Los Angeles County Museum of Art


LA County Museum of Art
Photo by: Sarah_Ackerman, Creative Commons

It’s hard to believe that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), currently home to some 100,000 pieces of art from all over the world, once had to borrow its entire art collection during their first inauguration. LACMA has certainly come a long way. From being originally part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art in Exposition Park, the museum now boasts of a seven-building complex exclusively dedicated to art situated in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles.

The County Museum of Art is home to an extensive collection of world art. You could say that you can trace the entire history of art just by going through LACMA’s impressive collection of past and present artworks. Where else can one find pre-Columbian works displayed side by side with works from contemporary masters like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Jose Clemente Orozco? Asian art, Latin American art, and Islamic art are just some of the museum’s popular collections.

The collected artworks of LACAMA are spread out among the museum’s buildings as follows:

  1. The Ahmanson Building contains the Modern Art, African, German Expressionist, Greek, and Roman art collections, including Tony Smith’s sculpture “Smoke” at the base of the building’s staircase.
  2. The Art of Americas Building contains the pre-Columbian, Latin American, American collection.
  3. The Hammer Building has the Chinese and Korean works on display.
  4. The Pavilion for Japanese Art includes Shin’enkan collection and various other art pieces.
  5. The Broad Contemporary Art Museum or BCAM houses the Contemporary Art collection of the museum.

Pick your favorite exhibit, from the extensive collection or discover new and intriguing pieces from a country you’ve been dying to visit. With museum’s vast collection of world art, learning about different cultures might not seem like a farfetched idea after all.

One response to “Los Angeles County Museum of Art”

  1. Ken Hirth says:

    For your Precolumbian Curator

    I hope you are well and are able to give me a little advice on a matter regarding Thin Orange. I am doing some research on Thin Orange as a trade ware and I am looking for collections in the USA (museum or private) that have Thin Orange ring base bowls. I want to measure whole vessels for weight, volume, and standardization issues that would relate to issues of stack-ability and trade. My research doesn’t normally deal much with museum collections so I don’t know which institutions might have a collection of Teotihuacan Classic period whole vessels. I am also looking for plain ring base bowls to measure as a control group.

    Any help or advice on this would be appreciated.

    Sincerely yours,
    Ken Hirth
    Professor of Anthropology
    Penn State University

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *