ICA LA (Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles)

ICA LA (Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) is an epicenter of artistic experimentation and incubator of new ideas in downtown Los Angeles.
(629)

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) opened in September 2017 and is a new museum housed in a renovated industrial building in Downtown Los Angeles. The ICA LA’s revelatory exhibitions of works by international artists, dynamic public programs, and inclusive community partnerships will reflect the diversity of Los Angeles and the world, fostering critique of the familiar and empathy with the different. Founded in 1984 as the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), the ICA LA is one of few kunsthalles—non-collecting museum—in the United States. The museum opened in a 12,700 square-foot industrial building in Downtown Los Angeles in September 2017 and features spaces for exhibitions, public programs, offices and a café, designed by the architectural firm wHY under the leadership of Kulapat Yantrasast. ICA LA will build on the distinguished history of SMMoA, a museum that fostered artistic experimentation with bold curatorial choices and often presented the first West Coast solo exhibitions of artists who went on to celebrated stature. ICA LA supports art that sparks the pleasure of discovery and challenges the way we see and experience the world, ourselves, and each other. The museum will nourish the community through the arts: educating the eye, stimulating the intellect, and nurturing the life of the mind and the spirit. ICA LA is committed to making contemporary art relevant and accessible for all; as always, admission is free. For more information, visit theicala.org.

09/15/2026

Here’s a sneak peek of the Fall 2026 mural installation of “Zoe Walsh: Gathering”, opening Saturday, September 26th. 🌾

“’If the great achievement of Gerhard Richter was to rethink painting in the age of photography, the great accomplishment of Zoe Walsh is to reinvigorate painting in the age of Photoshop, Instagram and other electronic devices that mediate our relationship with images,’ says art historian and gallerist Joan Robledo-Palop about the artist’s work.”
- Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, Cultbytes: Interviews

“[Zoe Walsh's work] understands that q***r and trans life has always unfolded in thresholds: between visibility and erasure, danger and sanctuary, archive and speculation, day and night. Walsh does not resolve those tensions; they let them shimmer, layered across canvas, until the viewer finds themselves standing in that same in-between—looking, remembering, and, perhaps, imagining new ways of inhabiting the fields that surround us.”
- Çisemnaz Çil, Musée

Photos courtesy of Zoe Walsh.

09/13/2026

Only 6 days left to drop off a rock from home to contribute to the upcoming Fall 2026 Annex exhibition “AoA x Hwa Records: Grounding Bodies, Casting Dreams"! 🪨

Hwa Records invites AoA Youth Fellows and the general public to participate in the creation of a diasporic Dol Top 돌탑 stone tower, which originates from an ancient geomancy tradition for spiritually safeguarding the village. This Dol Top will serve as a community protection spell for the youth of AoA’s dreams for the future. Drop-off is open at the front of the museum until Friday, September 18th at 5pm.

Join ICA LA on Saturday, September 26th to celebrate the opening of our fall exhibitions! 🍂Experience the work of Los An...
09/12/2026

Join ICA LA on Saturday, September 26th to celebrate the opening of our fall exhibitions! 🍂

Experience the work of Los Angeles artists Carl Cheng, Amia Yokoyama, and Zoe Walsh, along with a new project realized by ICA LA’s Agency of Assets Youth Fellows in collaboration with Saewon Oh and C. Ryu of Hwa Records () . Come for the art and stay for the opening festivities, including music, food, and drinks.

ICA LA is thrilled to announce the 2026-2027 Artist-in-Residence (AIR) cohort: Lena Chen (), Kimberly Robertson (), and ...
09/11/2026

ICA LA is thrilled to announce the 2026-2027 Artist-in-Residence (AIR) cohort: Lena Chen (), Kimberly Robertson (), and John Ziqiang Wu ().

Affirming our institutional commitment to center artists and honoring the long history of the Arts District as a neighborhood where artists have lived and worked for decades, ICA LA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program provides three artists with dedicated studio spaces adjacent to our building in DTLA for one year each. The AIR program not only provides working spaces for artists to create, but it is also designed as a residency embedded in the institution, inviting artists to access our building, resources, staff, and community partners; to contribute to the museum’s public programming; and to participate in some of ICA LA’s advisory and governance gatherings.

A major congratulations to our cohort of selected artists! We look forward to the year ahead! 🎉

ICA LA’s Artist-in-Residence program is made possible with lead support from the Getty Foundation. ICA LA is grateful to AVA Arts District for their in-kind support.

Meet Fall 2026 Exhibition Muralist: Zoe Walsh (b. 1989; Washington, D.C.).Walsh is a Los-Angeles-based artist holding an...
09/10/2026

Meet Fall 2026 Exhibition Muralist: Zoe Walsh (b. 1989; Washington, D.C.).

Walsh is a Los-Angeles-based artist holding an MFA from Yale University and a BA from Occidental College. They will be presenting a commissioned, site-specific mural on ICA LA’s 7th street façade, opening Saturday, September 26th.

“Zoe Walsh’s work explores ways of constructing non-linear relationships to time, history and identity through a lens of trans subjectivity. The position of trans identification is informed by the experience of looking from a distance, seeing through screens and reimagining the limits of the physical body. The artist’s process reflects this layered vision by working between different media—from sourcing film stills and the digital worlds of Sketch Up and Photoshop to the physical realm of paint on canvas.”
- Art Now LA

Slide 1: Photo by Chantal Anderson. Slide 2: Zoe Walsh, Blueing, 2026, Photo by Jeff McLane.

Meet Fall 2026 Project Room Artist: Amia Yokoyama (b. in Illinois; lives and works in Los Angeles).At once fantastical, ...
09/09/2026

Meet Fall 2026 Project Room Artist: Amia Yokoyama (b. in Illinois; lives and works in Los Angeles).

At once fantastical, monstrous, and rooted in the everyday, the work of Yokoyama brings together the mediums of ceramic sculpture, experimental animation, holography, painting, and installation, to create and challenge the mythologies and boundaries of our world. Featuring a constellation of new works, “Amia Yokoyama: Our Strange Hollows,” the artist’s first institutional solo presentation, opens Saturday, September 26th.

“Amia [Yokoyama]’s sculptures embody fluidity and the multiplicity of self, exploring the complexities of identity and embodiment in a realm between human and abstract, erotic and grotesque. Her work evokes a sense of both darkness and euphoria, where she weaves narratives that intertwine permanence with impermanence, the digital and the tangible, and personal, familial stories with myths of the unknowable.”
- Shelley Holcomb, Curate LA

Slide 1: Photo by Jonathan Chacon. Slide 2: Amia Yokoyama, Sarracenia, 2023, Photo courtesy of artist. Slide 3: Installation view, Unfurling Edge, Sebastian Gladstone Gallery.

Meet Fall 2026 exhibition Artist: Carl Cheng (b. 1942, San Francisco; lives and works in Santa Monica). Organized by The...
09/08/2026

Meet Fall 2026 exhibition Artist: Carl Cheng (b. 1942, San Francisco; lives and works in Santa Monica).

Organized by The Contemporary Austin () and making its last stop at ICA LA, the retrospective “Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses” brings together approximately 50 rarely exhibited artworks and archival ephemera and is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue. Unique to this presentation is a new work that exemplifies Cheng’s enduring fascination with water as both sculptural and conceptual material. Join us for an unforgettable Open House on Saturday, September 26th.

“Carl Cheng has the soul of a sincere artist and the mind of a mischievous engineer. For six decades, he’s devised inventions, experiments, and installations demonstrating that art, science, culture, and nature are one interactive whole.”
- Pamela J. Forsythe, Broad Street Review
“Cheng may be attuned to the realities of the anthropocene, but he doesn’t make the mistake of portraying the environment as merely acted-upon. ... [N]atural processes, which humans have historically mimicked and harnessed, reappear in a controlled context...The notion that technology is somehow ‘outside’ of nature, Cheng reminds us, is a convenient fiction...”
- Cassie Packard, FRIEZE

Slide 1: Photo by E. Bialobos. Slide 2: Carl Cheng, Human Landscapes, 2022, Photo courtesy of The Austin Contemporary. Slide 3: Carl Cheng, Alternative TV #3, 1979, Photo by Ruben Diaz. Slide 4: Installation view, Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses, at The Contemporary Austin. Photo by Alex Boeschenstein. Slide 5: Carl Cheng, Emergency Nature Supply Kit (E.N. Supply, No. 271-OG), 1970, Photo by Brian Forrest.

This Thursday night, August 6th, realized in collaboration with PRS and in conjunction with the Speaking in Tongues exhi...
08/04/2026

This Thursday night, August 6th, realized in collaboration with PRS and in conjunction with the Speaking in Tongues exhibition at ICA LA, featured artist Karen Lofgren, will join artist, writer, and filmmaker Elizabeth T. Vazquez in the historic PRS Library for a discussion reflecting on Lofgren’s work and artistic approach to the spiritual.

This event is free to the public courtesy of ICA LA. RSVP is required and capacity is limited in the PRS Library! 

slide one: SPECIMEN #1, NICOTIANA TABACUM, sculpture by Karen Lofgren

slide two: SPIRIT TOURIST #1, sculpture by Karen Lofgren

slides three & four: Speaking in Tongues exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

This week’s FOCUS newsletter celebrates iris yirei hu whose works "Corpus mundi" (2026) and "The invocation of the spiri...
05/29/2026

This week’s FOCUS newsletter celebrates iris yirei hu whose works "Corpus mundi" (2026) and "The invocation of the spirit blue child" (2024) are featured in "Speaking in Tongues," which remains on view at ICA LA through August 23.

The newsletter uses these three important elements of hu's artistic practice—people, plants, and rock—as frameworks for continued exploration of the artist's work, like these sundial portraits taken at hu's public work installed at Los Angeles State Historic Park, co-commissioned by ICA LA and ) in 2021, made in collaboration with Tongva Elder Julia Bogany, and poet Mercedes Dorame.

Visit the link in our bio to sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share upcoming programs and exhibitions, dive deeply into the work of exhibition artists, and share exciting ways to explore arts and culture throughout Los Angeles.

At once an altar and a type of alms, a vessel and an offering, iris yirei hu's "Corpus mundi" is a collection of porcela...
05/29/2026

At once an altar and a type of alms, a vessel and an offering, iris yirei hu's "Corpus mundi" is a collection of porcelaincast bones arranged to form a human co**se. Near one of the braided strands of hair rests a small animal skull, referencing the Hmong funerary tradition of placing a chicken near the head as a meal for the journey to the afterlife. Upon death, the soul is said to return to its birthplace, where it unearths its buried placenta and wears it like a jacket. Recalling this armor for the hereafter—and
reminiscent of the elaborate brocade and apron weavings of the Miao people—
hu's co**se rests atop a handdyed indigo textile that hugs the pearlescent blue
bones like a shawl. Whether sewn, dyed, cast, or painted, hu's works often incorporate natural inks made from earthly materials to draw attention to the politics of their making specifically, to the violence of extraction and exploitation at the hands of imperialism.

Address

Los Angeles, CA

Opening Hours

Wednesday 12pm - 6pm
Thursday 12pm - 6pm
Friday 12pm - 5pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm
Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+12139280833

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when ICA LA (Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category