February 2013

In 2005 Herb and Dorothy Vogel made an extraordinary gift of artwork to the country by donating fifty works from their collection to fifty individual institutions across the United States. The Museum of Contemporary Art was chosen as the receiving institution in California and became part of the historic Fifty Works for Fifty States project, which includes significant works by Carl Andre, Lynda Benglis, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Edda Renouf, and Richard Tuttle, among others. MOCA will showcase a selection of this gift in its Grand Avenue building as a testament to the commitment of two contemporary art collectors and their wish to share their collection with the public.

The efforts of MOCA’s Acquisition & Collection, Photography, and Drawings committees, as well as those of many generous individuals and institutions, have enabled the museum to cultivate one of the premier collections of contemporary art in the United States. Since 2010, key donations and purchases have brought significant artworks in a range of media, from paintings and sculptures to works on paper, videos, and installations, into the permanent collection.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, presents The Panza Collection and Selections from Major Gifts of Beatrice and Philip Gersh, Rita and Taft Schreiber, and Marcia Simon Weisman, now on view through January 14, 2013 at MOCA Grand Avenue. The exhibition celebrates the core of the museum's internationally renowned collection, which evolved as a result of the acquisition of The Panza Collection in 1984, considered at the time as one of the world's most important acquisitions of contemporary art and a turning point in the museum's early history. This exhibition also marks the first time since 2000 that almost the entire Panza Collection has been presented at MOCA. Installed by MOCA Senior Curator Alma Ruiz, The Panza Collection and Selections from Major Gifts of Beatrice and Philip Gersh, Rita and Taft Schreiber, and Marcia Simon Weisman features 92 works, comprising paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that serve both as evidence of the intellectual and emotional challenge that is involved in collecting and as a testament to exemplary civic patronage and its enduring legacy in the cultural growth of Los Angeles.

A Point of View: Selected Gifts from the Laurence A. Rickels Collection presents selections from the 2011 gift by writer, professor, and collector Laurence A. Rickels of 122 works made almost exclusively between 1993 and 2003 by Los Angeles artists, with an emphasis on works on paper and photography.

Since 1997, photographer Jason Schmidt has been making intimate portraits of artists around the world as part of his ongoing project Artists. Selected from over 500 photographs that currently make up this series, the 23 images on view represent several generations of artists working in an array of disciplines-painting, sculpture, video, performance, and installation-all of whom are based in Los Angeles. Schmidt photographs each artist in a context that is significant to his or her work, whether the studio, the gallery, or the wider world.

Ben Jones: The Video is the West Coast solo museum debut of the artist's work. The exhibition features new videos and paintings that build upon the artist's previous work using the extracted and abstracted forms of technology and pop symbols of our time to create irreverent, surrealistic, and introspective narratives and environments, often defined by their kaleidoscopic arrays of day-glo colors. With a fluid sense of material, Jones has worked with traditional art media like painting, drawing and sculpture, but also animated music videos, produced zines and costumes, furniture and web art, cartoons and music.