LOS ANGELES, CA.- As cultural institutions are recognizing the potential for pooling resources, the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles are establishing a joint collection of contemporary art by Los Angeles artists, to be founded through the acquisition of nearly 300 artworks from collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn.
“We’re all going to share the labor of it, we’re going to share the costs of it,” said Ann Philbin, the Hammer’s director. “All three of our institutions deeply care about the art that’s being made in our city — not just for this moment in time but out into the future. We think it’s going to be part of art history writ large.”
Jarl Mohn, a venture capitalist who served as CEO of NPR until 2019, said he was inspired by the cooperative nature of “PST Art,” an exhibition — about to open its third edition — in which museums and other nonprofit organizations across Southern California show art related to one theme over several months.
“When I decided I wanted to give the collection away — but keep it as a live object, keep it growing — I said, ‘I think we should revisit this notion of a collaborative thing,’” Mohn said in an interview. “It will make a big statement about our town. It will make a big statement about what we think is going on here.”
The collection, which will be called the Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA — or MAC3 — will start with 260 artworks from the Mohns. The Hammer Museum will add to it with 80 pieces that have been acquired since 2012 through its Made in L.A. biennial exhibitions of Los Angeles artists.
For the first joint acquisitions, curators from all three institutions unanimously selected 16 works from “Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living,” bringing the MAC3 collection to 356 artworks.
In addition to their artworks, the Mohns will create an endowment of $15 million to $20 million to fund annual acquisitions and expenses related to the care and storage of the collection. “It’s more and more difficult for museums to afford storing works,” Philbin said. “It sometimes determines things we can buy in terms of scale and quantity.”
The gifts will enable the three institutions to collectively acquire works by Los Angeles artists on an annual basis, with selections made jointly by curatorial teams from all three museums. Every other year, those acquisitions will come out of editions of Made in L.A.
In the non-biennial years, curators from the three institutions will identify works for acquisition by visiting studios and exhibitions. The full collection will be available to each institution for display and to other museums around the world as loans.
“We have to rethink how museums work and to be risk-taking and brave enough to collaborate,” said Johanna Burton, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art since 2021, acknowledging the financial challenges facing museums. “It signals that we’d better all band together.”
The existing 260-piece Mohn Collection includes works by more than 125 Los Angeles artists, including many who have appeared in one of the six editions of Made in L.A., such as Aria Dean, Rafa Esparza, Lauren Halsey, Luchita Hurtado and Arthur Jafa.
Among the other artists in the collection are Karon Davis, Rodney McMillian and Cauleen Smith.
The museums hope to attract other donations.
The Mohns have supported the Made in L.A. biennial since it started in 2012, including funding the Mohn Awards given to the biennial’s artists.
Jarl Mohn declined to quantify his total investment in MAC3 but said it would be more than he had spent before on art for institutions.
“This is the big one,” he said. “Because I believe in it. I believe in the art, I believe in the artists, I believe in the community. It’s about where we live. And I think this is a very special place right now.”
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
