10 best art shows at SoCal museums in 2025, a year full of captivating moments
From ‘Monuments’ at MOCA to ‘Robert Therrien: This Is a Story’ to ‘The Kingdom of Pylos,’ there was no shortage of captivating art at Southern California museums in 2025.
L.A. exploded into a world art capital. I was lucky to be here to witness it
Los Angeles’ ascension coincided with the 46-year career of art critic Christopher Knight. In his final column for The Times, he cites three important factors in that rise.
Robert Therrien’s smashing retrospective is among the year’s best museum solo shows
Form propels content in Robert Therrien’s retrospective at the Broad. ‘This Is a Story,’ filled with enlarged plates and tables, cheeky chapels and flowing beards, has a charismatic presence.
22 essential works of art at the Huntington and the surprising stories behind them
For more than 30 years after opening, the Huntington held the best art collection in the L.A. suburbs. With new additions, the museum continues to build its impressive collection of masterpieces.
Palm Springs Art Museum in crisis after trustees exit amid financial issues
Auditors have questioned the accounting practices at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Areas of concern include problems with reporting of endowment spending, improper recording of the market value of donated and deaccessioned art, and faulty recording of a…
Palm Springs Art Museum faces trustee revolt over new director
After an internal candidate was appointed to be director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, the search committee’s leader, upset over the selection process, resigned from the museum’s board.
The most significant American art museum show right now topples white supremacy
Juxtaposing Jim Crow-era Confederate monuments and recent art, “Monuments” challenges white supremacy.
At LACMA, a rambling theme show of recent contemporary art acquisitions jumps the rails
Museum shows of recent acquisitions are fine. LACMA trying to make ‘Grounded’ into a theme show isn’t.
Powerful ‘lynching’ pictures expose America’s dark past — and today’s turmoil
As the shredding of civil society accelerates, Ken Gonzales-Day’s art flips our common understanding of identity.
How a tiny stone from a warrior’s tomb is shaking up ancient Greek art at Getty Villa
‘The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece’ at the Getty Villa gives the first look outside Europe at the ancient Greek Griffin Warrior, whose grave held offerings of incomparable artistry.
LACMA’s great Buddhist art collection, pulled out of storage, is an irresistible force
Splendid sculpture and painting from LACMA’s permanent collection was packed up about eight years ago. Finally, it’s back on view — but only for a while.
The new LACMA is sleek, splotchy, powerful, jarring, monotonous, appealing and absurd
Los Angeles County Museum of Art offers its first public peek inside the new David Geffen Galleries building, whose vast expanses of concrete deliver some lovely moments as well as some groans.
‘Queer Lens’ is the provocative photography show only the Getty would be brave enough to stage
“Queer Lens: A History of Photography” showcases Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray and other big names, but the important exhibition is so much more, looking at expressions of gender and sexuality across two centuries.
‘Noah Davis’ at the UCLA Hammer Museum reveals the brilliant early work of a life cut tragically short
Noah Davis was a painter’s painter, a deeply thoughtful Black voice heard by other artists until he died at 32. A new L.A. show reveals just how good he was.
Guadalupe Rosales crafts an analog Wayback Machine for a vibrant show at Palm Springs Art Museum
Los Angeles artist Guadalupe Rosales reconfigures a dazzling archive of her hometown in the 1990s. It’s a show that should catapult her to prominence.
Are plans for the Joshua Tree Art Museum a desert mirage?
A foundation announced the groundbreaking for the Joshua Tree Art Museum, but public records reveal a more complicated picture.
Lewis W. Hine’s photos helped child labor laws pass a century ago. We need him again
As states consider loosening laws that regulate child labor, Lewis W. Hine’s early 20th century photographs, which helped child labor laws get passed, are worth our attention once again.
In Don Bachardy’s vivid portraits at the Huntington, show business isn’t what you think
A revelatory show at the Huntington puts Don Bachardy’s prolific portrait drawings into a welcome new light.
Bruce Nauman’s steel-plate sculpture captured the upheaval of 1968. It’s time for another look
Bruce Nauman’s celebrated Conceptual art ripened during the decade he worked in Pasadena. A fine gallery show assembles two dozen examples with political and social dimensions that speak to present day.
Our critics’ 29 most anticipated L.A. arts, theater, classical music, pop and comedy shows
Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar/SZA, Ali Wong, Ricky Gervais, Buddhist art, a queer photography retrospective, the Ojai and Seoul (in L.A.!) music festivals, “Life of Pi” and “Hamlet” highlight our staff’s spring preview picks.
Joe Goode beautifully blurred the lines of the art world
Painter Joe Goode was instrumental in establishing the 1960s L.A. art scene — and challenged conventions along the way.
A modern Stonehenge rises in Desert Hot Springs: Here are the standouts in Desert X 2025
The high-profile exhibition of large-scale art installations across the Coachella Valley has launched with fewer works this year. Here are the three standouts.
Fire could have destroyed the Getty’s irreplaceable art. Should the museum move?
In the wake of the Palisades fire, should Malibu’s Getty Villa and the Getty Center in nearby Brentwood evacuate — for good?
Why this Puritan sculpture may revolutionize your thinking about the rise of Christian nationalism
Christian nationalism was a flop when the Puritans tried it. See this famous Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture for information.
It’s raining men at the Getty’s survey of Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte
Unlike Manet, Degas, Renoir and Cassatt, Gustave Caillebotte mostly painted men rather than women — men at work, men in repose, even naked men getting out of the bath.