The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880–1920: Design for the Modern World

December 19, 2004–April 3, 2005

The first of its kind to assess the truly international influence of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, Europe, and the United States, this groundbreaking exhibition presents two hundred and sixty objects—furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and works on paper.

Online Exhibition

Press Release

Passion for Drawing: Poussin to Cézanne, Works from the Prat Collection

November 7, 2004–January 17, 2005

From the more than two hundred French drawings in one of the finest private collections in the world (that of Louis-Antoine Prat) Pierre Rosenberg, former director of the Louvre, has selected one hundred of the best sheets for an exhibition spanning the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Renoir to Matisse: The Eye of Duncan Phillips

October 17, 2004–January 9, 2005

Fifty-three European masterpieces from the world-renowned Phillips Collection are on view in Los Angeles for the first time in this specially ticketed exhibition.

Trajectories: The Photographic Work of Robbert Flick

September 12, 2004–January 9, 2005

This exhibition traces Flick’s career, exploring his visual development while charting the conceptual and philosophical impact of contemporary culture on landscape, cultural geography, and technology.

Childe Hassam and the Great War

August 7, 2004–January 2, 2005

By the time World War I began, Childe Hassam was one of the foremost artists in the United States. His picturesque city images, sparkling park and garden scenes, and sun-filled interiors established him as a leading American impressionist. During the Great War, he completed a series of flag paintings that became his most significant late works, as demonstrated in LACMA's Masterpiece in Focus Gallery. Other World War I period and New York-related artworks (most notably a fundraiser quilt made in Los Angeles with signatures of early Hollywood celebrities such as Mary Pickford) set the historical context for Hassam's painting, Avenue of the Allies: Brazil, Belgium.

Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form 1940s to 1970s

June 13–October 3, 2004

Beyond Geometry examines the role of radically simplified form and systematic strategies in the evolution of vanguard art across the West in the decades following World War II. Covering Central and Western Europe and North and South America, Beyond Geometry is the first exhibition to treat these issues in a broad international context.

Press Release

Contemporary Projects 8: Lee Mingwei’s “Through Masters’ Eyes”

May 15–August 1, 2004

For the past ten years, conceptual artist Lee Mingwei has been creating art installations that depend on the exchange of intimate experiences between artist and viewer. For Lee's first exhibition on the West Coast, Contemporary Projects 8: Lee Mingwei's "Through Masters' Eyes," the artist presents a collaboration between himself, the seventeenth-century Chinese master Shitao, a selected group of artists from around the world, and the museum audience.

Inventing Race: Casta Painting and Eighteenth-Century Mexico

April 4–August 8, 2004

Inventing Race: Casta Painting and Eighteenth-Century Mexico is a major international exhibition of approximately one hundred of the finest examples of casta painting. These unique works portray the complex process of mestizaje or race mixing among the three major groups that inhabited Mexico during the colonial period: Indian, Spanish, and African. The exhibition will show why race became a subject of a pictorial genre that lasted an entire century, and why the paintings, with their exquisite assortment of objects and detailed renditions, remain as intriguing today as they were in the eighteenth century.

Press Release

Diane Arbus Revelations

February 29–May 31, 2004

Through two hundred key photographs, many never before seen, and archival materials, such as contact sheets and Arbus's own writings, Revelations displays the full range and depth of the photographer's achievements.

Kamisaka Sekka: Rimpa Master—Pioneer of Modern Design

First rotation:
February 5–March 7, 2004

Second rotation:
March 13–April 25, 2004

Paintings, prints, lacquers, ceramics, and textiles compose the first large-scale retrospective of the artist responsible for integrating Western Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles into that of the ancient Rimpa School.

Jasper Johns: Numbers

February 1–April 18, 2004

Jasper Johns’s choice of symbols as a primary subject for his work is one of the most famous chapters in postwar art history. Jasper Johns: Numbers is the first in-depth exhibition concentrating on a single subject by one of America’s foremost artists, and includes more than thirty works on loan from public and private collections in the United States and Europe.

The Ardabil Carpet: A Sixteenth-Century Masterpiece Conserved

January 22–May 11, 2004

Considered one of the most renowned carpets in the world, and one of LACMA's most famous objects, this exquisite sixteenth-century textile makes its first U.S. public appearance following its landmark conservation.