Jorge Pardo’s Installation Design at LACMA

Fragments of turquoise, jadeite and seashells decorate a human skull, reflecting the ancient Mexican origins of such familiar celebrations as the Day of the Dead.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Pardo’s design for LACMA’s Pre-Columbian galleries is part natural cave, part hip urban lounge.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

LACMA’s expanding Spanish Colonial collection includes a Filipino ivory “Christ Child” with Buddha-style hair, loaned by the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in Caracas.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Belgian-born, Mexico City-based artist Francis Alys painted a picture of a seated man, then gave it to several commercial sign painters to copy. Like a visual game of “telephone,” each sign painter changed the original in subtle — and sometimes not so subtle — ways. LACMA has acquired three major Alys works for its collection of contemporary Latin American art.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Light reflections on curved plexiglass cases interfere with some displays, such as this one for a newly acquired ancient Panamanian burial urn.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

LACMA recently acquired the important Munoz-Kramer Collection of ceramics made between 1500 BC and AD 1500 in what is today Colombia, a gift of trustee Camilla Chandler Frost and collectors Stephen and Claudia Munoz-Kramer. A selection of decorated vessels, figures and funerary objects is on display in what the museum says is the most important collection of its kind in the United States.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Clay figures from West Mexico are among the prizes in LACMA’s impressive Pre-Columbian collection.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Diego Rivera’s 1931 portrait shows New York real estate mogul John Dunbar seated next to an ancient clay sculpture from West Mexico.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)