January 2012

In memory of MOCA founding member and Life Trustee Beatrice Gersh, MOCA presents A Tribute to Beatrice and Philip Gersh: Gifts to The Museum of Contemporary Art, featuring selections from the many important works of art gifted to the museum by Beatrice and her husband, Philip.

In 1946, the tabloid photographer known as Weegee relocated from New York City to Los Angeles. In moving west, he abandoned the grisly crime scenes for which he was best known and trained his camera instead on Hollywood stars, strippers, costume shops, and naked mannequins, sometimes distorted through trick lenses and multiple exposures. “Now I could really photograph the subjects I liked,” said Weegee of his life in Los Angeles. “I was free.” Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles is the first museum exhibition devoted to the work Weegee produced in Southern California.

Kenneth Anger: ICONS will showcase the films, books, and artwork of one of the most original filmmakers of American cinema. A defining presence of underground art and culture and a major influence on generations of filmmakers, musicians, and artists, Anger's films evoke the power of spells or incantations, combining experimental technique with popular song, rich color, and subject matter drawn equally from personal obsession, myth, and the occult.

The first West Coast solo museum exhibition from Chicago-based artist and urban planner Theaster Gates, this presentation of mixed-media sculptures and installation works uses a Black non-aesthetic to explore urban blight and the potency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in May 1963, when hundreds of demonstrators were violently hazed by the county's police and fire departments.

Featuring more than 130 artists working in a wide array of mediums and styles, Under the Big Black Sun addresses the dynamic period in American art when modernism, characterized by a master narrative of progress and succession, reached a dead end, and a multiplicity of movements, forms, and genres began to take shape simultaneously. The years considered bracket a tumultuous, transitional period in United States history, beginning with Richard Nixon's presidential resignation in 1974, and ending in Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981.

The first West Coast solo museum exhibition of photographer Hedi Slimane's work, California Song spans the photographer's California period and traces his explorations of cycles of urban youth culture and artistic communities, through installations of photographic essays, exhibitions, and publications.