The day has finally come for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to open on 22 September. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, and dedicated to the tradition of telling stories through images, the inaugural exhibitions will feature more than 1,300 objects installed across more than 30 galleries. For the first presentation of filmmaker and artist David Lynch’s work in his home city since his passing in 2025, Pace will present an exhibition placing five of Lynch’s photographic series together for the first time. Another rare show not to miss is the late conceptual artist John Baldessari’s sculptures on display at Sprüth Magers. Later this month in Santa Monica, The Other Art Fair, presented by Saatchi Art, returns for its 16th edition at Barker Hangar, showcasing 160 independent artists, from 14 countries. Feel like an iconic drive? An outdoor exhibit takes place along Route 66 in three different LA cities until the fall.
Los Angeles Art Exhibitions: what to see in September 2026
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park
Opening 22 September 2026
Co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum is encompassing everything from prehistoric cave paintings to today’s screen art. The spaceship structure is spanning over 30 galleries – holding works from Sargent to Wyeth, while exploring and celebrating the power of visual storytelling to inspire and forge community. Built in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, the Museum was designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec to embody the emotional power of narrative art, creating a sense of wonder, possibility, and connection to something larger than ourselves. The building is integrated into a new 11-acre campus and a park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA: a green, multilayered gathering place for local communities and an extraordinary programming resource that brings learning and engagement outdoors. And, a must stop is the mid-century influenced Skywalker Café designed by Rockwell Group, with sculptural architectural forms, adding another work of art to the venue.
David Lynch: LA
Pace 19 September to 24 October 2026
For the first presentation of David Lynch’s work in his home city since his passing in 2025, Pace will present an exhibition of photographs at its Los Angeles gallery, placing five of Lynch’s photographic series together for the first time. Unraveling the myths and mysteries of LA, and its emotional landscape, Lynch holds close to the dream of the city and its archetypes: the ingenue, the shapeshifter, the beauty and darkness - defining atmosphere and characteristics that are physical and psychological.
The Other Art Fair Los Angeles
Barker Hangar Santa Monica 24-27 September, 2026
This year’s fair will support 63% women-identifying and 46% Los Angeles-based exhibitors representing 14 countries, from Australia to Colombia, and Greece to South Korea. New to this edition, The Other Open is an artist-designed mini golf course, part sculpture, part installation, and fully interactive. Three female artists are designing unique courses: local artist Suze Riley, Isabel Arenda, and Heather Bellino. Another site-specific installation by Adam Rose and Richard Hoffman, TP Catalog - On Loan from The British Museum, a hand-painted restroom featuring a row of gold-framed toilet-paper transfers, each depicting an artifact that may itself have been acquired by The British Museum. From the playful to the immersive, visitors can leave a written fortune in artist Gina Su's oversized ceramic fortune cookie, Leave a Fortune, Take a Fortune, and take one left behind by a stranger. Also look for the Los Angeles-based Lisa Tse, recipient of its Fall 2026 New Futures award, who will exhibit her works in oil and mixed media.
Objective Truths
Roberts Projects 19 September to 24 October 2026
This group exhibition features artists from the gallery’s program including Aaron Glasson, Chris Johanson, Suchitra Mattai, Evan Nesbit, Wendy Red Star and Brenna Youngblood, among others. Responding to the changing conditions of the 21st century, works in the exhibition bridge the distance between representation and non-representation by reconfiguring color, light, material and texture as tools for rendering ineffable sensibilities. In tandem with the artists’ diverse approaches is a shared engagement with phenomenology and the malleability of meaning, centering the process of introspection and interpretation above reaching conclusive outcomes.
John Baldessari Sculptures
Sprüth Magers LA until 24 October 2026
Baldessari is widely celebrated for his groundbreaking work with language, photography, and conceptual art, whose influence shaped generations of contemporary artists. This new exhibition showcases a lesser-known side of his practice: sculpture. Baldessari's key three-dimensional works including giant ears, eyebrow reliefs, anthropomorphic furniture, and playful experiments with scale, reveal how the artist extended his signature humor and visual wit beyond the frame and into physical space. Sculptures including Beethoven's Trumpet (with Ear) (2007), an interactive work reproducing the deaf composer’s listening device and a massive, oversized ear, which makes sound as visitors approach, along with Ear Sofa and Nose Sconces with Flowers (2009). To see another side of the artist, fans can head to Cut in the Beverly Wilshire to view pieces from Baldessari’s W/Studio 54 Series - made with archival lightjet print laminated with lexan and mounted on dibond, acrylic paint.
FILM by Tacita Dean
MAF until 2 January 2027
For the US debut of FILM by Berlin and Los Angeles-based artist Tacita Dean, the installation is an homage to analog filmmaking, utilizing techniques that have been employed since the earliest days of the medium. First presented in 2011 for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, this silent, 35mm film will be projected onto a 31-foot-tall monolith within MAF's Theater Gallery. Dean is perhaps best known for her 16mm and 35mm film works that treat time, memory, light, and chance as subject matter, and reflect the artists belief that analog offers something deeply embodied and physical that digital cannot replace.
the sound i saw
David Zwirner, 19 September to 31 October, 2026
An exhibition of photographs by Roy DeCarava (1919–2009) was curated by Ebony L. Haynes at the gallery’s Melrose Hill location, focuses on his unwavering exploration of the relationship between the visual and the aural created between the late 1940s and the 1960s. First exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983, this body of work juxtaposes images of everyday life in New York City from deliverymen working, children playing, and riders waiting for the train, with images of jazz musicians, glimpsed both mid-set and off-stage in moments of repose. These tonally rich silver gelatin photographs are “images for the head and for the heart.” Presented in an adjacent gallery will be a listening room inspired by the artist’s personal playlists and favorite jazz albums.
The Hour of the Pearl
Megan Mulrooney Gallery September 12 to 24 October, 2026
This is Jonathan Ryan’s first exhibit with the gallery and a new chapter in his career. The artist began as an observational painter, working along the Mississippi River until relocating to Los Angeles, and moving away from the literal landscape. Rock formations and industrial structures became the building blocks for imagined worlds that feel ancient and futuristic at once. Sand and pulverized granite are worked directly into the paint, giving his surfaces a physical connection to the earthen forms they depict. Ryan introduces a visual language that draws from archaic architecture and geological formations as it does the pixelated imagery of 1980s video games.
Hothouse
Karma from 18 September to 24 October, 2026
For his debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Brooklyn-based Randy Wray presents new oil-on-linen paintings from an ongoing body of work that spans the past decade of his practice. For Wray, the studio is a hothouse: an environment teeming with growth, where color, form, and texture progressively overcome the blankness of the canvas. His intuitive process follows a logic akin to those of biological and geological phenomena suggested by his compositions, which evoke mitosis, proliferating moss, the slow erosion of rock, and other organic transformations.
OLYMPIA
Perrotin, 18 September until 7 November, 2026
The City of Angels is in the cross-hairs of Paul Pfeiffer’s canny examination of media, spectacle, architecture, and the body. As LA prepares for its LA28 Olympics, the artist is building on the momentum of his acclaimed 2023-24 MOCA retrospective, and revisits his conceptual million-seat stadium project, imagining two of Los Angeles’s iconic venues, LA Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium - a provocative representation of spectatorship in the age of social media. The architectural renderings inspired by Gothic and Renaissance, are recast as paired symbols of LA’s past and future. In addition, new sculptures from Pfeiffer’s Incarnator series that include fragments of Justin Bieber’s body (recognizable from his tattoos) are crafted in collaboration with traditional skilled carvers from the Seville region of Spain.
Path Discovery by Vinnie Hager
Route 66, Santa Monica Blvd, Until November 2026
In a first-of-its-kind public collaboration, The Cities of West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica are coming together for a shared public art initiative celebrating this historic highway’s Centennial milestone. This summer into the late fall, all three cities will present artist Hager’s vibrant series of graphic vinyl wraps on street poles in West Hollywood and Santa Monica, and as art banners along Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Featuring customized Route 66 shields and colorful motifs inspired by the joy of exploration, the project brings a unified artistic experience to one of Southern California’s most iconic corridors. Along the way, Luciana Abait’s Road Trip, a temporary vinyl mural located at 8315 Santa Monica Boulevard reimagines the Route 66 landscape, on view through November 2026; along with Sylke Meyer’s Past Tense / Future Perfect temporary sculpture at Plummer Park, captures the motion, mythology, and memory of Route 66 through a curved fiberglass camera obscura.
Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered
USC Fisher Museum of Art from 18 August 2026 until 13 March 2027
Highlighting 35 housing projects from Williams’s 60-year career, the show emphasizes the designer’s sustained commitment to innovative, dignified solutions for collective living during a period of rapid urbanization. Organized jointly by the USC School of Architecture and the USC Fisher Museum of Art, this exhibition examines Williams’s major contributions to modern multifamily housing as the first AIA-certified Black architect west of the Mississippi River. It pairs original archival drawings with newly commissioned works by contemporary artists and architects. This also comes on the heels of a new book, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer's View of a Trailblazing Architect photographed by Janna Ireland, published by Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library.
Ed Moses: Moses @ 100
William Turner Gallery until 5 September 2026
Located inside Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, the William Turner Gallery exhibition of works by Ed Moses marks the centennial of the artist’s birth in Long Beach, CA. The exhibition brings together a focused selection of material that underscore the restless experimentation and continual reinvention that defined Moses’ practice for more than seven decades, mainly from his Venice, CA studio.
Eileen Cowin: Between Panic and Paradise
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 23 August 2026 to 3 January 2027
This is the Los Angeles–based artist’s first major museum exhibition. Often blurring the distinction between nonfiction and fiction, for more than 50 years, Cowin’s provocative photography and video works have explored romance and confrontation, the personal and the political, and the monotony and mystery of daily life.
A Gaze Through Time: Contemporary Reflections on Memory and History
ADVOCARTSY until 26 September 2026
To inaugurate the new gallery space in Downtown Los Angeles, A Gaze Through Time brings together artists whose practices examine the ways in which memory is preserved, transformed, and reimagined across time. Spanning personal recollection, migration, mythology, political critique, and historical representation, the exhibition considers memory not as a fixed archive, but as a dynamic force through which the past continually informs the present.
Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon
Academy Museum until 28 February 2027
To honour 100 years of the on-screen goddess, hundreds of newly unveiled or rarely seen images, posters, letters, artifacts, and memorabilia are on display of the blond bombshell that still haunt and fascinate. This exhibition offers unique insight into her agency in becoming a Hollywood icon including many costumes from her most famous films.
Lauren Halsley’s sculpture garden
South Central LA, permanent
Artist Lauren Halsey’s public sculpture park and garden in South Central LA is now open to the public. Architecture studio Current Interests, led by Mira Henry and Matthew Au, served as the architectural collaborators on the project. Entitled sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles, the project will serve as a living shrine and tribute to the neighborhood that Halsey and her family have called home for several generations, with dedicated space for a full slate of programming led by Halsey's Summaeverythang Community Center.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind
The Broad from 23 May until 11 October 2026
Yoko Ono, the visionary artist, musician, and activist whose work has shaped contemporary culture for more than seven decades, will be celebrated at her first solo museum exhibition in Southern California. Materials from the artist’s international campaigns for peace and displays of anti-war activism will also be on view, such as Acorn Event (1968) and Bed Peace (1969), projects done in collaboration with her late husband, John Lennon.
Organized in collaboration with Tate Modern, London, visitors will be invited to directly participate in many of Ono’s works that transform simple acts into expressions of peace and connection. The Broad’s olive trees on East West Bank Plaza will become Wish Trees for Los Angeles, a key installation (first realized in 1996 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica), inviting audiences to tie their own wishes to the tree branches in a living expression of hope in the city.
Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976–86
The Skirball Cultural Center from 20 May until 6 September 2026
2026 marks fifty years since punk burst beyond New York City, a scene with a notable number of musicians of Jewish heritage. This exhibit highlights the stories of Jewish punks and fellow travelers, including Malcolm McLaren, plus members of the Ramones, the Circle Jerks, Bad Religion, Blondie, the Patti Smith Group, and more. By centering these narratives within the broader story of punk, the exhibition underscores how artists from many communities helped shape a movement that continues to challenge norms around identity, power, and belonging. Featuring more than 500 objects and pieces of ephemera, including clothing by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood.
A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic, and Spirit
Palm Springs Art Museum until Oct 2026
Take a drive out to the desert before the soaring summer temperatures kick-in, for a group exhibition bringing together 35 queer artists whose work spans more than 100 years (1909–2026). Collectively, they explore magic, esoteric spirituality, and occult knowledge as tools for survival, resistance, and world-building. Presented as part of the museum's Q+ Art initiative, curated by David Evans Frantz, Curator-at-Large of Q+ Art, this show explores how queer artists throughout time have turned to esoteric systems to cultivate community and imagine new social and spiritual frameworks.
Free and Queer: Black Californian Roots of Gay Liberation
California African American Museum, until 28 February 2027
This exhibit centers Los Angeles as a foundational site of Black queer cultural power, shaped through networks of resistance across neighborhoods, institutions, and grassroots communities. Curated by Susan D. Anderson, the exhibition foregrounds the role of Black queer cultural labor, bringing into focus a history that has often been left out of both mainstream LGBTQ+ narratives and dominant accounts of the civil rights movement. At a moment when queer history and representation are under renewed political pressure, the exhibition feels especially timely and urgent.
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.
The AIDS Monument
West Hollywood Park, permanent
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.