Powerhouse for presenting postwar art
Founded in 1979, MOCA is among the world’s most important contemporary art institutions and has grown to occupy two locations in Los Angeles, each of architectural renown. It also owns the major earth work by Michael Heizer, “Double Negative” (1969), in the Nevada desert. The museum’s main exhibition space on Grand Avenue was designed in 1986 by the Japanese postmodern architect Arata Isozaki, who went on to win the Pritzker Prize in 2019. The building played a major role in regenerating the city’s downtown area. The Geffen Contemporary, a former police car warehouse in L.A.’s Little Tokyo renovated by Frank Gehry, opened in 1983 and hosts temporary shows. The museums are known globally for groundbreaking monographic, touring and thematic exhibitions of postwar art. MOCA gave early platforms to artists including Roni Horn (1990), Gabriel Orozco (2000) and Mike Kelly (2014). “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” (2007) and “Art in the Streets” (2011), featuring graffiti and street art and organized by its then director Jeffrey Deitch, were both early institutional exhibitions of their kind. The permanent collection numbers some 8,000 works and is among the finest holdings of international contemporary art in the country.
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