Groundhog Day 2023

Artists have lived and worked in the sun-filled expanse in and around Los Angeles for decades… But the city's identity as a global arts center has eluded it. Until now.

—Penta, June 22, 2022

For decades, Los Angeles has had a strong arts community… But there has long been speculation, particularly from those based in New York, that there would never be enough collectors to sustain a market in the city. The arrival of the Frieze art fair there in 2019 seemed to herald a new chapter for L.A.…

—ARTnews,  Dec. 7, 2022

Reports of the L.A. gallery scene having "its moment" seem to come every 10 or so years, often from East Coast media seemingly amazed that culture thrives amid sunshine and spinning the same cliches about artists migrating west being drawn by more accessible studio space and the alluring quality of the light… Those aren’t inaccurate dynamics…

—Deborah Vankin in Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2022

…the art infrastructure has gone from zero to 100 in the City of Angels.

—Vanity Fair, Feb. 18, 2022

And even though New York is the epicenter of the art market, with the largest population of millionaires and billionaires worldwide — and the art world has a running joke about the dearth of collectors in LA — LaViola says the landscape is “rapidly changing."

—Hyperallergic, Feb. 16, 2022

Mr. Brainwash Museum, Beverly Hills

The rise of L.A. as one of America’s art capitals is obvious. We all are experiencing a much more decentralized art market—whether triggered by the pandemic or not.

—Thorsten Albertz in ArtNet News, Feb. 15, 2022

In the past few years, L.A.'s art scene has undergone a revival of sorts.

—The New York Times, July 30, 2015

No one is suggesting that Los Angeles is about to supplant New York as an art capital... 

—The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2011

For some years it has been fashionable in some circles to opine that California—and, in particular, Los Angeles—will eventually equal New York as a fountainhead of American art and culture. Indeed, some people claim it has already happened…

—Peter Schjeldahl in The New York Times, May 21, 1972

As far as the contemporary art scene is concerned, Los Angeles slowly but surely is making its way into the second city spot.… Perhaps it seems a paradox that Los Angeles and not San Francisco is moving into the artistic limelight. San Francisco, after all, has always been the refined, cultivated, and continental city, while Los Angeles was obviously vulgar, totally lacking in style.

—Henry Geldzahler in Vogue, Sep. 15, 1964

LACMA, 1966

And ICYMI:

Long in the cultural shadow of its northern neighbor Los Angeles, Orange County’s cultural scene is finally getting its moment in the sun…

—Surface, Oct. 6, 2022