May 2026
May 2026 at a glance: 9 exhibitions opened, 0 closed, and 29 more were on view across the city.

Skirball Cultural Center
Original comic art and rare artifacts trace how comic books shaped 20th-century American identity, from WWII through hip-hop and civil rights movements.

The Broad
Ono's first solo museum show in Southern California, with Tate Modern: seven decades of instruction pieces you complete yourself, from Wish Trees to Cut Piece.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Marking the 100th anniversary of the Daimler-Benz merger with a broad range of Mercedes-Benz models spanning the marque's engineering history.

Chinese American Museum
The museum's inaugural show in its newly expanded gallery: seven decades of Diana Shuiu Wong's abstract works blending traditional Chinese and contemporary Western aesthetics.

Autry Museum of the American West
Historical and contemporary objects, media and art examine how diverse Angelenos have claimed and contested life, liberty and happiness across two centuries of LA history.

Craft Contemporary
Courtyard installation by Liz Galvez adapting desert passive-cooling strategies into a shared, sustainable structure for LA summers.

Craft Contemporary
Guatemalan-born artist Jackie Amezquita's on-site residency forming pebble sculptures from soil, masa, cacao and copal with visitor collaborators.

Craft Contemporary
Clay Biennial show on earth-based practice by Latinx, Indigenous and Black artists, exploring land, ancestral knowledge and colonial extraction.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Examines how Marilyn Monroe shaped her own public image within the classical studio system, with rare artifacts and screen-worn costumes from Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
More than 150 works from Asia, Europe and the Americas explore block printing, the world's oldest way of making multiple images. Resnick Pavilion; closes 13 Sept.

GRAMMY Museum L.A. LIVE
Memorabilia from Long Beach reggae-punk trio Sublime, including handwritten lyrics, stage instruments, and rare live photography.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Postwar art from MOCA's collection of nearly 8,000 works, with Rothko, Mondrian, Rauschenberg, Luchita Hurtado, On Kawara, Betye Saar and Anne Truitt.

Fowler Museum at UCLA · Free
Traces African art objects from their origins through colonial acquisition and European markets into the Fowler's collection, layering the stories within each piece.

Autry Museum of the American West
Cochiti Pueblo artist Virgil Ortiz reimagines the 1680 Pueblo Revolt as speculative fiction, with futuristic characters and installations fusing Indigenous resistance history with sci-fi aesthetics.

Wende Museum · Free
Photographer Anton Roland Laub documents seven Bucharest churches moved and hidden behind housing blocks during Ceaușescu's 1980s demolition campaign.

Wende Museum · Free
An East German guardhouse reimagined as an immersive installation where visitors' breath powers an air-raid siren and an aluminum zoetrope of birds.

Wende Museum · Free
A scaled recreation of a modernist Cuban house built 1957-1963, exploring memory, displacement, and the gap between reality and dream during the Cold War.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Over 112 years of Aston Martin excellence, from racing heritage to modern hypercars, including the DB5 of James Bond fame.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Yearlong exhibition of site-specific installations by British artist Edmund de Waal across the Huntington Art Gallery, Chinese Garden, and Japanese Garden.

Getty Villa · Free
Striking stone portraits of court officials and priests from Egypt's 26th Dynasty (664-526 BCE), on long-term loan from the British Museum.

Getty Center · Free
A calibrated array of prisms casts shifting bands of spectral light across the Museum rotunda, tracking the sun's changing arc through the seasons; commissioned for PST ART.

Getty Villa · Free
Getty's illustrated Book of the Dead manuscripts, the spells and images that guided ancient Egyptians through the afterlife, back on view on the Villa's second floor.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Twelve benches by the L.A. sign painter line the Kendall Concourse, drawing on rotulismo mexicano, the tradition of Mexican hand-painted signage.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Marking 250 years of the United States with American-made vehicles spanning early 1900s classics to modern hypercars.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
LACMA's own Impressionist holdings set among the prints, photography, decorative arts and fashion of late-19th-century France. Resnick Pavilion.

Hammer Museum · Free
Chicago artist Mike Cloud's large-scale collaged portraits and mixed-media assemblages exploring consumer culture and childhood.

Fowler Museum at UCLA · Free
Carved guardians, ritual bowls, textiles and video reveal how the Ifugao people's rice terraces entwine sustenance and spirituality.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Nearly 200 rare early American motorcycles from Professor Richard Bunch's collection, spanning the pioneer era through the Great Depression.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Celebrates Studio Ghiblis 2008 film Ponyo through over 100 rare hand-drawn animation artworks, including original art by Hayao Miyazaki, many shown in North America for the first time.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Screen-used vehicles and production prototypes marking 25 years of the Fast & Furious franchise's most iconic builds.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County · Free
Rare, spectacular mineral and crystal specimens, some displayed publicly for the first time.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Life-size orca replicas and Indigenous Pacific Northwest Coast art explore the bond between orcas, people, and the ocean.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Sandy Rodriguez's largest installation to date, including a 20-foot map of the United States painted on hand-processed amate-fiber paper.

Autry Museum of the American West
Works from the Autry's Native American collections explore Knowing, Creating and Transference, curated in part by three contemporary Plains Indian artists reflecting on their traditions.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Betye Saar's Huntington-commissioned site-specific installation: a 17-foot vintage wooden canoe with found objects including birdcages and antlers.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Explores the design dialogue between American automakers and Italian coachbuilders, pairing American mechanical strength with European styling.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Traces Waymo's evolution from Google's self-driving car project to a leading autonomous vehicle company, showing the tech turning sci-fi into reality.

California Science Center · Free
17,000-sq-ft exhibition with 25+ interactive activities exploring the science of sports and movement, featuring LA-based mentor athletes; on view through the 2028 Olympics.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.