MOCA UNVEILS 2026 EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

MOCA Focus: Diane Severin Nguyen features the West Coast premiere of the artist’s new performance, WAR SONGS (2025/2026). California-born, New York-based artist Diane Severin Nguyen (b. 1991, Carson, CA; lives in New York), together with Music Director Laszlo Horvath and a cast of ten performers, examines how images and media shape identity, power, and history in her first live performance project. Debuting at Performa Biennial 2025 in New York, the performance adopts the format of an anti-Vietnam War concert, reinterpreting protest music to examine how the aesthetic forms of past resistance movements generate cultural afterlives that continue to shape our contemporary moment.

By reworking iconic anti-war anthems and populist folk songs, Nguyen refracts the sound of past resistance through the contemporary zeitgeist, questioning how nostalgia shapes current ideas of freedom, purity, and collective struggle. In addition to the formation of an art band and a live performance, this project includes a monographic catalogue offering a multifaceted exploration of music and cultural memory.

A unique collaboration between MOCA and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, this presentation brings together the work of the internationally acclaimed visual artist Haegue Yang (b. 1971, Seoul) and her interest in and engagement with the experimental composer Isang Yun (1917-1995). Yang is celebrated for her distinctive abstract visual language, often articulated through structures made of venetian blinds and accompanied by choreographed sequences of light and movement that create heightened sensory experiences.

Over the last decade, she has devoted herself to extensive archival and artistic research on the musical legacy and political inheritance of Isang Yun, a pioneering avant-garde composer whose artistic evolution as a transnational, diasporic figure unfolded amid the major political upheavals of the twentieth century. The sprawling installation Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) marks a major breakthrough in this sustained engagement. The institutional collaboration unfolds over two distinct presentations: an exhibition featuring Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) at MOCA Grand Avenue, for its U.S. debut; and a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall for a special one-evening performance of Yun’s Double Concerto(1977) by the LA Philharmonic on March 10, 2026. This project bridges two distinguished cultural organizations and their unique architectural sites, connecting them through time and space in an immersive sonic and visual experience.

Over a career spanning six decades, Michael Asher (1943–2012) played a pivotal role in developing conceptual art through site-specific interventions that made their surrounding context the active content of his work. Asher’s interrogations of these sites reveal the many ways art can critique and make visible the often unseen social, economic, and institutional structures that underpin the subjects it addresses.

This focused survey, first exhibited at Artists Space, New York, presents twenty works via their material elements, documentation, and an accompanying exhibition guide. In conjunction with the exhibition, MOCA will also present a selection of works from the permanent collection gifted to the museum by Asher, underscoring his enduring impact on the institution’s history.

While many of Asher’s projects left no trace, “fragments” exist for some, including distributed objects (household items, games, clothing, maps, and postcards) that were designed to circulate publicly. His practice also employed a broad range of 20th-century media and utilized their conventions of production and distribution—including film, television, radio, magazines, publications, advertising, and graphic identities. Among his many engagements with institutions, Asher intervened in branding and signage, patronage, and educational and curatorial responsibilities.

Founded in 1992, the Gene J. and Betye M. Burton Acquisitions Endowment, dedicated exclusively to the acquisition of works on paper, has been integral to the development of MOCA’s collection. This unique and enduring gift was rooted in the belief that works on paper can and should be seen as independent, ambitious works of art in their own right. Today, it encompasses pastels, collages, graphite drawings, prints, and watercolors by artists including Lee Bontecou, John Cage, Cynthia Hawkins, Kahlil Robert Irving, Barry Le Va, Lee Lozano, Ree Morton, Nancy Rubins, Joey Terrill, and Hannah Wilke. Good on Paper not only provides insight into the centrality of drawing to contemporary art, but it also pays tribute to the Burton Family, who have played a key role at MOCA since the very beginning, contributing extraordinary insight, energy, and support to virtually every aspect of the museum’s life.

Drawing from MOCA’s world-renowned, ever-growing collection of over 8,000 objects, this exhibition focuses on artworks dating from the 1940s to the 1970s and demonstrates the collection’s historical depth, commitment to artistic experimentation, and global awareness. Featuring recent acquisitions alongside beloved artworks that have long been mainstays of MOCA’s collection, highlights include a gallery dedicated to the abstract expressionist canvasses of Mark Rothko, an oil by Luchita Hurtado from the artist’s ‘I Am’ series that belongs to the Mohn Art Collective, as well as paintings, sculptures, and work in all media by figures including Piet Mondrian, On Kawara, Robert Rauschenberg, Betye Saar, and Anne Truitt, among others. Selections from the Collection provides insight into art practice in the decades immediately preceding MOCA’s founding in 1979 and an outlook informed by the diverse cultures of Los Angeles.

Drawn from MOCA’s renowned Collection, this exhibition highlights works from the 1960s to the present with an emphasis on installation, scale, and media works. Featuring a wide range of artists long- and newly connected to MOCA, this exhibition highlights artworks that capture the diversity and foresight of MOCA’s collecting over four decades, reflecting the collection’s historical depth, recent experimentation, global awareness, and diverse perspectives.

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize

MOCA Grand Avenue

As an inaugural recipient of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize, New York-based Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña debuts a newly commissioned project at MOCA.

Titled Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water, the work is the latest in Vicuña’s series of collective actions developed with the participation of communities and publics, in both museums and natural sites, that she has created around the world since the 1960s. Quipu comes from the Quechua word for “knot,” and this multi-phase, collaborative “quipu of encounters” will engage local artists, youth, scientists, and Indigenous water defenders in Chile and in Los Angeles in poetic and political exchanges that confront the ongoing water crises unfolding in each region.

The project culminates in a ritual quipu assembly facilitated by Vicuña in Los Angeles, weaving together the struggles for water preservation in Chile and Los Angeles and building coalitions across geographies and beyond national borders. This exhibition also presents documentation in the form of writings, images, oral histories, field recordings, and other experimental forms of the collective events taking place in Chile and is accompanied by a publication.

MOCA Grand Avenue

For the inaugural Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize exhibition at MOCA, Julian Charrière (b. 1987, Morges, Switzerland; lives in Berlin) will debut a new commission as well as recent work devoted to the fragility and resilience of planetary water systems. A juried award that supports artists whose practices engage critical intersections of art, architecture, design, climate, conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice, the Schmidt Prize exhibition marks Charrière’s first museum presentation in Los Angeles. Expanding on his interdisciplinary practice, this exhibition features immersive environments that explore humanity’s evolving relationship with the planet, inviting audiences to reflect on the urgent realities of climate change and environmental degradation while meditating on nature’s powerful, raw beauty.