October 2026
October at a glance: 1 exhibition opening, 15 closing, and 54 more on view across the city.
Permanent guide to October 2026 →

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.

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.

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.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
More than 70 ensembles trace a century of Chinese women's dress, from late Qing embroidered robes to 1930s qipao and the 1960s cheongsam. BCAM, Level 2.

Getty Center · Free
How Earl Stendahl's Los Angeles gallery marketed pre-Hispanic Mexican antiquities to museums, collectors and Hollywood from the 1940s onward, reshaping the trade in ancient artifacts.

Getty Center · Free
Traces an 1892 Otto Greiner drawing marked lost by a Dresden museum after WWII, its rediscovery at the Getty Research Institute, and its impending return to Dresden.

Getty Center · Free
Charcoal drawings, lithographs and pastels from Getty's collection trace Odilon Redon's dreamlike, symbolist imagery drawn from mythology, religion, literature and science.

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

Hammer Museum · Free
Marking the Grunwald Center's 70th anniversary with over 70 prints, drawings and photographs spanning the Renaissance to the present.

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.

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.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles · Free
Youth fellows from Downtown and East LA collaborate with Korean diasporic artists Saewon Oh and C. Ryu on a participatory stone-tower installation.

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.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
How artists, scientists, writers, and dreamers across centuries have traced their ideas onto the lunar surface.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
How damaged objects, visible mistakes, and imperfections make library materials more compelling, beautiful, and revealing.

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.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Picasso's lovers, friends, rivals and himself, portrayed in every idiom from fractured Cubism to his expressive late style. BCAM, Level 3.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Dancing skeletons and personifications of Death in prints from the Renaissance to German Expressionists reckoning with war and revolution. BCAM, Level 3.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Seasonal open-air pavilion where visitors walk among hundreds of orb-weaving spiders, plus tarantula and wolf spider habitats.

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

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Five years of major purchases and gifts, from Julie Mehretu and Henry Taylor to Suzanne Jackson and Charles Gaines, grouped by theme across the galleries.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Black-and-white portraits by Venezuelan artist Alexander Apóstol cast the archetypal roles of Latin American populist and authoritarian political theatre.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Five decades of the L.A. artist's provocative photography and video, blurring fact and fiction to probe romance, rivalry and the mystery of daily life. BCAM, Level 2.

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.

Getty Center · Free
Works by 13 photographers including the Álvarez Bravos, Héctor García and Graciela Iturbide, drawn from a 25-year gift to the Getty tracing a century of Mexican photographic creativity.

Getty Center · Free
Five photographers—Laura Aguilar, Reynaldo Rivera, George Rodriguez, Patssi Valdez and Ricardo Valverde—whose work expanded depictions of Chicano/a communities in Los Angeles in the late 20th century.

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

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, diverse perspectives on nature, nation, and the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County · Free
A reproduction of a hand-edited draft of the Declaration of Independence, paired with artifacts from 250 years of American civil rights history.

Hammer Museum · Free
An installation using electroforming to grow copper over plants and cables, exploring electricity as a form of interconnectedness.

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

Wende Museum · Free
Photographs from Argentine newspapers La Razón and Clarín trace four decades of political life, from Perón through coups and rallies to the return of democracy.

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.

Hammer Museum · Free
The Brazilian artist's U.S. institutional debut, centered on her film documenting rural life, reggae and African diasporic memory in Maranhão.

Norton Simon Museum
Bronze, silver and ivory art from Kandy, Sri Lanka's last royal capital before British colonial rule, blending Buddhist devotion and royal patronage.

GRAMMY Museum L.A. LIVE
Handmade sets, props, and original artwork from the "the cure" music video, including her nurse costume and hospital props.

Marciano Art Foundation · Free
Two-part show on Leguillon's collecting practice: 250-plus ads of artists as brand ambassadors, plus his traveling Museum of Mistakes.

Marciano Art Foundation · Free
The US premiere of Dean's 2011 vertical 35mm installation, an 11-minute silent celebration of analog photochemical film.

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.

Hammer Museum · Free
A retrospective of about 150 works by the Lebanese artist, spanning 1970-2011, exploring humor, language, gender and the body.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles · Free
Six-decade retrospective of ~50 rarely seen works by LA artist Carl Cheng, exploring environmental change and technology at the intersection of ecology and identity.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles · Free
Yokoyama's first institutional solo show: ceramic sculpture, experimental animation and holography exploring metamorphosis and underworld mythologies.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles · Free
Commissioned mural on ICA LA's 7th Street facade: silhouetted bodies in nature drawn from queer archives, topographic maps and community photography.

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.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
First major museum retrospective on Los Angeles ceramic artist Doyle Lane (1923-2002).

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Photographs by Laura Aguilar made 1984-1992 documenting Dia de los Muertos celebrations in Los Angeles, drawn from her estate.

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

Getty Center · Free
Traces the four hand-crafted stages of a medieval book—preparing parchment, writing, painting and binding—through manuscripts from the Museum's collection.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
A two-story immersive installation exploring six aesthetic themes of cinematic light and color -- sunrise/sunset, moon, neon, candlelight, fireworks, and campfire -- via synchronized projections and an original score.

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.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Immersive exhibition on horror cinemas cultural impact, with props and costumes from Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and more, across six themed chambers.

Petersen Automotive Museum
A chronological timeline of record-setting automobiles from the postwar era to today, tracing how aerodynamics and powertrain design chased raw speed.

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.

7 Nov · Wende Museum · Free

12 Nov · Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

13 Nov · Norton Simon Museum

15 Nov · Craft Contemporary

15 Nov · Craft Contemporary

15 Nov · Craft Contemporary

15 Nov · The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)

15 Nov · The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)

21 Nov · The Broad · Free

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Japanese American artists, photographers and designers whose lives were upended by wartime incarceration, and the postwar work that followed.
Norton Simon Museum
Traces the rivalry between San Francisco's purist and Los Angeles's experimental schools of postwar California photography.

Craft Contemporary
The first major LA presentation of Guatemalan art, pairing historical Maya textiles from 22 communities with seven contemporary artists.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.