This month in LA brings not only 4th of July fireworks celebrations, but more World Cup watch parties continue at the Hammer Museum in Westwood during, and Football World Cup art nods with Big Balls by Werner Bronkhorst that can be viewed early in the month on Melrose in West Hollywood. Love it or not, the world’s first ‘Museum of AI Arts,’ debuts with the inaugural exhibition Machine Dreams: Rainforest at DATALAND on Grand Ave. in Downtown LA. For nostalgic film buffs, the 100-year-anniversary of Marilyn Monroe is celebrated with an exhibit at The Academy in true glamorous Hollywood style, and Jeffrey Deitch looks back on Urs Fischer’s groundbreaking communal clay molding project from 2013, in YES and LA DUST.
Los Angeles Art Exhibitions: what to see in July 2026
Werner Bronkhorst: Big Balls
8175 Melrose Avenue from 9-12 July 2026
Celebrate the Football World Cup with a new series of paintings in homage to the beloved sport. South African-born, Sydney-based, globally recognized Werner Bronkhorst sculptural and hyper-realistic works often feature miniature figures amongst layers of paint. Inspired by artists including Andy Warhol, William De Kooning and René Magritte, the artist combines pop culture references with abstract expression and surrealism, while documenting his creative process through his social media channels.
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.
Urs Fischer: YES and LA DUST
Jeffrey Deitch until 8 August 2028
Looking back on the acclaimed Swiss artist’s April 2013 radical show staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Fischer arranged for tons of modeling clay to be delivered to the museum, installed a restaurant kitchen and a grand piano, and invited anyone who wanted to participate to sculpt the clay. Over 2,500 people created an array of figures and forms and Fischer selected the most intriguing sculptures to cast in bronze. This was during Deitch’s tenure as MOCA Director. Thirteen years later, twenty-five of these surreal bronze structures will be presented at his N. Orange Drive gallery in Hollywood.
Double Take: Photographs in Pairs
Fahey/Klein Gallery until July 2026
This exhibition pairs photographs that share striking visual similarities yet emerge from entirely different eras, cultures, and intentions. The exhibit groups photos according to their formal qualities: the angle of a body, the geometry of a space, the relationship between figures, and the interpretation of color, regardless of when, where, or why they were created - the images are viewed individually and not separated by artist, genre, subject, or chronology.
Expect to see over 20 pairings of photographs from a range that includes Diane Arbus, Peter Beard, Patrick Demarchelier, Bruce Webber, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and more.
Zhang Enli
Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood until 22 August 2026
Shanghai-based artist Zhang Enli’s first West Coast solo exhibition is bringing together a new series of abstract portraits. While anchored in figuration and paired with descriptive titles, the works on view convey their subjects’ essence via evocation rather than likeness, with Enli’s increasingly loose brushwork proving abstraction’s power to disclose information about the human condition.
Sprüth Magers | 10 Years LA!
Sprüth Magers until 31 July 2026
This is the last month to view the exhibit celebrating the gallery's decade-long presence in Los Angeles and it’s first location in the U.S., founded in 2016 by Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers. This celebratory show is bringing together more than 50 artists across generations and geographies, from Cindy Sherman and Jenny Holzer to Anne Imhof and Kaari Upson, along with a sculpture from Kara Walker installed outside the gallery. Inside, renowned vinyl from Barbara Kruger will take over one of the gallery walls, along with works by John Baldessari, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, John Waters, and many others.
Animals
Perrotin until 11 July 2026
Alex Gardner’s beautiful paintings about fatherhood are on display for the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Long Beach-based artist. Gardner’s characteristic faceless figures are featured in 13 new paintings rendered in a rich palette of bruised blues and dense greens across a range of scale from tiny to life-size.
Gabrielinos (I Am You And What I See Is Me)
Perrotin until 11 July 2026
Also at Perrotin for a short window of time, Mexican artist Gabriel Rico’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles is seen through textile, assemblage, and sculpture. Rico explores the connections between humanity and nature, and our methods of communication, asking viewers to reflect on the lifeforms that surround us.
The Rooftop Paintings
Parker Gallery until 15 August 2026
The Rooftop Paintings at 255 Bowery, a solo exhibition by Gerald Jackson, is the 90-year-old’s second at the gallery. This exhibition focuses on a singular group of paintings and works on paper produced in the early 1980s, offering a closer look at a pivotal period in his practice. Jackson relocated from his native Chicago to the Lower East Side in the early 1960s, where he quickly became part of the community of Black artists and musicians living there. The Bowery as a site of artistic inspiration and production has been widely examined.
Yuichiro Ukai
Parker Gallery until 15 August 2026
In his first solo exhibition with the gallery, celebrated self-taught Japanese artist Yuichiro Ukai - also part of Atelier Yamanami - shows a selection of new large-scale works on paper from 2021–2025 never before seen in Los Angeles. The densely animated works on paper poster board incorporate figures from contemporary manga and anime, mythic beasts, and historic Japanese epics. Drawn on sequential panels like traditional picture scrolls, Ukai’s works present a cartographic landscape distinctively melding characters from across cultures, time, and space.
Balboa of House and Garden
Lisson until 22 August 2026
Coinciding with the unveiling of Finch’s site-specific commission at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago this summer, this marks Spencer Finch’s first exhibition in Los Angeles and his inaugural presentation with the gallery in the United States. Expect to see over fifty unique works on paper, a site-specific skylight installation, and a monumental outdoor sculpture, extending Finch’s longstanding exploration of light, perception, memory, and the emotional resonance embedded within ordinary experience.
dear artists... Los Angeles - Streets, Structures & Stories
Helms Design Center in Culver City until 25 July 2026
Band of Vices and Helms Design District are bringing a collaborative exhibition showcasing more than 100 artists to explore the layered narratives that shape Los Angeles. Presented across town in two exhibition spaces, Band of Vices (located in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District) and the Helms Design Center (on the campus of Culver City’s Helms Bakery), the exhibition creates a dialogue between art, architecture, design, and community.
World Cup Soccer Exhibit
Torrance Historical Society & Museum until 31 August 2026
In celebration of the upcoming FIFA World Cup 26™, and in recognition of Torrance being the birthplace of AYSO Soccer, the Torrance Historical Society invited Miguel Salazar and Julie Randall to share their private soccer collection that showcases items accumulated from 1998 to 2026. This includes memorabilia such as an autographed jersey from legendary Brazilian soccer star Pelé. Other artifacts and keepsakes representing major soccer events highlight the global impact and lasting legacy from organizations such as the FIFA World Cup, the Women’s World Cup, AYSO, LA Galaxy, and Olympic Soccer, are on display.
Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar
Roberts Projects until 22 August 2026
As part of a series of exhibitions and initiatives celebrating Saar's 100th birthday this summer, this exhibition explores the central role of costume design in Saar's early career and throughout her life as a mother and artist. The archivally-driven show features over 200 objects, including costume designs, photographs, drawings, garments, jewelry, artworks, and historic materials from the 1950s–1970s.
Catherine Opie: Holding Blue
Holding Blue
Regen Projects, Los Angeles)
Regen Projects until 3 July 2026
This exhibit marks Catherine Opie’s twelfth solo exhibition with the gallery. The new photographs and sculptures flow between Opie’s investigations into the formal and theoretical qualities of the photographic medium and the singularities of the Norwegian landscape while searching for the ‘blue hour.’ Through meditations on temporality, embodiment, and the preciousness of the natural world, these works extend Opie’s longstanding practice of closely observing the social and physical world around her.
Beneath the Avocado Tree
Simchowitz Hill House, Pasadena, until 25 July 2026
Ken Taylor Reynaga’s solo exhibition centers around a particular kind of shade, soft and irregular, shifting with the wind, where time slows just enough to notice what usually slips by. The work centers on the oftenunseen laborers whose bodies imprint the land even as they disappear into it. Drawing on migration, inheritance, and arthistorical influences, Reynaga creates images both specific and mythic, holding beauty and exhaustion in layered, unresolved surfaces.
Keith Tyson: The Generative Universe
Hauser & Wirth DTLA Until 16 August 2026
British artist Keith Tyson’s first exhibition in Los Angeles since 2009 brings together paintings, sculptures, drawings, and mixed media works spanning the past three decades, while making a powerful case for the universe as a single generative system: a constantly shifting, causal network in which forms arise, transform, and dissolve. Tyson, who originally trained as an engineer, was an early practitioner of generative art, and this series showcases chemical reactions and fluid dynamics that create their own swirling, unpredictable imagery, and his ongoing Still Life series, where he reimagines the genre through shifting scientific, mathematical, and art historical frameworks.
No Spectators
REEF gallery DTLA until 25 July 2026
Visionary photographers have been documenting the past eighty years of mayhem at the Olympic Auditorium - L.A.’s home for visceral entertainment from boxing to wrestling, roller derby, and music in a theatrically charged atmosphere. The larger-than-life performers and ecstatic crowds came from all over the city to enter the cavernous arena at the corner of 18th Street and Grand Avenue.
This new exhibition focuses on the music from Bob Willoughby’s groundbreaking images of L.A.’s 1950s rhythm and blues scene to iconic punk rock photos shot by Edward Colver, Ann Summa, Alison Braun, and Robbie Robinson to vivid color shots of Fela Kuti by Kurt Mahoney. 18th & Grand is a multimedia cultural project using a historic venue to tell a larger story about Los Angeles. Comprising an Emmy-Nominated documentary film directed by Stephen DeBro (fans of the film include Ed Ruscha), a large-scale, award-winning exhibition, screenings, panels and events, with participants Cheech Marin, Gustavo Arellano, Carlos Palomino, John Doe, Julio César Chávez, and many other notable figures.
California Light and Space (The 21st Century Version)
David Zwirner 4 June until 1 August 2026
Organized by Helen Molesworth, this group exhibit features an A-list curation of works by artists who make up the fabric of the city’s vibrant and diverse arts scene while showcasing the West Coast terroir of Los Angeles. Expect a range of mediums that depict the light and space movement from the 1960s and 1970s, in its current modern-day form, from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean during the ‘magic hour’. The line-up of talent includes Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sonia Boyajian, Noah Davis, rafa esparza, Jennifer Guidi, Lauren Halsey, EJ Hill, Thomas Houseago, Manuel López, Rodney McMillian, Mr. Wash, Catherine Opie, Hilary Pecis, Lari Pittman, Jason Rhoades, Cauleen Smith, and Lily Stockman
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.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Coyote
PDC Design Gallery until 3 July 2026
Harry Fonseca (1946-2006) is widely considered one of the most prominent Native artists from California, and is recognized by his use of his distinct representation of his Coyote figure, which he used both to explore aspects of his own kaleidoscopic identity and confront dominant narratives.
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: Ninety-six and Pissed
The Library at MAF until 18 July 2026
This exhibition presents over thirty new drawings that meld cartoon characters with Celtic runes and Egyptian hieroglyphics, placed in dialogue with the artist’s earlier iconic drawing Wonder Woman (2007), and a selection of hand-built ceramic sculptures.
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.
Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials
Hammer Museum until 23 August 2026
This groundbreaking exhibition features 22 indigenous and brown artists using organic and living materials from cacao, tree bark, avocado, and lemon to examine and expose the ongoing political discourse.
Characterized by their diversity and internationality (50% of the artists are indigenous, while the other 50% consider themselves part of the brown cultures.) Some of the participating LA-based artists commissioned for their work include Raven Chacon - the first Native American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music; Carmen Argote, Jackie Amezquita, Edgar Calel, Rose B. Simpson, among others.
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.
Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection
Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles 16 August 2026
Eileen Harris Norton has built an inspiring art collection and forged a philanthropic legacy by focusing upon the work of women artists, as well as artists of color and of her native California. Marking fifty years since Harris Norton made her first acquisition - a print purchased in 1976 directly from Los Angeles artist and African American arts advocate Ruth Waddy, ‘Destiny Is a Rose’ will present more than 80 works from Harris Norton’s holdings in an exhibition conceived to celebrate the connoisseurship and commitment to social justice.
Taking its title from a 1990 painting by Kerry James Marshall, ‘Destiny Is a Rose’ features paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Catherine Opie, Yoshitomo Nara, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, and many others.
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 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.
The AIDS Monument
West Hollywood Park, permanent
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.