Featured Events in Los Angeles in December, 2024 (August Updated)

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Nov. 11, 2023–Nov. 30, 2027 | Renowned American artist Betye Saar’s large-scale work “Drifting Toward Twilight”—commissioned by The Huntington—is a site-specific installation that features a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe and found objects, including birdcages, antlers, and natural materials harvested by Saar from The Huntington’s grounds.

Egypt’s 26th Dynasty (664–526 BCE) was a period of revival and renewal. It marks the last great phase of native pharaonic rule in ancient Egypt and is notable for its exceptional artworks, particularly stone sculpture. The achievements of Egyptian artists of this period are vividly expressed in the sculpted portraits of officials associated with the court and priesthood, which were created to be displayed in tombs and temples. The works in this exhibition are on special loan from the British Museum, London.

This site-specific work explores the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem, as well as the destruction of the forest and its potential for regeneration. The sculpture celebrates the beauty of wood in its natural state and emphasizes its potential as a reusable and renewable resource.

explores the rise of Futurism in contemporary Indigenous art as a means of enduring colonial trauma, creating alternative futures, and advocating for Indigenous technologies in a more inclusive present and sustainable future. Over fifty artworks are on display, some interspersed throughout the museum, creating unexpected encounters and dialogues between contemporary Indigenous creations and historic Autry works. Artists such as Andy Everson, Ryan Singer, and Neil Ambrose Smith wittily upend pop-culture icons by Indigenizing sci-fi characters and storylines; Wendy Red Star places Indigenous people in surreal spacescapes wearing fantastical regalia; Virgil Ortiz brings his own space odyssey, to life in a new, site-specific installation. By intermingling science fiction, self-determination, and Indigenous technologies across a diverse array of Native cultures, envisions sovereign futures while countering historical myths and the ongoing impact of colonization, including environmental degradation and toxic stereotypes.

The Natural History Museum’s historic diorama halls are the largest exhibitions at the museum, showcasing over 75 incredibly detailed habitats ranging from arctic tundra to tropical rainforest. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the dioramas, NHM is restoring and reopening a diorama hall that has been closed for decades. There, visitors will experience immersive new installations — by artists RFX1 (Jason Chang), Joel Fernando and Yesenia Prieto (working as a three-artist team), as well as Saul Becker and Lauren Schoth — that call attention to dioramas as a unique combination of art and science and explore biodiversity, ecology, conservation, colonialism, and changing museum display techniques. NHM maintains an active diorama program where staff continue to update and build dioramas, keeping this art form alive. Visitors can examine these illusions of wilderness through a series of displays, engaging programs, and a new book that sheds light on the previously untold history of NHM’s dioramas.

Mesoamerican artists held a cosmic responsibility: as they adorned the surfaces of buildings, clay vessels, textiles, bark-paper pages, and sculptures with color, they (quite literally) made the world. The power of color emerged from the materiality of its pigments, the skilled hands that crafted it, and the communities whose knowledge imbued it with meaning. Color mapped the very order of the cosmos, of time and space. By engineering and deploying color, artists wielded the power of cosmic creation in their hands. We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art explores the science, art, and cosmology of color in Mesoamerica. Histories of colonialism and industrialization in the “color-averse” West have minimized the deep significance of color in the Indigenous Americas. This exhibition follows two interconnected lines of inquiry—technical and material analyses, and Indigenous conceptions of art and image—to reach the full richness of color at the core of Mesoamerican worldviews.

This site-specific work explores the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem, as well as the destruction of the forest and its potential for regeneration. The sculpture celebrates the beauty of wood in its natural state and emphasizes its potential as a reusable and renewable resource. California-based Japanese American artist Mineo Mizuno’s site-specific sculpture, titled Homage to Nature, is crafted from fallen timber gathered in the forests of the Sierra Nevada, where the artist lives and works. Views of the San Gabriel Mountains in the background will frame the work. The sculpture explores the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem, as well as the destruction of the forest and its potential for regeneration. Homage to Nature celebrates the beauty of wood in its natural state and emphasizes its potential as a reusable and renewable resource. Using yakisugi (shou sugi), a traditional Japanese method of wood preservation known in the West as burnt timber cladding, the charred surfaces of the reclaimed timber in the sculpture speak not only to fire’s destructive power but also to its ability to reinvigorate the land. As a companion and response to the sculpture, a “fire landscape” will be planted near the sculpture to mimic new growth that occurs naturally after a fire. This new sculpture marks the culmination of a series of installations by the artist designed to reflect on The Huntington’s collections and link the gardens and art galleries. Homage to Nature will be unveiled on May 25, 2024, and will remain on view for five years.

Spectrum 14 is a calibrated array of prisms that cast a dazzling display of luminous color across the Museum’s rotunda. Bands of spectral light traverse the space in relation to the sun, which follow a slightly different arc through the sky every day. Over time, Ross’s work changes in response to Earth’s rotational orbit, connecting us to the premodern experience of astronomical observation and calculation that defined cycles of days, seasons, and rituals. This project was commissioned for PST ART as part of the exhibition Lumen: The Art and Science of Light. This is the second “Rotunda Commission,” a series of art installations inspired by the Getty Museum’s collection, architecture, and site.

In the early decades of the 20th century, automobile ownership saw tremendous growth in the United States—with one motor vehicle per every five Americans by 1929—and a new motoring landscape evolved to accommodate the increase in car travel. For over a century, civil engineers, automotive designers, architects, and graphic artists have worked, often without credit, to create highway systems and the vehicles that traverse them, along with standardized signage and roadside amenities that have become so commonplace that they are largely taken for granted. Modern and contemporary artists, however, have long noticed and been inspired by the world in which the automobile operates and have responded to it in their work. Eyes on the Road brings the often-overlooked “art” of the highway together with artistic representations of this visual culture, highlighting the role of the car in shaping the country’s built environment and drawing new attention to the world around us.

For several decades, artist Cai Guo-Qiang has used gunpowder and pyrotechnics to create drawings, paintings, and explosion events. The exhibitionCai Guo-Qiang:A Material Odysseywill fill the first floor galleries at the USC Pacific Asia Museum. Based on years of research by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Research Institute,A Material Odysseywill explore the nature and properties of gunpowder and chronicle its use by the artist. This explosive material, invented in China over 1,100 years ago, has come to define Cai’s work. Its unpredictable nature dictates his artistic process and determines the outcome. Through gunpowder, the artist invites uncontrollable forces to participate in the creation of his work. With an abundance of artworks and scientific displays, the exhibition will narrate the lifelong love story of Cai Guo-Qiang with gunpowder. Programs accompanyingA Material Odysseywill include videos illustrating the making of fireworks, the process of creating gunpowder paintings, interactive displays, and a variety of film screenings and conversations.

Experience the magic of Andrea Bocelli in concert at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on December 8, 2024. The renowned Italian tenor will mesmerize the audience with his powerful voice and emotional performances. Located at 3900 W Manchester Blvd., Inglewood, CA, 90305, the venue provides the perfect setting for an unforgettable night of music. Don't miss this opportunity to witness one of the greatest singers of our time live on stage. Secure your tickets now for a truly unforgettable evening with Andrea Bocelli.

Experience the electrifying lineup of Greet Death, Prize Horse, and Bad Light at Knucklehead Hollywood in Los Angeles. This not-to-be-missed event will take place from December 12th to December 13th, 2024. Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing performances of these talented bands at 6202 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038. Tickets are priced at $18.91. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to witness a night of unforgettable music and entertainment.

Santa Runs Griffith Park is an annual festive event held in Los Angeles, at the iconic Griffith Park. Participants of all ages are invited to join in the holiday spirit and dash through the scenic park while dressed as jolly old St. Nick. The event, scheduled for December 15, 2024, offers a range of ticket prices starting from $20, making it an affordable and fun-filled activity for families and friends looking to celebrate the season together. With the address set at 4800 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90027, attendees can easily locate the venue and enjoy a day of merry running in the heart of the city. Santa Runs Griffith Park promises a memorable experience for all who take part, spreading joy and cheer throughout the community.

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A Traveler’s Guide to Mettlach: Villeroy and Boch showcases everyday life in the 1800s Mettlach, Germany. Scenes of everyday life in Mettlach have been documented and celebrated by Villeroy and Boch, a ceramic production company founded in 1836 when Jean François Boch and Nicolas Villeroy merged their ceramic businesses into what is now known as Villeroy and Boch. The workers of the Mettlach factory came from diverse backgrounds, including art studios, archives, and museums. The varied backgrounds of the factory workers contributed to the artistic achievements of the Villeroy and Boch company. The Mettlach collection reflects German cultural experiences, societal interpretations, and mythology. This exhibition shows scenes of love and relationships as well as larger themes of fantasy, offering an all-encompassing snapshot of the myriad facets of human life within Mettlach. A Traveler’s Guide to Mettlach, on view in the Robert and Colette Wilson Gallery through June 2025, presents concepts of life, laughter, relationships, and the day-to-day existence of the German people.

Pinto Gallery is an LA-based contemporary art gallery, showcasing the most impressive and innovative Japanese artists.

This February ‘DRIVE’ will open with The Parking Space, featuring a Chevrolet Caprice and Impala, a Ferrari 328 GTS and a Ligier microcar, parked in the gallery alongside a video in which Rhoades fervidly discourses on his concept of the Car Projects. While driving around Los Angeles in 1998, Rhoades explains the relationship of cars to his art (parking is equated with sitting in a sculpture) and to daily practice (driving between the house, the studio and stores is time and space for the mind to race and wander). He expounds on cars as icons of art history (Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia speeded modern art forward with their mechanized abstractions), identifiers of class (you are what you drive) and environments of control. The radio is tuned to Power 106 FM and as the world streams by to the propulsive hip-hop beat, the romance of cars seems irresistible. In April, the installation will be reconfigured to accommodate a lounge and become The Pit. An influx of archival materials will be key to unpacking the various episodes of Rhoades’ Car Projects, starting with the Caprice and the 1996 exhibition ‘Traffic.’ Not only did the artist cut a deal with CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France the organizers of the show, to go in on buying him the car as a transactional work of art, he later leveraged its symbolic value by trading the Caprice for a Ferrari. This summer the exhibition’s focus will swerve onto The Racetrack. A set of half-scale NASCAR-style cars, custom jackets and colorfully painted tire barriers are among what remains of ‘The Snowball.’ Staged in California as a daylong racing event at Willow Springs speedway, ‘The Snowball’ was ultimately destined for the 2000 Venice Biennale and Rhoades’ collaborative work for the Danish Pavilion. In September, The Garage will cover the final stretch of ‘DRIVE’ with a selection of framed works on paper and a major sculptural installation. Throughout the year, the line-up for ‘DRIVE’ will feature a range of public programs. A film series centered on cars and the city of Los Angeles will be curated by film historian and critic Elvis Mitchell. A theatrical staging of the playwright Charles Mee’s ‘Under Construction,’ which was inspired by Rhoades’ art in its collage depiction of America today, will be presented as part of Hauser & Wirth’s Performance Project. Organized as an investigation in real time, ‘DRIVE’ invites people to approach the exhibition like a garage of art and ideas, in which cars are coming and going and tinkering is a productive state of mind. As an artist, Rhoades was keenly attuned to sources of cultural power and weakness. When he put the internal combustion engine on art’s pedestal, was he presciently placing the car where it belongs for a greener tomorrow? The car as a subject in Rhoades’ art continues to drive and trouble the imagination today.

Nancy Baker Cahill’s multifaceted augmented reality (AR) public art project, Mushroom Cloud, is a project focused on accountability; one that values sharing and conserving resources, and strengthening networked systems through participation, communication, and advocacy. The work speaks to rising waters, to viewers raising their gaze to witness the sky-covering mycelial network, and to collectively rising to the opportunity to combat the climate crisis through distributed support, mutual accountability, and environmental stewardship. Mushroom Cloud acknowledges the imminence of this cataclysmic crisis while offering hope that through cooperative and constructive action, a vibrant and vital future is still possible.

KYDOIMOS: The Din of Battle is comprised of more than 50,000 aerial photographs of Dugway Proving Ground, a classified military installation set in a remote portion of Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert. The flickering images in KYDOIMOS depict test grids inscribed into the desert floor, where chemical and biological weapons and their facsimiles are detonated, turning this isolated landscape into a measuring device against which dispersal rates, toxicity levels, and threats to the human body are measured. Gaining access to the site required patience, persistence, and a government handler who accompanied the artist at all times. Maisel was further challenged by posted signs declaring that “Photography, or making notes, drawings, maps, or graphic representations of this area, or its activities, is prohibited unless specifically authorized by the Commander.” These limitations notwithstanding, Maisel was able to capture an abundance of images that collectively convey the scope and scale of the secretive activities at Dugway Proving Ground, while also acknowledging the ways in which they are abstracted and concealed.

Climate Changeis a visceral, charged work of 21st-century expanded cinema. In this vision, which could be called dystopian but in truth is terrifyingly near, a catastrophic sea-level rise has inundated the world’s coasts, unleashing a flood of hundreds of millions traumatized refugees. What happens in a world where the systems built to sustain and extend capitalist enterprise and global hegemony melt down their own foundations? Kline opens the door to such a future, inviting us to place ourselves within it and consider the rear view. Josh Kline: Climate Changeis organized by Rebecca Lowery, Associate Curator, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Lead support is provided by the MOCA Environmental Council, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, and Nora McNeely Hurley and Manitou Fund.

The spectacular French microscope from Getty’s collection is a unique testament to scientific advances and Rococo design in the Age of Enlightenment. It allowed science enthusiasts to immerse themselves in the recently discovered world of the microscopically small. New study and conservation present the cultural and historical context of this magnificent object and reveal its technical complexity in a display which includes its lavish tooled-leather case and specimen slides of natural curiosities.

In September 2024, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Copenhagen; lives and works in Berlin) presents a new site-specific installation made for The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. In line with Eliasson’s career-long exploration of light and color, geometry, and environmental awareness, the installation playfully engages with material and immaterial qualities of the museum’s architecture. A series of large-scale optical devices designed specifically for MOCA Geffen will respond to the building itself, as well as to the everchanging atmosphere of Los Angeles. Visitors will encounter a dazzling range of sensory experiences that harness the laws of geometric optics to address feelings and concepts of embodiment, perception, and participation.

Since 2014, Ronan Donovan, a National Geographic Explorer and photographer, has examined the relationship between wild wolves and humans in order to better understand the animals, our shared history, and what drives the persistent human-wolf conflict. This moving exhibition features Ronan Donovan’s striking images and videos of wild wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Ellesmere Island in the high Canadian Arctic. “Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan”, created by National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, highlights the contrast between wolves that live in perceived competition with humans, in the Yellowstone area, and wolves that live without human intervention, in the Canadian Arctic. As wolves in North America are increasingly under threat due to recent extreme wolf-control laws, and humans continue to impinge on the land and food sources that these animals need to survive, Donovan’s compelling photographs inspire a better understanding of these often misunderstood animals. This exhibition is presented in partnership with the National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, and supported through the patronship of Jacques Marie Mage.

David Zwirner is pleased to present The Last Dyes, an exhibition of new dye-transfer prints by William Eggleston opening at the gallery’s 606 N Western Avenue location in Los Angeles. The works on view are from Eggleston’s celebrated Outlands and Chromes series, as well as several images that were first shown in the artist’s groundbreaking exhibition of color photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1976, and the concurrent publication William Eggleston’s Guide. The presentation is the last major group of photographs ever to be produced using the dye-transfer printing method, making it a unique opportunity to see a number of works by Eggleston in the format in which he originally presented them. Eggleston, in consultation with his sons William and Winston, chose this group of images for his final dyes as a representative selection of the immense photographic project he undertook between 1969 and 1974 during his travels through the American South and West. The Last Dyes is presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a landmark regional event exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty.

Marian Goodman Gallery presents the first exhibition with French artist Bernard Frize since announcing representation of him earlier this year, as well as his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in twenty years. Since the late 1970s, Frize has concentrated his practice on abstract conceptual painting that reflects on what it means to make a painting as well as how a painting can be made. Through a dedicated methodology that is at once playful, mechanical, and spiritual, Frize liberates his work from the self-expressive promise of the painterly gesture through a range of strategies that reflexively question the role and labor of the painter.

German artist Joseph Beuys is one of the most famous and controversial figures in the international art world in the second half of the 20th century. From teaching students to inspiring countless later artists, his influence on contemporary art is immeasurable. In this exhibition, from newspaper articles to bottled river water, Beuys's desire to change the world through art is condensed. His art is not captured through media such as painting or drawing. Instead, Beuys draws inspiration from the world around him, transforming seemingly simple, organic media into important works of art.

Luther Vandross: Artistry and Elegance celebrates the extraordinary life and legacy of Luther Vandross, an eight-time GRAMMY® winner, revered songwriter, arranger, producer, performer, and one of the most gifted vocalists in music history. The exhibit offers an intimate glimpse into Vandross’ creative process and showcases his ornate stage wardrobe, exclusive performance footage from his popular tours, and a never-before-heard recording of him in the studio. Luther Vandross first captured the spotlight in the 1970s as a sought-after backup singer, collaborating with luminaries such as David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Quincy Jones, Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, and Carly Simon. As a solo artist, he became renowned for his relatable lyrics about love and mesmerizing live performances, characterized by dynamic bands, elaborate stage designs, and striking custom costumes worn by his background singers. Vandross achieved remarkable success, charting a Top 10 R&B hit every year from 1981 to 1994 and releasing 11 consecutive platinum records, with over 40 million albums sold worldwide.

Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world. The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation, while also sparking philosophical debates about the very nature of representation. Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes. The nearly 200 artists, designers, and makers in Digital Witness illuminate today's visual culture where digital editing tools are easier to access than ever before.

This winter, enjoy a new and enchanting Christmas experience for the whole family! Say hello to the holidays at Los Angeles’ first-ever Christmas Market! Welcome to Skylight ROW DTLA, a bustling Christmas market in Germany complete with strings of lights, freshly baked goodies, festive activities and holiday music! Explore dozens of open-air stalls and sample seasonal treats like soft pretzels, hot chocolate, crispy schnitzel, and handmade crafts from local artisans.