The Museum of Contemporary Art has three Los Angeles locations—one in West Hollywood, at the Pacific Design Center; one on Grand Avenue in Bunker Hill; and one in Little Tokyo. But now, somewhere in the middle, there's a new MOCA arriving in an existing art gallery, bringing pieces from the museum's permanent collection to the gallery's home in a nondescript, one-story building on Washington Boulevard in Arlington Heights, just south of Koreatown and east of Mid-City. In doing so, it will be helping to put "important works of art in a largely working-class black and Latino neighborhood," the LA Times says
The Underground Museum has been around since 2012, when painter Noah Davis acquired a couple storefronts and united them into one big space; he also created a garden behind the gallery and a collection of art books that he opened up to the public for browsing (see below). Though the space was definitely off the beaten path, the exhibits it hosted "caught the eye of both critics and museum curators" and built a reputation that was enough to make MOCA interested when he suggested working together.
The Underground Museum and MOCA's collaboration will last three years, during which the gallery will show curated exhibits that draw from the MOCA's more-than-7,000-piece collection. MOCA isn't the only museum in town that's thinking about spreading their art around. Back in October, LACMA expressed interest in an old Culver City courthouse as a possible site for a full-fledged satellite location; that museum already has a site in MacArthur Park where they host a once-yearly exhibit.
· An unassuming storefront. A major museum. A collaboration that takes museum art to the people of L.A. [LAT]
· Old Culver City Courthouse Could Become a LACMA Satellite [Curbed LA]