Featured Events

Commissioned on the occasion of Hollyhock House’s centennial, Janna Ireland: Even by Proxy presents twenty-one photographs by the artist that introduce new perspectives on Los Angeles’ only World Heritage site. Ireland’s photographs privilege the quiet, subtle details of Hollyhock House and make visible the care and conservation that sustain the site over time.

The title of the exhibition comes from Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography, in which he describes the process of realizing Hollyhock House. For Ireland, Wright’s phrase “even by proxy” points to the fraught relationship between client and architect in building the house as well as the ongoing project of preservation.

Even by Proxy is presented in partnership with Project Restore and the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University.

Janna Ireland lives in Los Angeles, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Occidental College. Her photographic work is primarily concerned with the themes of family and domestic life, the built environment, and interactions between humans and the natural world.

Her 2024 mid-career survey, Janna Ireland: True Story Index, was jointly hosted by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. In 2016, she began photographing structures designed by legendary Black architect Paul R. Williams. A collection of 250 of these photographs was published in a monograph entitled Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View, in 2020. In 2021, Ireland was awarded a Peter E. Pool Research Fellowship by the Nevada Museum of Art to photograph Williams’ work in Nevada. The resulting solo exhibition traveled from the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno to the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas and the AIA Center for Architecture in New York.

Ireland’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of institutions including LACMA, SFMOMA, the Nevada Museum of Art, the California African American Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Janna Ireland is the 2024 recipient of the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award, which is presented to a photographer who honors Shulman’s legacy by challenging the way we look at physical space. She is the recipient of the 2023 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize, a 2023 City of Los Angeles Independent Master Artist Program (COLA-IMAP) grant, and is a 2024 runner-up for the Aperture Portfolio Prize. Her work has been the subject of articles in publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Harvard Design Magazine, and Aperture. She holds an MFA from the UCLA Department of Art and a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU.

Advance reservations recommended. To book a self-guided tour ticket, CLICK HERE.

This moving, seminal visual arts project was conceptualized and developed by the Watts Towers Arts Center Director, Rosie Lee Hooks, who commissioned 13 artists from the community to use shovels as a canvas to honor the legacy of our ancestors. Each of the world-renowned master artists who accepted the challenge has a history of building art institutions in Watts and in the greater Los Angeles area.

A one-woman show highlighting the cumulative work of Robin Strayhorn using various mediums. Strayhorn is a multidisciplinary artist residing in Los Angeles for the past 40 years. Some other most recent work reflects time spent living and studying in India. There will be an Artist Talk/Reception on February 9, check the website for details.

Join Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson; Mayor Karen Bass; the Los Angeles City Council; and the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) to officially celebrate the exhibition installation of the work of Los Angeles photographer, Leroy Hamilton in DCA’s Henry P. Rios Gallery at Los Angeles City Hall on display from Friday, January 31, 2025 to February 26, 2025.

The Story of Us displays Black Angelenos in several dimensions of their lives—at home with family, in the conference room, on the court, in government halls of power, on the mainstage, in the streets, and in places of worship. It captures the fullness of Black life. Mr. Hamilton seeks to restore the humanity behind Black faces that are often misrepresented. Visitors will experience the full spectrum of Black personhood through the lens of a local artist with strategic connections and expansive vision.

The Story of Us is Leroy Hamilton’s exhibit which he hopes will reverberate across the country. By capturing a collection of photos of Black Angelenos, the artist hopes to draw parallels between movement building in Black Los Angeles to national Black movements. Mr. Hamilton hopes to remind visitors that there is a community photographer in every community, and we must recommit ourselves to seeking them out and uplifting their work. The photography exhibit is an ode to Black Los Angeles and all we represent in the past, present, and future–from Crenshaw to the coast, this is The Story of Us.

The exhibition is curated and coordinated by Larry Earl.

Photography Exhibition: January 31, 2025 through February 26, 2025

The exhibition is free to visit and open to the public.

Ribbon Cutting: Friday, February 7, 2025, 9:30 a.m.

Fostering Photovoice: a photo exhibition about the foster youth experience, features photographs that depict identity, family, and the foster care system by six LA based foster youth artists. Join us for our Closing Reception on March 8, 2025. Stay tuned for upcoming details.

Fostering Photovoice is a group photography exhibition that reflects the lives and experiences of youth impacted by foster care. The project was conceived by a photovoice research collective that included six artists—all former foster youths between the ages of 18 and 25 who reside in Los Angeles County. Several UCLA undergraduate and graduate students were involved, among them, participants who have had lived experience in foster care, or had expertise in using the arts-based empowerment method called photovoice for research and social policy.

The collective came together over 7 weeks during the summer of 2023. The exhibition is organized by prompts and considers the differences in the views of each artist. It includes reflections on who the youth are, how they think about family, and how they would have liked the system to respond to and support their needs.

The series invites the viewer to beliefs about foster youth and the foster care system, including any biases they may have. It is also an opportunity to reflect on how to best support foster youth who enter state care through no fault of their own—both as children and as they transition to adulthood.

America’s suburbs are undergoing significant transformation. The traditional view of suburbs as predominantly white, middle-class areas no longer reflects reality. Today, they encompass a diverse mix of residents—rich and poor, Black, Latino, Asian, immigrants, and the unhoused. This shift is especially evident in Los Angeles, where many suburbs have become majority-minority. The New Suburbia explores the experiences of Asian Americans, Black Americans, and Latinos who moved into formerly exclusive neighborhoods.