Los Angeles art exhibitions: the best shows to see in December

This holiday season in Los Angeles brings a new ‘common ground’ for the Natural History Museum near South Central, with an indoor-outdoor modern and inviting ‘front porch’ on the Natural History Museum campus, which was constructed to be a museum of, for, and with the local community. In Hollywood, Japanese architect and performance artist Hiroshi Sugimoto marks his American debut of 'Brush Impression, Heart Sutra' at Lisson. Leica Gallery in the West Hollywood Design District takes a deeper look at the lost American dream on historic Route 66 with a photo exhibit by the late Edward Keating.

Here are the best openings and continuing shows to see in Los Angeles this December taking place at some of our favourite Los Angeles galleries.

Los Angeles art exhibitions: what to see in December 2024

NHM Commons

Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, Permanent

NHM Commons is a new wing and community hub featuring 75,000 square feet of renovated space, new construction by architect Frederick Fisher, and landscaping by landscape architect Mia Lehrer. A key design element of the new experience is the building’s transparent glass façade which will enable the public to see into the Museum and its collection while offering views of the park from inside. Other highlights include a new landscaped Community Plaza and Museum entrance, a multi-purpose theater, a new LA-focused retail space, and a grab-n-go cafe from South LA Café. Its centerpiece is an expansive Welcome Center that is free to the public, featuring Barbara Carrasco’s landmark 1981 mural 'L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective'; a temporary exhibit dedicated to NHM’s Community Science initiatives, and Gnatalie, and a 75-foot sauropod dinosaur skeleton with distinctive green fossils.

Sudden Synesthesia

The Hole, Hollywood, until 28 December 2024

Los Angeles and Melbourne-based Nick Thomm’s hypnotic new exhibit of form and colour is spread across LA. Through painting, sculpture and video, the artist explores color as a language for emotion with shifting hues as fleeting as human feelings. From the images you see when listening to music or the shape of a scent, Thomm turns the optical effects of colour up to full volume while exploring synesthesia as a creative interplay between senses. Inspired by the California Light and Space movement, Thomm explores intangibility. The works loop in all bodily senses including awareness of breath, encouraging the viewer to slow and stay, take a few deep breaths, and see what happens.

The Last Dyes and Pearl Lines

David Zwirner, Melrose Hill, until 1 February 2025

'The Last Dyes', is an exhibition of new dye-transfer prints by William Eggleston. The works are from Eggleston’s celebrated 'Outlands and Chromes' series, as well as several images that were first shown in the artist’s groundbreaking exhibition of color photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1976, and the concurrent publication William Eggleston’s Guide.

'Pearl Lines' is the gallery’s first exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist Walter Price since the announcement of his representation earlier this year. Marking Price’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, the show includes paintings from a new body of work that pays homage to car culture, with its particular significance to the city and its environs. Across the canvases, sleek automobiles are stamped into rows of busy traffic with splintered and spectral forms.

Form Is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

Lisson Gallery, Hollywood, until 11 January 2025

For his first Los Angeles show in a decade, multi-disciplinary artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto, debuts 'Brush Impression, Heart Sutra' (2023) in America. Presented on a dramatic, large-scale, curved wall, Sugimoto arranges 288 unique gelatin prints of Kanji characters in order of the Heart Sutra, a fundamental scripture of East Asian Buddhism. Seven of the artist’s 'Sea of Buddha' photographs will hang on surrounding walls, six individual photographs and one triptych, each capturing a grouping of individually unique buddha statues from a revered ancient shrine in Kyoto. The series of works will transport viewers back centuries, offering a vision of the Buddhas as the monks would have seen them in the early morning light.

L.A. Story

Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, until 4 January 2025

This is your last chance to catch this group exhibition inspired by the 1991 film with a cross-generational array of works by artists from David Hockney to Ed Ruscha, depicting the celebration of Los Angeles as a place unlike any other. Co-organized by Ingrid Schaffner, senior curatorial director, and Mike Davis, senior director, in dialogue with the film’s writer and star Steve Martin. ‘I’m thrilled that ‘L.A. Story’ is the focus of so many wonderful artists and a wonderful gallery, Hauser & Wirth, which is just across the street from the Troubadour, where I first stepped foot on Santa Monica Blvd., which began my L.A. sojourn,” said Martin.

Edward Keating Main Street: The Lost Dream of Route 66 and Ed Justice JR Fleeting Moments

Leica Gallery, West Hollywood Design District, until 6 January 2025

Main Street is the culmination of 11 years of travels along Route 66 — the 2,400-mile stretch between Chicago and Santa Monica, called the “mother road” in John Steinbeck‘s The Grapes of Wrath. Keating, who won a Pulitzer for his Ground Zero images for Time magazine, ventured westward and back, insightfully documenting life along the road and lives of Americans that have clung to it.

Also at Leica, influenced by the Pop Art movement of the 1950’s and 60’s, along with the Surrealist Movement that started in the 1920’s, Ed Justice JR, sees the world as fleeting moments, rather than the continuous flow of daily life. ‘The power of a still image to capture a fleeting moment and make it a permanent memory has always captivated me. My work is a reflection of the tangible world,’ said the artist. As such, he looks for subjects that are in plain sight and works to capture them with unexpected representations. ‘I try to remove myself from the everyday world, but the everyday world is seen in my photographs.’

Cosmic Dance

ADVOCARTSY, Beverly Grove, until 14 December

Isfahan, Iran-born, multi-disciplinary artist, Mobina Nouri has her second solo exhibition at Advocartsy. The departure point for this show is Nouri’s previous series A Thousand Tales. Continuing her characteristic hand-drawn, densely-detailed, acrylic, and oil-based ink on canvas work, this series takes on a much more universal scale while still alluding to Persian lore and mystical wisdom. Each piece features multiple iterations of the feminine form, and Nouri surrounds those forms with natural and cosmic elements that create deep visual and ideological context and suggest a grand yet intentionally enigmatic narrative.

New Waves and Impermanent

PERROTIN, Mid-City, until 25 January 2025

Perrotin is presenting two compelling exhibits, one is a solo presentation by artist Leslie Hewitt of 'New Waves', which brings together a selection of her acclaimed still life photographs, and places them in conversation with two other powerful works: a floor sculpture that pays homage to the lost outlines of everyday spaces and ancestral sites submerged by systematic oppression, eminent domain, and other forces often collapsing within anti-blackness; and a collaboration with artist Jamal Cyrus that functions as an open-ended event score. These Parroting distinct bodies of work speak to the intersection of ordinary objects, lived spaces, and material associations as they exist within the larger context of social and political histories.

Plugged In: Art and Electric Light

Norton Simon, Pasadena, until 17 Feb 2025

Presented in the Museum’s lower-level exhibition wing, this show features eight prolific artists who incorporated electric light into their practice to shape and respond to sweeping artistic and social change. These works were produced between 1964 and 1970, and encompass a collection by Walter Askin, Laddie John Dill, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, Jess, Robert Rauschenberg, Allen Ruppersberg, and Andy Warhol. This show is concurrent with the Getty-led initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

Robert Rauschenberg’s monumental ‘Green Shirt’ (1965–67) is an intricate marriage of technical skill and artistic vision and a focal point of the exhibit. The sculpture resembles an amalgam of commercial signage, adorned with multicolored neon tubes bent into motifs derived from Rauschenberg’s substantial body of work. Newly added in November, a film series Low Key: The Magic, Wonder and Horror of Light is presented in conjunction with the show.

Lightscape by Doug Aitken

Walt Disney Concert Hall, opening 16 November and continuing at
Marciano Art Foundation from 17 December 2024 until 15 March 2025

Artist Doug Aitken is collaborating with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the Marciano Art Foundation on a multimedia world premier artwork Lightscape at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The modern mythology propelled by music asks the questions, “where are we now?” and “where are we going?” The ‘answers’ play out in is a shapeshifting act of contemporary storytelling that unfolds in various stages: a feature-length film, a multi-screen fine art installation, and a series of live musical performances.

The world premiere of the concert iteration of ‘Lightscape’ caps off the LA Phil’s daylong Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings festival, with Grant Gershon leading the LA Phil New Music Group and the Los Angeles Master Chorale in a hypnotic series of original soundscapes and minimalist compositions to accompany Doug Aitken’s vivid moving images. Following its concert premiere, the work migrates to the Marciano Art Foundation in the form of a multi-screen art exhibition running from with weekly live music activations curated by the LA Phil, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Aitken.

When the Veil Thins

Compound, Long Beach, until January 2025

Located in the Zaferia District of Long Beach, Compound’s latest exhibition is curated by Mari Orkenyi and renowned artist Tofer Chin, whose own installation with an imposing black painted fence, THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD, AND IT IS IN THIS ONE is on display in the LAB. In the main building, he is joined by revered and local emerging artists such as Amir H. Fallah, Analia Saban, Aryana Minai, Jamal Gunn Becker, Mia Weiner, Mike Nesbit, Molly Haynes, Shaniqwa Jarvis, Thomas Linder, and Todd Tourso for ‘When the Veil Thins.’

Permanent fixtures at Compound include a commissioned outdoor mural by Grammy award-winning artist Dave Van Patten and Kashira Edghill, to the courtyard sculpture garden with ‘Until All Is Dissolved’ by Roksana Pirouzmand, which you can admire from a seat at Union restaurant and bar by celebrated Baryo chef Eugene Santiago. Newly appointed executive director January Arnall, who hails from The Hammer Museum in Westwood, and MCA Chicago, will help to implement special guest art talks and exhibits, local artisan craft markets and a wellness series with local practitioners.

Post Human

Jeffrey Deitch, Hollywood, until 18 January 2025

In 1992, ‘Post Human’ was a ground-breaking exhibition that showcased the work of thirty-six young artists interested in technological advancement, social and aesthetic pluralism, and new frontiers of body and identity transformation. Curated by Jeffrey Deitch, these artists were exploring the same questioning of traditional notions of gender, sexuality and self-identity that was taking place in the world, and still is today.

More than thirty years later, Deitch revisits the theme, bringing the discourse into the present. The show includes several of the key figures who participated in the 1992 exhibition in dialogue with some of the most interesting artists continuing the exploration of these themes today. Participating artists include Urs Fischer, Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst, Alex Israel, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Pippa Garner, Chris Cunningham, Sam McKinniss, Pierre Huyghe, and Arthur Jafa.

Arthur Jafa: nativemanson

Sprüth Magers, mid-city, until 14 December 2024

For more on Arthur Jafa, head to Sprüth Magers (with galleries in New York, London, and Berlin) for his first solo gallery exhibition in Los Angeles. Spanning three decades, the artist’s work comprises films, artifacts, and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. This mini-retrospective will feature recent works, sculptures and moving images, including Jafa’s latest film, ‘BG,’ his deft remix of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in which Jafa performs an exorcism on the film, alongside a selection of earlier works. Underscoring the many facets of Jafa's practice is a recurring question: How can visual media, such as objects, static and moving images, transmit the equivalent "power, beauty, and alienation" embedded within forms of Black music in US culture?

Gustav Metzger. And Then Came The Environment

Hauser & Wirth, Downtown Los Angeles, until 5 January 2025

In conjunction with the Getty’s PST ART initiative, this is the late artist’s first solo exhibition in LA. And Then Came the Environment’ presents a range of Metzger’s scientific works -as an early proponent of the ecology movement and an ardent activist- merging art and science from 1961 onward, highlighting his advocacy for environmental awareness and the possibilities for the transformation of society, as well as his latest experimental works, created in 2014. The exhibition title comes from Metzger’s groundbreaking 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ wherein he proclaims an urgent need to redefine our understanding of nature in relation to the environment.

Candida Höfer

Sean Kelly, Hollywood, opening 16 November until 11 January 2025

Curated by renowned architects Mark Lee and Sharon Johnston of the LA-based firm Johnston Marklee, this exhibition explores the intersection of architecture, photography, and cultural history. Recently awarded the 2024 Käthe Kollwitz Prize, Candida Höfer’s work is a testament to the enduring influence of architectural and cultural heritage, through the lens of one of the most respected photographers of our time.

Inspired by German/Prussian architect Erich Mendelsohn, who navigated the complex cultural landscape of Europe post-World War II, Johnston Marklee have created a literal and metaphorical division within the gallery space. The gallery will be split into two distinct halves, with one side showcasing Höfer's photographs from North America and the other from Europe. This horizontal division symbolizes the cultural and architectural dialogue between the two continents, offering viewers a profound visual experience that bridges historical and contemporary perspectives.

Diane von Furstenberg: Woman Before Fashion

Skirball Cultural Center, Brentwood/Bel-Air, until 31 August 2025

This U.S. debut explores the remarkable life and work of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg's career, from the 1970s to the present day including a selection of items drawn from the DVF archives along with ephemera, fabric swatches, media pieces, and information on her philanthropic work. Garments from Greco-Roman drapery to kimonos, dance uniforms, and fellow designers that explore the connections between these historical pieces and her designs.

New artifacts also shed light on von Furstenberg’s life as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a war refugee, offering additional perspective on the factors that shaped her life and work, including a spotlight on the designer’s mother Lily Nahmias featuring audio, images and text that explore her experience as a member of the resistance. Skirball Cultural Center President and CEO Jessie Kornberg commented, ‘Jewish connection to garment industries and needlepoint trades spans continents and generations. Past exhibitions like the retrospective on Rudi Gernreich or the textile art of Aram Han Sifuentes celebrated these connections.’

Fragments

Friedman Benda, West Hollywood, until 1 February 2025

Paris-based French designer Ferréol Babin unveils his first solo gallery exhibition, marking the first time a comprehensive body of his work will be on view to the public. Informed by extensive study of wood-working techniques in France and Japan and his participation in an immersive artist residency by BRH+ in Turin, Babin evokes historical methods and motifs through his own poetic approach. Offering ambiguity for the viewer to wonder how a piece is made, Babin leaves behind fragments so one can discover the meaning of an object on their own.

Scientia Sexualis

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, until 2 March 2025

ICA LA is kicking off it’s fall exhibition, Scientia Sexualis, by showcasing a group survey of contemporary artists whose works take up the fraught relationship between sex and science. Organized by Jennifer Doyle (Professor of English, University of California, Riverside) and Jeanne Vaccaro (Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Museum Studies, University of Kansas), and accompanied by a major scholarly publication (the title from French philosopher Michel Foucault’s landmark text, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (1976), the exhibition is part of the Getty PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism

The Brick, Hollywood, until 21 December 2024

The Brick (formerly known as LAXART) inaugural exhibition Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism is tied to PST ART: Art & Science Collide. The show is curated by Deputy Director and Curator Catherine Taft and explores crucial links between gendered oppression and the exploitation of our planet's natural resources.

Originally a philosophical and political concept, ecofeminist art developed from anti-nuclear and feminist movements in the 1970s. Ecofeminist artists often created site-specific work that sought to address the connections between the domination of women, queer people, and the environment. Spotlighting the past five decades to present times, eighteen international artists and collective are representing this important history through installations, video work, photography, and sculptures. Some of the participating artists include Alliance of the Southern Triangle (A.S.T.), Alicia Barney Caldas, Francesca Gabbiani, Masumi Hayashi, Institute of Queer Ecology, Kite, Leslie Labowitz Starus, Otobong Nkanga, and A.L. Steiner.

Portable Wetland

Brackish Water, Los Angeles California State University, Dominguez Hills, until 14 December 2024

Environmental artist Lauren Bon and her Metabolic Studio could not be busier this fall as she participates in multiple exhibition as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Her work fuses art, architecture, social practice, environmental activism, and speculative ecology. As the holder of the LA River’s first private water right with the responsibility for the stewardship of water, Bon’s work in Portable Wetland demonstrates new ways to look at water conservation through an accessible and minimally invasive process to protect our health and well-being.

In addition, Bon is literally “Moving Mountains” by transporting truckloads of living soil from the Topanga Canyon land slide to the LA River to create areas of new forestation and a citizen’s utility, and continuing her “Bending The River” project which will deliver cleaned water that she has diverted from the LA river to the State Historic Parks next Spring. Bon is also included in several other Getty PST projects this fall, including a Concrete is fluid, a solo exhibition at Honor Fraser gallery opening 14 September until 14, December 2024.

Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics

LACE at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, East Hollywood, until 5 January 2025

As part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this exhibition revisits the collaborative artistic practice of the late Beatriz da Costa (1974–2012) as an investigation into technoscientific experimentation, politics, activism, and art-making, contextualized for our contemporary moment.

Curated by LACE’s former Chief Curator/Director of Programs Daniela Lieja Quintanar with Ana Briz, the project weaves together an exhibition, public programming, performances, educational workshops, and study groups as an evocation of da Costa’s approach to the intersections of ancient and non-academic forms of knowledge.

Breath(e)

HAMMER MUSEUM, Westwood, until 5 January 2025

Presented in partnership with Conservation International, this show is comprised architectural, décor, new tech, recycling materials, living organisms - all intertwined and connected to climate and social justice. Curated by artist Glenn Kaino and guest curator Mika Yoshitake and features more than 100 artworks by 25 international artists. The sprawling exhibition will fill the majority of the Hammer’s galleries and outdoor spaces, and includes specially commissioned works by Mel Chin, Ron Finley, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Garnett Puett, and Lan Tuazon.

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard

LACMA, mid-Wilshire, until 5 Jan 2025

This is the first-ever museum survey of the Venezuelan-born, L.A.-based artist’s prolific career. Spanning over five decades, the exhibition explores ceramics, paintings, and drawings, including an important selection of works made collaboratively with her husband, Michael Frimkess, and numerous works never-before shown in public. With insights into the artist's fascination with illustrations from art books, popular media, animation, autobiography, and the comedy of everyday life, celebrating the inventiveness of Suarez Frimkess’s practice, securing her position in the recognized, longstanding tradition of artists working with ceramics in California.

Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight

The Huntington, Pasadena, until Nov. 30, 2025

Also, at The Huntington in The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art building, where you can also find several Warhol works including “Brillo Box,” renowned American artist Betye Saar’s large-scale work of a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe, “Drifting Toward Twilight.” takes up an entire room. This site-specific installation was commissioned by The Huntington and adorned with found objects, including birdcages, antlers, and natural materials harvested by the artist from The Huntington’s grounds. This work explores themes of racial oppression and ‘caged freedom.’

A small side room shows a short documentary film on Saar’s six-decade career as a pioneer of assemblage art, an important artistic voice during the feminist and Civil Rights movements, and as part of the foundational generation of Black artists in Los Angeles.

A convenient nearby glass door leads to the historic rose garden and tea room, which was refurbished and reopened earlier this year. Beyond that lies the Shakespeare Garden and the Japanese botanical gardens dotted with artifacts and sculptures.

Intuit Dome

Inglewood, permanent

One of the most exciting art collections to hit Los Angeles can be found at the new home for the LA Clippers in Inglewood. The cutting-edge sports venue recently unveiled the monumental, site-specific, outdoor artworks commissioned for the Intuit Dome which opens to the public this August. The $11 million public art collection features a collection of globally recognised artists, selected by Ruth Berson, former deputy director of curatorial affairs at SFMOMA, who have deep ties to Los Angeles and intertwine their artistic talents with sports.

Glenn Kaino’s massive sculpture Sails, made of painted steel and wood looms in the form of the clipper ships that connected the world via the ocean’s trade routes. In this ship, basketball is the cultural wind that can connect us all.

Michael Massenburg’s mural of printed porcelain enamel on steel panel features figures of basketball, tennis, and soccer players, singers, musicians, and dancers, titled Cultural Playground expresses the artist’s belief that 'the two most profound things that unite people are the arts and sports.'

Jennifer Steinkamp’s digital artwork Swoosh, uses the entire surface of the Intuit Dome, designed by the architectural firm AECOM, with five animations will transform the surface of the dome and light up the sky with geometric panels.

Patrick Martinez’s sculpture Same Boat uses a neon sign to create an image that reproduces a statement by the late Civil Rights leader Whitney M. Young: “We may have all come on different ships but we’re in the same boat now.”

On a wall adjacent to Same Boat, you will find Kyungmi Shin’s stained-glass mosaic with stainless steel tracery, Spring to Life. For this work, Shin drew inspiration from Centinela Springs, the now-vanished water source in South Los Angeles that once supported the Tongva people and the land they cultivated. (If you would like to see more of Shin’s work, the artist has a solo exhibition at Craft Contemporary until 8, September 2024.)

The Dome opening features an exhibition of photographs by Catherine Opie (on loan from MOCA) evoking the experience of community. “We designed Intuit Dome to be a place that brings people together,” said Gillian Zucker, CEO of Halo Sports & Entertainment. “When it came to our public art, we wanted to deliver a collection that is as compelling to people well versed in art as it is to a novice viewer. We are eager to make these unique works, from these amazing artists, available to everyone.”

Josh Kline: Climate Change

MOCA, downtown Los Angeles, until 5 January 2025

Josh Kline’s dystopian science fiction installations took five years to fully produce but they could not be more on target with the current political and environmental climate concerns in America. This exhibition transforms the galleries at MOCA Grand Avenue with photography, moving image work, and ephemeral materials.

Also at Grand Ave., NTS Radio is in residency, in the museum’s newly opened cultureLAB space offers a summer-long collaboration of live broadcasts and music programming located on the Sculpture Plaza at MOCA, or tune in at nts.live

Mineo Mizuno: Homage to Nature

The Huntington, Pasadena, until 25 May 2029

The Huntington holds a library with British medieval manuscripts, including the 15th-century Ellesmere tome of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; 16 themed gardens with more than 83,000 living plants; an art museum and more.

In the main garden area on the vast grounds, Mineo Mizuno’s sculpture celebrates the beauty of wood in its natural state and emphasises its potential as a reusable and renewable resource. This site-specific work explores the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem, as well as the destruction of the forest and its potential for regeneration.