Highlights of 2015

Charles Gaines, "Walnut Tree Orchard, Set 4" (version 2), 1975­-2014

Photograph, ink on paper

Courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Photo by Robert Wedemeyer

We start our bright new year with double trouble with Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989, the survey that was so well-received at the New Museum opens at the Hammer Museum on February 7. But the African-American Conceptual artist is also showing new work on February 28, Librettos: Manuel de Falla/Stokely Carmichael as the debut show of a new Leimert Park facility. Art + Practice is a program and a place created by artist Mark Bradford, collector Eileen Harris Norton and social activist Allan DiCastro. They plan to do more than talk about the socio-political possibilities of contemporary art with programs for foster youth, studios, and an exhibition space in the 17,000 square foot facility. in the heart of lively black cultural center of Leimert Park.

Brenna Youngblood, "Forty Couches and a Rug," 2008-2011

Mixed media on panel, 12 x 18 inches

Courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, California

Photo Joshua White/JWPictures.com

And at the Pomona College Museum of Art, Brenna Youngblood is featured in Project Series 50 where she will present a new suite of paintings that explore gestural abstraction, color field painting, and collage, and that pose questions about memory, identity, and class. It is opens January 20.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775 - 1851)

"The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834," 1834-35

Oil on canvas

Philadelphia Museum of Art: The John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928

If you liked the Mike Leigh film Turner, get ready for the real thing at the Getty Museum: J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Freegoes on view February 24.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775 - 1851)

"Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth," exhibited 1842

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Photo © Tate, London 2014

Turner (1775–1851) produced his most important and famous pictures after the age of sixty, in the last fifteen years of his life. Organized by the Tate with over 60 oil paintings and watercolors, the show demonstrates the artist's determinedly radical approach to his technique and subject matter, his awareness of his contemporaries and the market.

West Coast Premiere screening of Matthew Barney's "River of Fundament"

with music by Jonathan Beppler

Photo by Hugo Glendinning

CAP/UCLA brings the first dose of Matthew Barney when they present his new film, River of Fundament on April 25. With composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney based the work on Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings and it took seven years to complete. We'll learn more about the process when Barney's show of sculptures, drawings and photographs and opens at MOCA in September.

Walt Disney Concert Hall Project Drawing, Los Angeles, California, 1991

Ink on paper, 9 × 12 inches (22.9 × 30.5 cm)

Collection Frank Gehry, Los Angeles

© 2014 Gehry Partners, LLP, Courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP

At LACMA, get ready for the granddaddy of assemblage. Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada opens June 7 while on September 13, the retrospective of Frank Gehry comes from its triumph at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Construction continues on the Broad Art Museum

Third Floor glass elevator

Photo by Nathaniel Riley

Finally, sometime next fall, we will have the long awaited opening of the Broad Art Museum downtown and the new Hauser, Wirth and Schimmel Gallery, which is almost as large. Stay tuned.