Seeing more than one museum show in Los Angeles in a single day isn’t easy — the exhibitions are spread too far apart, and looking at art can be exhausting. Pace yourself, and you won’t even mind the schlepping (read: traffic) or miss that winter SoCal sun.
If you’re over IKEA
Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890–1980, at Los Angeles County Museum of Art
This colorful, accessible show demonstrates the ways in which Americans embraced Nordic-inflected aesthetics far before IKEA rose to be a household brand. Combining industrial design, textiles and household objects, this show traces how Scandinavian design became a ubiquitous feature of daily life. Through Feb. 5.
If you need to brighten your day
Uta Barth: Peripheral Vision at the Getty Center
Barth’s photography is in many ways quintessentially LA: Preoccupied with light, it has a minimal, dreamy quality that emphasizes domestic spaces and design. Starting with her early work from 1978 to 1990, the Getty Center exhibition traces her development over more than three decades as she transitions from creating images to investigating the nature of photography itself. Through Feb. 19.
If you’re up for magical thinking
Joan Didion: What She Means at the Hammer
Already in the works before Didion died in 2021 at the age of 87, the exhibition is an attempt to create a portrait of the pioneering writer through art, ephemera and movie footage. Organized by New Yorker critic Hilton Als, it includes more than 200 pieces from about 50 artists including Ed Ruscha, Vija Celmins and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Through Feb. 19.
If you want a taste of royalty
Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan at the Getty Villa
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has the most important collection of Nubian artifacts in the U.S. It has loaned those objects for this Getty Villa show comprising spectacular jewelry, metalwork and sculpture from an immensely wealthy civilization. Nubia flourished from the Bronze Age to the initial centuries A.D. along the Nile River in what’s now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Through April 3.
If you want to be delighted
William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows at the Broad
At a surface level, Kentridge’s films are entertaining — this may be the only video art in the world that can engage children and adults alike — but it’s also steeped in trenchant political and social critique. This show, which combines the Broad’s holdings with major loans from Europe and the U.S., contains more than 130 works from Kentridge’s storied, multidecade career. Through April 9.
If you want to see a true original
Henry Taylor: B Side at the Museum of Contemporary Art
In what is billed as the largest retrospective of Taylor’s 30-year career, visitors will see his inimitable portraiture, which combines a painterly naturalism with an engaging sense of humor, as it develops into an aesthetic uniquely his own. Through April 30.
If you’re feeling crafty
Gee’s Bend: Shared Legacy at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens
Not that anyone needs an excuse to visit the exquisite gardens and mansion in San Marino, California, but now there’s a timely reason to go: The Black women of the acclaimed Alabaman quiltmaking collective Gee’s Bend created prints by pressing original quilted fabric designs onto a wax-coated printing plate. This work is on view alongside some original quilts. Through Sept. 4.
