Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun

November 10, 2005–February 20, 2006

Artist Lee Mullican (1919–98) created paintings, drawings, and sculptures of great beauty for more than fifty years. His works carry with them an almost shamanistic power. His abstractions simultaneously engage the eye, the mind, and the heart. They combine visual beauty, a fine application of paint, and a broad range of influences and references, including Native American art and culture, modern art, Byzantine icons, Paleolithic figures, Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and more.

Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun is the first major retrospective for the artist—who was central to the development of art in the Los Angeles area—and the first major exhibition of his paintings in more than twenty years. The exhibition presents approximately seventy-five paintings, sculpture, and drawings created during the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

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Contemporary Projects 9: Gajin Fujita and Pablo Vargas-Lugo

October 27, 2005–February 12, 2006

This project room highlights the work of two young artists who are gaining increasing international recognition. Gajin Fujita (Los Angeles) and Pablo Vargas-Lugo (Mexico) address notions of cultural and stylistic appropriation in the twenty-first century. By borrowing forms from Asian art (i.e., Japanese, Tibetan, Chinese, and Korean), as well as contemporary Latino graffiti, the artists, in radically different ways, exemplify how artistic traditions are referenced back and projected forward across what are normally thought of as both stylistic and national borders. Artistic process and meticulous craftsmanship underlie the works of these fascinating artists. The exhibition comprises approximately thirty works exhibited for the first time at LACMA.

Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865–1885

October 20, 2005–January 16, 2006

Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865-1885, organized by Joachim Pissarro—curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (and a great grandson of Camille Pissarro)—focuses on the years 1865 to 1885, when Cézanne and Pissarro most influenced each other, as they occasionally worked side by side. LACMA is the only West Coast venue for the exhibition, which opened in New York on June 26, 2005, and will travel from Los Angeles to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship

September 10, 2005–January 2, 2006

Organized by LACMA Curator of Pre-Columbian Art Virginia Fields with Dorie Reents-Budet of the National Museum of Natural History, the exhibition features approximately 150 objects, including 70 that have never before been seen in the United States. The exhibition presents new discoveries in Maya archaeology, art history, and hieroglyphic writing that describe the appearance of kingship among the ancient Maya and its cultural and philosophical foundations.

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Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape

June 26–September 18, 2005

Ranked with Rembrandt and Vermeer as one of the great masters of 17th-century Dutch painting, Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–1682) painted some of the most dramatic and seductive landscapes in the history of art. This is the first American exhibition dedicated to Ruisdael since 1981 and the first ever to be seen on the West Coast. Organized by Seymour Slive, professor emeritus of Harvard University and the world’s leading authority on Ruisdael, the exhibition features forty-eight of the artist’s finest paintings. The selection includes many paintings from private collections that are being lent for the first time, such as the imposing Waterfall in a Mountainous Landscape with a Ruined Castle (private collection, United Kingdom). Other paintings from the collections of The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, including the famous Jewish Cemetery (Dresden), have rarely, if ever, been seen in the United States.

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Tim Hawkinson

June 26–August 28, 2005

LACMA presents the only West Coast showing of Tim Hawkinson, on view from June 26 through August 28, 2005. Co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and LACMA, this is the first major museum survey of Los Angeles-based artist Tim Hawkinson, considered by many to be a phenomenon within and beyond the art world. The show offers a fascinating and often larger-than-life cross-section of Hawkinson’s body of work, including meticulously detailed drawings, minute constructions, inflated latex casts, and fantastical mechanical contraptions. The exhibition features more than 65 works spanning two decades.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

June 16–November 15, 2005

Marking the first time the treasures of Tutankhamun (King Tut) have visited Los Angeles in 27 years, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, an extensive exhibition that includes more than one-hundred-and-thirty treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, other Valley of the Kings tombs, and additional ancient sites.

The exhibition includes fifty major objects excavated from Tutankhamun’s tomb, including his royal diadem—the gold crown, discovered encircling the head of the king’s mummified body, that he likely wore while living—and one of the gold and precious stone inlaid canopic coffinettes that contained his mummified internal organs.

More than 70 objects from other royal graves of the 18th Dynasty (1555–1305 BC) are showcased, including those of pharaohs Amenhotep ll and Thutmose lV and the rich, intact tomb of Yuya and Tuyu, parents-in-law of Amenhotep lll and great-grandparents of Tutankhamun. Yuya and Tuyu’s tomb was the most celebrated historical find in the Valley of the Kings until Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s undisturbed burial chamber in 1922. All of the treasures in the exhibit are between 3,300 and 3,500 years old.

André Kertész

June 12–September 5, 2005

This is a retrospective exhibition of the work of one of the twentieth century's greatest photographers. As evidenced by some of his earliest surviving photographs, André Kertész appears to have recognized almost immediately that he could use the camera to explore, preserve, and question his relationship to the world. He had little interest in grand subjects or newsworthy events, but instead photographed his friends and family on their outings to the countryside, as well as in his neighborhood in Budapest. In all his early works he created a curious sense of distance, as if he was, at one and the same time, both a participant in the activities he documented and an outside observer.

Japan Goes to the World's Fairs: Japanese Art at the Great Expositions

May 26–October 10, 2005

The one-hundred-and-forty-five works in this exhibition illustrate the importance of the expositions in cultural and artistic exchange between Japan and the West and resulting changes in the Japanese aesthetic.

On Tour with Renzo Piano & Building Workshop: Selected Projects

Mar 13–October 2, 2005

Featuring several seminal works as well as upcoming projects, On Tour with Renzo Piano & Building Workshop: Selected Projects, an intimate view of the work of one of the most respected and visionary architects of our time, chronicles Piano’s involvement in each stage of a building’s development—from concept and masterplan to construction and detailing.

Images of Fashion from the Court of Louis XIV

March 12–June 26, 2005

The focal point of Images of Fashion is the recent acquisition of an exceedingly rare folio of one-hundred-and-ninety colored engravings dating from 1678–1693. These images—among the first fashion plates in existence—were authorized by Louis XIV and his finance minister, Colbert, to promote French luxury goods and culture. They defined our modern concept of fashion.

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German and Austrian Posters—War, Revolution, Protest: Recent Gifts to the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies

March 10–June 12, 2005

Whether motivating the public to buy products or to take political action, posters convince at a glance. Around 1900, in Germany and Austria, advertising met the graceful and decorative style of art nouveau, known in Germany as Jugendstil. With World War I and the political upheaval and social turmoil that followed, posters became political. During the 1920s they served theaters, cabarets, and the new film industry, represented by a bold poster advertising Fritz Lang’s highly acclaimed M (1931). This exhibition presents a selection of over seventy highlights from more than 200 posters recently donated to the Rifkind Center by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation and Robert Gore Rifkind.

Rauschenberg: Posters

March 10–June 12, 2005

Robert Rauschenberg has been one of the most prolific poster artists of the twentieth century. This exhibition focuses on the artist’s nearly fifty years of consistent creation of mass-editioned, public-use fine art posters.