Kicking off the New Year, LA Art Show will hold court for its 31st year as LA’s longest running art show, held in downtown LA at the Convention Center with a new Latin American pavilion, and the Art of Contemporary Africa showcasing works by Dr. Esther Mahlangu, along the fair’s non-commercial platform, DIVERSEartLA. For Shepard Fairey fans, this is your last chance to see ‘Out of Print’ at Beyond the Streets on LaBrea, while the Hammer Museum is presenting ‘Works on Paper’ running in a two part series until October 2026, and Mustang celebrates an ‘American Icon’ with a fun interactive exhibit for all ages in the Arts District.
Los Angeles Art Exhibitions: what to see in January 2026
LA Art Show
Los Angeles Convention Center from 7-11 January 2026
Joining the global line-up the first time, Art of Contemporary Africa will showcase works by Dr. Esther Mahlangu, the acclaimed Ndebele artist whose eight-decade career has made her a celebrated cultural ambassador. Also on board, Karl A. Meyer’s 1980s NYC Crosby Street woodcut prints will be publicly shown for the first time in over 40 years. The fair’s non-commercial platform, DIVERSEartLA, returns with ‘The Biennials, Art Institutions and Museums in the Contemporary Art Ecosystem,’ exploring how global biennials and museums shape contemporary art. Marcos Ramírez, recognized as a key figure in borderland cultural practices, will be showing as part of this.
Other highlights include the first significant solo presentation of Sylvester Stallone’s abstract works: the dynamic crossover of music and contemporary art with pieces by Paul Simonon (The Clash) and Chris Rivers (Heaven’s Basement); and the new Latin American Pavilion, offering an essential platform at a time when immigration issues continue to disproportionately affect Latin American communities.
Five Centuries of Works on Paper: The Grunwald Center at 70
Hammer Museum
Part I: until 17 May 2026
Part II: June 7 – October 25, 2026
The Hammer Museum at UCLA is presenting a two-part exhibition celebrating the 70th anniversary of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. With more than 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and artist’s books, the center’s collection of works on paper is among the most significant in the United States. Part One, features nearly 100 works reflecting the breadth of the collection, from the Renaissance to present day, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vassily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, Ansel Adams, Elizabeth Catlett, Corita Kent, Bridget Riley, Ed Ruscha, and Vija Celmins.
SHEPARD FAIREY: OUT OF PRINT
BEYOND THE STREETS until 11 January 2026
Proving that print still matters, this landmark exhibition devoted to the artist’s lifelong dialogue with printmaking, showcases more than 400 original screen prints alongside new and re-mixed works spanning over three and a half decades, that combine screen printing and stenciling. The works survey Fairey’s enduring commitment to the image, the multiple, and the power of mass communication.
‘Some of my biggest art influences were not paintings but printed things like posters, album covers, skateboard graphics, punk flyers, and t-shirt designs,’ says Fairey. ‘Printing is a cornerstone of my art practice and philosophy. The printing press began the democratization of art, and I have used printed posters to spread my artwork and messages in public spaces as well as keep my art affordable by printing multiples.’
The Art of the Album – The Photography of Danny Clinch
Wrensilva on Melrose Ave. until Spring 2026
For a completely immersive experience, Wrensilva LA Listening Studio on Melrose has launched a photo and listening installation with more than three decades of music culture and lifestyle photography by Danny Clinch. This installation brings iconic images together with the album covers they helped define, plus the vinyl itself, played on a Wrensilva record console. It’s a rare chance to stand inside the relationship between image, artist, and record. Featured artists include 2Pac, Johnny Cash, Foo Fighters, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, and more, that reveal living documents of artists in their element, images that become inseparable from the songs, the albums, and the eras they helped shape.
Keep Movin’ by Wolfgang Tillmans
Regen Projects 15 January 2026 until 1 March 2026
Following a year of ambitious institutional presentations at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus Cleff, Remscheid; and the Albertinum, Dresden, and the inclusion in the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, this exhibition marks Tillmans’ ninth solo exhibition with the gallery since 1995. Highlights include core themes of the artist’s practice through new photographs, videos, sculptural installations, and a new iteration of Truth Study Center.
Throughout the exhibition, Tillmans emphasizes interconnectedness—between people, materials, histories, and images. His work is marked by a deep sensitivity to the interweaving of past and present, the fragility of seemingly stable structures, and the transformation of matter from one state to another.
New Objectivity
Night Gallery until 10 January 2026
Last chance to view this body of extraordinary new work by Los Angeles painter Andy Woll. The show is now on view in-person and, in an Online Viewing Room. From abstract mountain strokes of Mt. Wilson in Los Angeles, to portraits, ‘They are grounded, lovingly captured in warm oils forever with an uncanniness and curiosity that is extraordinary and wonderful,’ states Jeff Poe. ‘Profound because they are not just flesh made into paintings but paintings of people alive and rendered in deliberate intense strokes that guide us to feel they are here in their thoughts, reflections, inside.’
Patricia Garcia, Fertile Moon
Galerie XII Santa Monica until 31 January 2026
Marking her official debut in California, at Bergamot Station Arts Centre, FERTILE MOON presents celebrated Mexican painter Patricia García's surreal and fantastical works. Blending dreamlike imagery with cultural symbolism, elements such as the xoloitzcuintle (the iconic Mexican dog), native flowers and red haired women, Garcia explores the transmission of culture between generations. Through quiet, symbolic scenes, the Guadalajara-born artist evokes the emotional legacies passed down through intuition, ritual, and presence. Symbols like the moon suggest continuity, protection, and the quiet strength of matrilineal bonds. Garcia’s work honors the invisible threads that connect women across time—woven from resilience, care, and shared emotional landscapes.
American Icon: A Ford Mustang Immersive Experience
Ace Mission Studios™Arts District until 9th February 2026
Los Angeles in an undeniable car culture capital, so the latest design-driven attraction on the city's cultural landscape, is making its World Premiere in LA. The experience also features a film cameo from Captain America himself, Anthony Mackie, a mustang enthusiast, and ideal host for the journey through seven different interactive spaces celebrating the original Pony car's 60th anniversary.
This is not your traditional look-don't-touch museum moment, but rather a multisensory journey through six decades of Mustang legacy — blending cinematic environments, 360-degree projection technology and sculptural set design that feels more like a tech-infused art installation that moves from Motor City industrial grit to a stylized Sunset Boulevard, exploring rare and movie-famous Mustangs up close (Gone in 60 Seconds, Transformers, Kick-Ass), and a short film spotlighting the cultural tastemakers and innovators who shaped the brand. This is an all ages experience.
The AIDS Monument
West Hollywood Park, permanent
With World AIDS Day on 1 December, the City of West Hollywood and the Foundation for the AIDS Monument (FAM) unveiled The AIDS Monument in West Hollywood Park to memorialize those impacted by HIV/AIDS, and will honor the community's activism and the personal stories. Designed by artist Daniel Tobin, the monument will feature a plaza, a donor wall, vertical bronze ‘traces’ with narrative text, integrated lighting reminiscent of a candlelight vigil, and a podium facing N. San Vicente Boulevard, that will function as a public art experience and memorial site.
Robert Therrien: This is a Story
The Broad until 5 April 2026
This is a story, indeed. Featuring 120 artworks spanning five decades, including enormous tables, chairs, and dishes, to intimate drawings of snowmen, birds, and chapels – many made in Therrien’s downtown LA studio in his adopted home of Los Angeles, until his passing in 1990. This location was pivotal to his musings on scale, as the region's sprawling, open spaces allowed him to see the untapped potential of everyday objects. The show will include partial reconstructions of Therrien’s studio environment, like his project tables, drawings, and tools.
JOHN GIORNO: NO NOSTALGIA
Marciano Art Foundation until April 2026
Marciano will reopen its second-floor Window Gallery with an exhibit devoted to the late poet, artist, and activist John Giorno. Known for transposing poetry into the visual, sonic, and performative, the exhibition spans Giorno's early prints to his later text paintings. Works from the 1960s through the 2010s reveal how he merged spiritual clarity with pop immediacy, and how language could heal and become physical. Notably, the exhibition will feature his landmark Dial-A-Poem (1969) recordings, newly reactivated to offer 24-hour access to more than 250 recordings by 132 poets, artists, musicians, and activists. Dial-A-Poem will be accessible through a physical landline within the exhibition, as well as through a QR code that guests may use through their own devices.
TJ Shin. Songs of Emerging Endangerment
Los Angeles State Historic Park until 22 February 2026
Songs of Emerging Endangerment by artist TJ Shin, commissioned by Clockshop, is a sound installation using mimicry to map systems of global migration. 50 participants connected to regions along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway were asked to imitate the calls of endangered bird species that travel the world’s largest bird migratory path. Installed at Los Angeles State Historic Park in a city shaped by Cold War–era urban planning and waves of migration from the Asia-Pacific, the project features a 30-foot-tall sculptural air raid siren that projects a composition of imitated bird calls scheduled throughout the day. The installation is set to sound hourly from dawn to dusk.
Walk on the Moon by Alteronce Gumby
Jeffrey Deitch until 17 January 2026
Alteronce’s first solo presentation with the gallery, is his most ambitious and multifaceted exhibition to date. The artist is recognized for expanding the possibilities of abstraction, bridging color theory, cosmology and physics to explore how light and material shape human perception. With Walk on the Moon, he sharpens this inquiry into a multisensory experience, presenting new works that invite viewers to explore color through both its material and energetic properties. Structured across four interwoven movements that encompass painting, sculpture, installation and sound, the exhibition extends Alteronce’s inquiry into how color can shape space, time and perception.
Monuments
Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, Little Tokyo, until 3 May 2026
Inspired by the wave of repulsion after the turbulent 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., that opposed the removal of a local statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. 200 other tributes across the country to American turncoats who supported slavery have also been removed. A selection of decommissioned Confederate statues will be shown at MOCA and alternative space The Brick (on N. Western in the Melrose Hill area), joint organizers of the exhibition, paired with contemporary work by Bethany Collins, Stan Douglas, Leonardo Drew, Jon Henry, Martin Puryear, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker and a dozen other artists, borrowed and commissioned for the occasion.
A Tender Excavation
Lace at Luckman Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles, until 21 February 2026
Curated by Selene Preciado this exhibit approaches research-based artistic practices through propositions of alternative histories, bringing together a group of artists who work with historical and familial photographic archives as a point of departure to construct new narratives and elicit transformation. Artists featured in the exhibition include Zeynep Abes, Susu Attar, Jamil G Baldwin, Mely Barragán, Artemisa Clark, Arleene Correa Valencia, Mercedes Dorame, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Leah King, Tarrah Krajnak, Heesoo Kwon, Ann Le, Arlene Mejorado, Star Montana, and Camille Wong.
Land marks
PACE Gallery until 17 January 2026
Curated by Joshua Friedman, a Vice President at Pace, this group exhibition of new and recent works by 17 artists is centering on notions of selfhood as they relate to space and place. The presentation will spotlight emerging artists, including several LA-based artists, and situate intergenerational figures in dialogue with one another. This will include over 25 artworks, with a strong emphasis on painting, by Jarvis Boyland, Chioma Ebinama, Janiva Ellis, Jake Grewal, Loie Hollowell, Patricia Iglesias Peco, Li Hei Di, Sophia Loeb, Sarah Martin-Nuss, Marina Perez Simão, Nathlie Provosty, Anne Rothenstein, Kate Spencer Stewart, Reika Takebayashi, Salman Toor, Janaina Tschäpe, and Shiwen Wang.
Horror
Tetsumi Kudo, Untitled, 1962-63
Sprüth Magers until 14 February 2026
While this exhibit of ‘Horror’ is taking place after Halloween, it proves that the theme never really dies for fans of the genre. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers have pulled together a group exhibition organized by Jill Mulleady featuring an intergenerational group of artists. The exhibition presents horror as both symptom and strategy, illuminating seen and unseen forces that inscribe themselves on human experience. Channelling our deepest anxieties whether evoking Cold War paranoia, civil rights conflicts, radiation fears, surveillance anxieties, or the existential dread and hyperreality of our times, the works in the exhibition quietly surface the intimate, often suppressed tensions embedded within collective and individual realities.
'Flora Yukhnovich. Bacchanalia'
Hauser & Wirth DTLA until 18 January 2026
For her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and debut with Hauser & Wirth, British artist Flora Yukhnovich will present a new series of large-scale canvases prompted by the centuries old theme of Bacchanalia. In these canvases, lush, swirling brushstrokes evoke the dynamism and intense corporality of both ancient and contemporary hedonism, a past of satyric excesses and a present of consumerism and popular culture glut. The artist is celebrated for taking inspiration from art historical genres ranging from French rococo and Italian baroque to abstract expressionism, for paintings that celebrate materiality and process through shifting, chimerical forms.
Made in L.A. 2025
New Theater Hollywood. Still from episode one ofCalla Henkel and Max Pitegot’s THEATER, 2024
Hammer Museum until 1 March 2026
Celebrating the diverse and unique LA artists, for the seventh iteration of the Hammer’s signature biennial exhibition showcasing artists practicing throughout the greater Los Angeles area. 28 participants in the exhibition present work not only made in the city but also grounded in its complex and unfolding terrain. The works include film, painting, theater, choreography, photography, sculpture, sound, and video. Each engages with this city in ways alternately literal, formal, material, and metaphoric from Freddy Villalobos to Alonzo Davis, Gabriela Ruiz and David Alekhuogie.
Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft
Norton Simon Museum, until 16 February 2026
To commemorate the Museum’s 50th anniversary, the exhibition features 60 stunning works that highlight gold’s cultural and material resilience across time and place and reexamines gold not just as a material of beauty, but as a transformative force that has shaped civilizations, and ignited passions. Organized by Associate Curator Maggie Bell and Assistant Curator Lakshika Senarath Gamage, it uncovers the intersections between value, artistry, and power. In addition, ‘Recollections: Stories from the Norton Simon Museum,’ is a new book that to uncovers the museum’s evolution through thirteen essays, each centered on a remarkable work of art or collection.
Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philp Guston
Skirball Cultural Center, until 1 March 2026
The work of American-born painter Philip Guston, the child of Jewish immigrants from Odessa (present-day Ukraine), and Trenton Doyle Hancock, a leading Black contemporary artist based in Houston, Texas, in dialogue for the first time. The exhibition features key works by Guston, including his now-iconic, late satirical Ku Klux Klan paintings, in dialogue with major works Hancock created in response to his inspirational mentor, highlighting their parallel thematic explorations of the nature of evil, self-representation, otherness, and art activism.
The Day Tomorrow Began
LACMA until 29 March 2026
For his upcoming solo at LACMA (his largest in LA and most ambitious to date) Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan takes on alarming efforts to censor institutions and rewrite American history by asking: What happens if, instead of hiding and obscuring the past, we spotlight it and reflect it back on itself?
Strachan does exactly that across his signature immersive installations (including a barbershop, a laundromat, and a rice field) and monumental sculptures, he invites the public to critically rethink the ways in which we represent, discuss, commemorate, and celebrate history, and which histories at that. This exhibit coincides with the lead up to the opening of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries, housing the 3,000+ works from the museum’s encyclopedic collection. (Later in the month, Strachan’s modern take on commemorative structures will also be on view at MOCA.)
In Bloom: Flowers in Contemporary Art
Forest Lawn Museum, Glendale until 15 February 2026
The timeless floral theme is on display for a group exhibition exploring contemporary approaches. The media and artworks vary dramatically, with paintings, sculptures, installation, and video that range from naturalistic to abstract, and from playful to contemplative. New works by most of the artists include David Flores, DABSMYLA, Francesca Gabbiani and Eddie Ruscha, Simonette David Jackson,
Jasmyn Marie, Analia Saban, Kim Schoen, and Tiffanie Turner, with new works by most artists.
Jaws: The Exhibition
Robert Shaw as Quint during production of Jaws (1975)
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures until 26 July 2026
For a final end-of-the-summer fling, Jaws: The Exhibition - in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery, will be the largest presentation ever mounted for the Oscar® winning Steven Spielberg classic and feature scene breakdowns, interactive experiences, behind-the-scenes stories, and some 200 original objects, many never before put on public display. And, yes, it’s still terrifying 50-years later.
Big Art. Bigger Dreams.
Downtown LA, until 2028
DTLA Alliance, has partnered with Street Art for Mankind (SAM) and the City of Los Angeles to create a public art museum launching in real time starting with three massive murals by acclaimed LA-based artists. With support from the Coca-Cola Company, a total of 12 large-scale works will be created that will reimagine downtown’s skyline and streetscape by 2028 when the city is set to host the Olympic Games.
Each mural celebrates global values of sustainability, education, and women’s empowerment, turning walls into landmarks. David Flores is creating a massive, vibrant mural on the Los Angeles Athletic Club (LAAC) depicting a skateboarding scene, Emily Ding is bringing to life a powerful and elegant mural of two women walking arm-in-arm on the Figueroa Eight while Shamsia Hassani is crafting a poetic triptych on The Bloc.
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.”
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.