Los Angeles - Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)

As the name suggests, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is devoted exclusively to modern art, and is the only one of this kind in Los Angeles. All the works here are from 1940 onwards and cover all media. The museum came to life in 1979 and has expanded over the years. Today the museum includes three separate facilities; the MOCA Grand Avenue, the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and the MOCA Pacific Design Center.

Each building is unique and offers its own permanent and / or changing exhibitions.

The main building is the MOCA Grand Avenue on Bunker Hill, designed by Arata Isozake. It was opened to much fanfare in 1986 and is made of red sandstone, giving it a much different appearance than the other locations. The Geffen Contemporary is located in an old police car warehouse that has been converted into museum space. In West Hollywood is the Pacific Design Center, dedicated primarily to architecture and design.
Until this museum was founded Los Angeles was without a collective home for art which is exclusively contemporary, not just modern. The main building was erected on the last piece of vacant land on the California Plaza, a giant complex of offices and apartment buildings, shopping centers and restaurants, between the City Hall and the actual city center. Pontus Hulten, former manager of the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, was chosen as the first director of the museum, but he withdrew from the post before the two buildings were inaugurated, and his deputy Richard Koshalek was appointed in his place.

The museum was set up so that there would be a home in Los Angeles for contemporary art, and the many native collectors could be catered for. Two important collections have been donated to the museum: 80 works that were in the possession of the Italian Count Guiseppe Panza di Biumo (mainly of abstract impressionism and pop-art), as well as 64 from the estate of the collector Barry Lowen (minimalists from the sixties and seventies, neo-expressionists, post-minimalists from the eighties).

Together with gifts of individual works, the museum has a stock of 425 paintings, sculptures, prints, sketches, photos, installations and other works, and it is still in the building-up phase.

Lighting conditions

The natural lighting conditions of the Isozakis Museum, built of red sandstone, are extremely advantageous, thanks to its pyramidal superstructures, cubes and cylinders which give the low building the appearance of being at the same time higher and yet firmly anchored to the ground. The division of the old storeroom into small and large galleries, with ramps and staircases, provides many possible arrangements for exhibitions.