic, and its museums are no exception. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the largest in the Western United States. The Museum of Contemporary Art has one of the world’s most important collections of post-war art. The J. Paul Getty Trust is the world’s wealthiest art institution. LA has an impressive list of museums. Some have plans to expand, and there are a few entirely new ones in the works. Our next series of posts will provide an overview of notable museum projects in LA.
Related posts:
New Museum in LA: The Broad
New Museum in LA: LACMA
New Museum in LA: The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
New Museum in LA: The Petersen Automotive Museum