Fall 2025 Preview
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| Baltimore's Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument. To appear in "MONUMENTS." |
August
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| Utagawa Hiroshige, Shono: Driving Rain, about 1833–36. Hammer Museum, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts |
September
Jaws, the movie, is 50 years old, hence "Jaws: The Exhibition." It's the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures' first major exhibition devoted to a single film (Sep. 14, 2025–July 26, 2026).
October
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| Patrick McGrath Muñiz, Diasporamus, 2021. Photo: Essentials Creative (c) Patrick McGrath Muñiz |
"Soy de Tejas: A Statewide Survey of Latinx Art" brings the work of 40 Texas-born or -based artists to the Cheech Marin Center, Riverside. It's on view Oct. 4, 2025–Jan. 11, 2026.
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| Alake Shilling, I'm Just a Fun Guy, 2023. Collection of Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood. Photo: Evan Bedford |
The Hammer's "Made in L.A. 2025" features 28 emerging and established artists and collectives chosen by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha (Oct. 5, 2025–Mar. 1, 2026).
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| Paul Signac, Mont Saint-Michel, Setting Sun, 1897. Dallas Museum of Art |
Up the coast, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has a loan exhibition of Impressionist and Modern art from Dallas, with works by Monet, Degas, van Gogh, Matisse, and Mondrian. "The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art" runs Oct. 5, 2025 to Jan. 25, 2026.
At LACMA, "Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began" is the Bahamian artist's first L.A. museum show, consisting of a sequence of walk-through installations (Oct 12, 2025–Mar. 29, 2026).
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| Trenton Doyle Hancock, Step and Screw: The Star of Code Switching, 2020. The Jewish Museum |
The Skirball Center will present "Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston," a clever show that drew praise when it appeared at the Jewish Museum earlier this year. As a college student Hancock aspired to create art "LIKE GUSTON BUT BLACKER AND WORSE." Shown are Hancock's paintings of a chopped Black superhero who fights Guston's schlubby Klansmen, alongside Guston's vintage paintings of the Klan. It opens at the Skirball Oct. 16, 2025.
Over the past year, toppled Confederate monuments have been making their way to Los Angeles for a unique exhibition organized by the Brick and MOCA. "MONUMENTS" will show the pro-Confederate (but typically early 20th-century) sculptures alongside work made in response by contemporary Black artists. Admittedly, the news cycle moves faster than the years-long slog of organizing a loan show. Lest there be any concern that the exhibition is beating a dead equestrian, monuments are back in the news. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have vowed to restore two DC-area Confederate monuments. The Albert Pike monument, which was pulled down with chains on Juneteenth 2020, is to be restored in Oct. 2025… which happens to be the opening month of "MONUMENTS." Split between MOCA Geffen and the Brick, it seems certain to get the most attention of any West Coast museum show this fall (Oct. 23, 2025–Apr. 12, 2026).
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| Giovanni di Paolo, Branchini Madonna, 1427. Norton Simon Museum |
The Norton Simon Museum is turning 50—as old as Jaws—and it's marking that gold anniversary with "Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft." Drawing on new technical studies, it explores the use of gold and gilt in artworks made from 1000 BC to the 20th century. It runs Oct. 24, 2025–Feb. 16, 2026.
November
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| Carlos A. Cortéz, Ricardo Flores-Magón, 1978. Smithsonian American Art Museum |
The Huntington hosts the traveling show "Radical Histories: Chicano Prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum" in its Boone Gallery (Nov. 16, 2025–Mar. 2, 2026).
The Getty Research Institute is organizing its first extensive exhibition on the Guerrilla Girls, drawn from the group's archives. "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl" is at the Getty Center, Nov. 18, 2025–Apr. 12, 2026.
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| Tom Wesselmann, Great American Nude #57, 1964. Whitney Museum of American Art |
If you like the Hancock & Guston face-off at the Skirball, you might want to head to Palm Springs. "Mapping the Female Body: Tom Wesselmann and Mickalene Thomas" is not such a random pairing as you might think. Thomas has credited Wesselmann's Great American Nudes as an influence, while admitting his straight-white-male-gaze art was seen as "taboo." The show sounds crazy enough to be fun. "Mapping the Female Body" is at the Palm Springs Art Museum, Nov. 22, 2025–Apr. 6, 2026.
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| Works by Robert Therrien. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com |
Robert Therrien (1947-2019) was making Instagrammable sculptures before there was an Instagram. His outsized furniture makes the viewer part of the sculpture, a signifier of its uncanny scale. Therrien had surveys at MOCA in 1984 and LACMA in 2000. Now the Broad is planning a posthumous retrospective that will cover a long, diverse career and include late works never before exhibited. "Robert Therrien: This is a Story" will be at the Broad Nov. 22, 2025–Apr. 5, 2026.
December
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| Thomas Cole, Portage Falls on the Genesee (small detail), about 1839. The Huntington |
A show called "Collecting Impressionism at LACMA" has added relevance with recent gifts from the Pearlman Foundation. The show takes a historical view of the growth of LACMA's collection as an expression of changing tastes and civic ambitions. It opens Dec. 21, 2025. (An exhibition of the Pearlman collection is scheduled for Feb. 2026.)
Comments
> the exhibition is beating a dead
> equestrian, monuments are
> back in the news.
Theft of metal, particularly copper, is in the news too.
Street lights in LA have stopped working and monument plaques are missing because of robbers stealing underground wiring (for copper) and landmark objects made of metal. The amount of time and effort required to hoist wiring apparently barely covers the dollars the thieves receive from dishonest scrap-metal yards.
The floodlights of the 6th Street viaduct, designed by architect Michael Maltzen and which opened to some fanfare 3 years ago, are among the many cases of things going on the blink due to thievery,
Cities like Los Angeles have always been similar to an endurance test, often giving a sense of eventually taking one step too far:
Livescience .com: "During the fourth century, the city of Rome had a population of about 1 million people. But this number dropped to around 80,000 in the early sixth century and then fell much lower...In addition to war and enslavement, the people of Rome experienced other problems, including natural disasters and health crises."