We’re blessed with an abundance of museums and art galleries here in L.A., but with so many shows rotating in and out at any given time, it can be hard to keep up. Nobody wants to be the person who only finds out about a cool exhibit when it’s closing down and heading out of town. To help you make the most of your gallery-going, consult our monthly guide to the best museum exhibits in L.A.
New Openings
Siri Kaur: SHE TELLS ALL — Eric Buterbaugh Gallery
Opens October 31
Local photographer Siri Kaur assembles this show as a journey though L.A.’s occult underground. You’ll find evocative portraits of tarot card readers, mystics, and other practitioners, alongside renderings made of neon signs from the storefronts of local psychics’ shops, and photos of “magical objects.” The collection draws from Kaur’s own upbringing in the 1970s New Age movement, and California’s perennial appeal to spiritual seekers.
Alex Hubbard: The Corner of the Table — Regen Projects
Opens November 16
Los Angeles-based artist Alex Hubbard opens his first solo show in his home city since 2012 this month. The show will include new multimedia painting world, which incorporate nontraditional and industrial materials like resin, fiberglass, and auto body paint, and two video installations combining handmade projectors streaming animation.
L.A. on Fire — Wilding Cran Gallery
Opens November 16
For this timely show, Los Angeles contributor Michael Slenske has curated works across media and era that capture fire and the California landscape. Participating artists include Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie, Alia Shawkat, and Gajin Fujita.
Tokyo Pop Underground — Jeffrey Deitch
Opens November 23
Curated by Tokyo gallerist Shinji Nanzuka, Tokyo Pop Underground examines Japan’s contemporary art and pop culture underground from the 1960s to today. Some of the pieces were not originally intended as fine art, but were designed objects from everyday and commercial life which caught Nanzuka’s curatorial eye. Another theme in the show is artists who were little-recognized in Japan in previous decades because their work was deemed too radical or anti-conformity for their time.
Ryan Schude — bG Gallery
Opens November 23
Photographer Ryan Schude, who has shot images for Los Angeles, mounts a solo exhibition at bG Gallery in Santa Monica. He’s best-known for large images that feature numerous models in elaborate scenes, described as “mingling surrealism and Americana with a touch of contemporary humor.”
Ongoing Exhibits
Coyote Leaves the Res: The Art of Harry Fonseca – The Autry Museum
Closes January 5, 2020
Harry Fonseca was an influential force in shaping the look of contemporary Native American art. This collection of work focuses on the character of Coyote, the shape-shifting trickster of lore, depicted by Fonseca in leather and sneakers, amid colorful, graphic designs.
Ed & Nancy Kienholz: The Merry-Go-World or Begat by Chance and the Wonder Horse Trigger — L.A. Louver
Closes January 18
In 1992, L.A. Louver gallery staged “The Merry-Go-World,” a large installation by artists Ed and Nancy Kienholz. The ambitious, interactive structure, which took the pair four years to construct, has since been displayed at galleries around the world–but has never returned to Los Angeles until now. Designed to inspire compassion and an openness to the suffering of strangers, viewers spin a carnival wheel to discover which of eight very different “lives” they will experience, forcing one to consider the privileges and suffering a person is given by the randomness of their birth.
Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again — The Broad
Closes February 16
Artist Shirin Neshat gets her largest museum exhibition to date, with this show created by the Broad. Spend time with over 230 photographs and eight video installations from Neshat’s three-decade career. Much of the work is informed by Neshat’s Iranian heritage, and perspective as a person living outside Iran, closely watching the Green Movement, Arab Spring, 9/11, and other global political events.
Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century – The Autry Museum
Closes March 1, 2020
Cross Colours was an emerging brand from a pair of Black L.A. designers when Will Smith started sporting their clothes on screen in early episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Soon the brand, always informed by Afrocentrism and progressive politics, became a national sensation. This exhibition dives in on 30 years of the brand, from the vintage textiles that informed the designs, to how the company used fashion as a platform to address social justice.
Disruptors – Petersen Automotive Museum
Closes March 15, 2020
Designers Rem D. Koolhaas and Joey Ruiter turn their innovative, minimalist sensibilities to cars, skateboards, and other objects in this just-opened exhibit. How each of these A-list designers reshapes everyday functional items to be visually and technologically sophisticated is sure to provoke some thoughts.
Closing Soon
Mary Corse: A Survey in Light – LACMA
Closes November 11
Topanga Canyon-based artist Mary Corse has been working since the mid-1960s, when she broke through as one of the few women associated with the West Coast Light and Space Movement. The connective thread amongst all of the pieces in this, her first solo museum survey, is the reflection and refraction of light; she uses a variety of materials, even the microspheres that illuminate street lane markers, to create pieces that shimmer and glow as the viewer moves around them, making it one of the best museum exhibits we saw this season.
Dark Fantasy — UTA Artist Space
Closes November 16
In this group show, UTA Artist Space and Carpenters Workshop Gallery team up to present a selection of pieces pulled from influential artists. Among the works on view will be the Los Angeles debut of musician-fashion designer-artist Virgil Abloh’s “Acqua Alta” series and a new, site-specific work created for the UTA space by Studio Drift.
Kenny Scharf: Optimistically Melting! — Honor Fraser
Closes November 16
Known for his surreal, swirling cartoon figures, SoCal legend Kenny Scharf takes on the still life in a new group of paintings on display at Honor Fraser. Outside the gallery, Scharf is constructing a garland built from plastic detritus that will wrap around the building as a statement about consumption.
RELATED: These L.A. Artists Are Bringing Queer Perspectives Into Focus
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