(Sian Roper / For The Times)
11 art shows to see in and around L.A. this fall, including two that should top your list
- Share via
A few museum exhibitions that opened in the summer are extending into the fall, so the post-Labor Day lineup for new visual art shows is not extravagant. Still, a number of notable offerings are on the docket — although it’s disappointing that virtually all of it is Modern and contemporary. Global art’s history is on hiatus, narrowing the mix.
Two standouts include one on the controversial topic of vandalized and decommissioned Confederate monuments at MOCA and the Brick, and the other is a full retrospective of the late Los Angeles-based artist Robert Therrien at the Broad.
These are the 16 must-see works of art from permanent collections at the Huntington, LACMA, the Getty, MOCA, the Norton Simon, UCLA’s Hammer Museum and more.
Here’s a selection of what’s coming up, in chronological order of their opening dates.
Showing Places
Transgresoras: Mail Art and Messages, 1960s–2020s
Riverside Exhibition
(© Virginia Errázuriz)
In the U.S., the emergence in the 1950s of the first lively American market for new art led to some artists developing strategies for getting around the limitations of galleries and commerce. In Latin America, meanwhile, artists often faced censorship. Mail art that could circulate through the post office was simultaneously invented in both places to serve those situations, as this intergenerational survey plans to explore.
Where: California Museum of Photography, Riverside
When: Sept. 13 to Feb. 15, 2026
Price: Free (ticket registration required)
Where: California Museum of Photography, Riverside
When: Sept. 13 to Feb. 15, 2026
Price: Free (ticket registration required)
Show more Show less
Route Details
Grounded
Mid-Wilshire Exhibition
(Courtney M. Leonard)
Featuring 40 works, spanning the 1970s to today, by 35 artists based in the Americas and around the Pacific, “Grounded” continues LACMA’s ongoing emphasis on contemporary rather than historical art. The diverse work, primarily sculpture and installation, is billed as investigating “ecology, sovereignty, memory and home.”
Where: LACMA
When: Sept. 14 to June 21, 2026
Price: $23 adults; $19 seniors; $19 students; $19 visitor with disability; teens and youth are free, as are all visitors after 3 p.m. Monday to Friday (for L.A. County residents with valid ID)
Where: LACMA
When: Sept. 14 to June 21, 2026
Price: $23 adults; $19 seniors; $19 students; $19 visitor with disability; teens and youth are free, as are all visitors after 3 p.m. Monday to Friday (for L.A. County residents with valid ID)
Show more Show less
Route Details
Habitat: Making the California Environment
Irvine Exhibition
(UCI Langson Institute)
Between the late-19th century California genocide of Indigenous people and the state’s urban upsurge that took off in the 1920s, radical change came to the region’s natural environment. Landscape paintings from the period will be examined through that vividly shifting lens.
Where: Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, UC Irvine
When: Sept. 20 to Jan. 10, 2026
Price: Free
Where: Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, UC Irvine
When: Sept. 20 to Jan. 10, 2026
Price: Free
Show more Show less
Route Details
The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse From the Dallas Museum of Art
Santa Barbara Exhibition
- Route
-
- Share via
-
(Brad Flowers/Dallas Museum of Art)
Is there anyone who doesn’t like Impressionist paintings and sculptures? As the Dallas Museum of Art renovates and expands its building, a selection of 50 Impressionist and early Modern works from its permanent collection, dating from the 1870s to 1925, has embarked on a three-year, five-city tour. Six paintings by Claude Monet and four by Piet Mondrian are featured.
Where: Santa Barbara Museum of Art
When: Oct. 5 to Jan. 25, 2026
Price: $30 adults; $25 seniors; $21 for youth (6 to 17 years old) ; free under 6 years old
Where: Santa Barbara Museum of Art
When: Oct. 5 to Jan. 25, 2026
Price: $30 adults; $25 seniors; $21 for youth (6 to 17 years old) ; free under 6 years old
Show more Show less
Route Details
Made in L.A. 2025
Westwood Exhibition
(Graham Howe)
The university museum’s seventh biennial survey of mostly recent art from the sprawling region will include 28 artists and collectives — including influential elder statesman Pat O’Neill, 86. They work in every imaginable medium, from traditional painting and sculpture to theater and choreography. The always much-discussed result will reflect the diverse artistic interests of the changing curatorial team, which this time is composed of independent curator Essence Harden, Art Institute of Chicago (and former Hammer) curator Paulina Pobocha and Hammer curatorial assistant Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow.
Where: UCLA Hammer Museum
When: Oct. 5 to Mar. 1, 2026
Price: Free
Where: UCLA Hammer Museum
When: Oct. 5 to Mar. 1, 2026
Price: Free
Show more Show less
Route Details
Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began
Mid-Wilshire Exhibition
Tavarese Strachen, “Six Thousand Years,” and “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility,” 2018, mixed media.
(Johnna Arnold / Tavares Strachan)
Bahamian-born New York artist Tavares Strachan, whose immersive solo exhibition “Magnificent Darkness” filled the Hollywood branch of Marian Goodman Gallery last year, makes multidisciplinary art that seeks to amplify notable events and people — especially related to exploration, from deep-sea diving to outer space — that are often sidelined in standard cultural histories. Strachan, a 2022 MacArthur Foundation fellow, once shipped a 4.5-ton block of ice from the Arctic to the Bahamas via FedEx. We’ll see what might arrive at Wilshire Boulevard.
Where: LACMA
When: Oct. 12 to March 29, 2026
Price: $23 adults; $19 seniors; $19 students; $19 visitor with disability; teens and youth are free, as are all visitors after 3 p.m. Monday to Friday (for L.A. County residents with valid ID)
Where: LACMA
When: Oct. 12 to March 29, 2026
Price: $23 adults; $19 seniors; $19 students; $19 visitor with disability; teens and youth are free, as are all visitors after 3 p.m. Monday to Friday (for L.A. County residents with valid ID)
Show more Show less
Route Details
the eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal
San Marino Exhibition
(Linnea Stephan)
British artist, potter and writer Edmund de Waal is obsessed with archives, which he describes as “places, streets, hillsides as much as card indexes.” For a body of new work, he once traveled to the place in China where the clay used to make porcelain was discovered — and then on to Dresden, Germany; Cornwall, U.K.; and the Appalachian Mountains, where subsequent cultures reinvented it. De Waal’s three site-specific, yearlong installations will be in the Huntington’s cultural and natural “archives” that are its art gallery and Chinese and Japanese gardens.
Where: The Huntington
When: Oct. 18 to Oct. 26, 2026
Price: Monday-Thursday: $29 adult; $24 senior, military with ID, student (12-18) with ID; youth $13; free for children under 4 (reservations recommended). Friday-Sunday, holidays and peak seasons: $34 adult; $28 senior, military with ID, student (12-18) with ID; youth $15, free for children under 4 (reservations required).
Where: The Huntington
When: Oct. 18 to Oct. 26, 2026
Price: Monday-Thursday: $29 adult; $24 senior, military with ID, student (12-18) with ID; youth $13; free for children under 4 (reservations recommended). Friday-Sunday, holidays and peak seasons: $34 adult; $28 senior, military with ID, student (12-18) with ID; youth $15, free for children under 4 (reservations required).
Show more Show less
Route Details
MONUMENTS
Downtown L.A. Exhibition
(The Brick)
The most eagerly anticipated theme exhibition this fall is reflected in the emphatic title, pointedly written all in caps. “MONUMENTS” was inspired by the wave of revulsion following the violent 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. — a deadly riot opposing the proposed removal of a local statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. That statue is now gone, torn down along with some 200 other tributes across the country to American turncoats who supported chattel slavery. (The last known Confederate monument in Southern California was removed in 2020.)
A selection of decommissioned Confederate statues will be shown at MOCA and alternative space the Brick, joint organizers of the exhibition; they’ll be 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.
Where: Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick (Geffen Contemporary is the map location)
When: Oct. 23 – Apr. 12, 2026
Price: $18 adult; $10 seniors and students; free for children under 12 (admission covers both venues)
A selection of decommissioned Confederate statues will be shown at MOCA and alternative space the Brick, joint organizers of the exhibition; they’ll be 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.
Where: Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick (Geffen Contemporary is the map location)
When: Oct. 23 – Apr. 12, 2026
Price: $18 adult; $10 seniors and students; free for children under 12 (admission covers both venues)
Show more Show less
Route Details
How to Be a Guerrilla Girl
Brentwood Exhibition
(Getty Research Institute)
The Guerrilla Girls famously shield their identity by wearing gorilla masks in public, but this show will unveil “how to” information on their effective techniques of data research, distribution and culture jamming. Drawing on the witty protest group’s early archives, acquired in 2008 by the GRI, their 40th anniversary will be celebrated by an exhibition of materials outlining the collaborative process that goes into their ongoing demands for art world equity for women and artists of color. A selection from their dozens of posters and ads will be displayed.
Where: Getty Research Institute
When: Nov. 18-April 12, 2026
Price: Free (timed entry required)
Where: Getty Research Institute
When: Nov. 18-April 12, 2026
Price: Free (timed entry required)
Show more Show less
Route Details
Robert Therrien: This is a Story
Downtown L.A. Exhibition
- Route
-
- Share via
-
(Douglas M. Parker Studio)
A quintessential artist’s artist, internationally admired Los Angeles sculptor Robert Therrien (1947-2019) made eccentric objects in two and three dimensions that seem strangely familiar when they are wholly abstract, and strangely abstract when they are instantly recognizable as representations of known things — a tall pillar of giant dinner plates, for example, or a simple little snowman. Often the materials are unusual, like zinc over bronze, buffed plaster or tempera on silver, adding to the sense of mysterious specificity. With more than 120 works spanning five decades, this should be the most compelling museum solo show of the season.
Where: The Broad
When: Nov. 22 to April 5, 2026
Price: $15 presale; $18 after November 21; free for those 17 and under
Where: The Broad
When: Nov. 22 to April 5, 2026
Price: $15 presale; $18 after November 21; free for those 17 and under
Show more Show less
Route Details
Mapping the Female Body: Tom Wesselmann and Mickalene Thomas
Palm Springs Exhibition
(Palm Springs Art Museum)
An unexpected juxtaposition of two very different painters from the end of one century and the beginning of the next is set to consider dissimilar representations of the contemporary female nude. In the 1960s, the famous “Great American Nude” series by Tom Wesselman (1931-2004) applied commercial advertising techniques to painterly traditions in Western art familiar since the Renaissance. Fifty years later, Mickalene Thomas applies commercial craft techniques to vibrant paintings of queer Black women — a subject previously absent from Western art history. Questions of gender, sexuality and their depictions are the exhibition’s focus.
Where: Palm Springs Art Museum
When: Nov. 22 to April 6, 2026
Price: $20 adults; $18 seniors; $12 students/teachers; free for children under 18 and active-duty military and their families
Where: Palm Springs Art Museum
When: Nov. 22 to April 6, 2026
Price: $20 adults; $18 seniors; $12 students/teachers; free for children under 18 and active-duty military and their families
Show more Show less
Route Details
No matching entries.
Please reset filters to see all entries.
No matching entries.
Please reset filters to see all entries.
Updates:
11:06 a.m. Sept. 3, 2025: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the pricing of “Robert Therrien: This is a Story” at the Broad and “The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse From the Dallas Museum of Art.” Pricing is $15 for the Broad exhibit and $30 adults; $25 seniors; $21 for youth (6 to 17 years old); free under 6 years old for the Santa Barbara exhibit.
