Special Events
From happy hours to museum exhibitions, check out these happenings while you’re in town. We’ll continue to update this page leading up to the conference.
Conference Events
Infinite Space, a documentary feature film, traces the lifelong quest of visionary genius John Lautner to create “architecture that has no beginning and no end.” It is the story of brilliance and of a complicated life – and the most sensual architecture of the 20th century.
Celebrate the conclusion of the IDC’s academic sessions at the closing reception hosted by the Getty. Set on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Getty Center offers panoramic views of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean.
Frida Escobedo, award-winning Mexican architect and founder of her eponymous studio, will deliver the closing speaker at the 19th International Docomomo Conference. Her keynote, Underlying Futures will unearth a plural prospect of the future, engaging with the themes of climate, community and creativity as they relate to modern architecture.
Ahead of the Closing Plenary and Reception, conference attendees are invited to enjoy open hours at The Getty.
Hubert-Jan Henket, Dutch architect, scholar, and co-founder of Docomomo International will invite reflection on whether the classic definitions of the Modern Movement still hold true in our evolving world of climate urgency, social change, and architectural pluralism.
TICKETED EVENT | Enjoy a fab Happy Hour sponsored by USModernist at John Portman’s Late Modern vision, the Bonaventure Hotel.
Enjoy drinks and light bites in true Hollywood environs, at this working film studio – and successful adaptive reuse project – which was originally the headquarters of the Union Oil Company of California.
Thom Mayne, Pritzker Prize-winning architect and founder of Morphosis, will join acclaimed writer and broadcaster Frances Anderton for the Opening Keynote Conversation.
Meet, greet, and toast other Getty Grant recipients ahead of the Opening Keynote and Reception. Invite only.
Participants will conduct a site to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records
Exhibitions
MONUMENTS marks the recent wave of monument removals as a historic moment. The exhibition reflects on the histories and legacies of post-Civil War America as they continue to resonate today, bringing together a selection of decommissioned monuments, many of which are Confederate, with contemporary artworks borrowed and newly created for the occasion.
The Wende Museum reconstructs the modernist Cuban home built by the artist’s father between 1957–1963, amid the Cuban Revolution and Cold War embargo. The installation evokes memory, home, and exile, exploring how lived experience, dreams, and reality intersect. Through this evocative recreation, it questions authenticity, reflects on the emotional imprint of history, and examines how individuals and societies absorb the collapse of utopian hopes.
Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures explores the world's oldest and most versatile method of making multiple images. More than 150 works from Asia, Europe, and the Americas present the medium as both a means of creative expression and a vehicle for mass production that enabled images and ideas to circulate widely. The exhibition also includes a section developed with Los Angeles–based Block Shop, highlighting how contemporary makers continue to reinterpret this enduring art form.
Material Curiosity by Design explores the prolific careers of midcentury designers Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman in dialogue with select works by three contemporary artists – Porfirio Gutiérrez, Jolie Ngo, and Vince Skelly – sparking a dynamic conversation about materials, innovation, and craft.
How to Be a Guerrilla Girl presents the inner workings of the anonymous feminist art collective alongside a new commission at the Getty Research Institute.
On view during Open Hours at the Getty for Conference attendees, 4pm–6:30pm, Friday, March 20, ahead of the Closing Keynote and Reception.
Artist Robert Therrien’s meditations on scale and material are a deeply influential and well-known approach within the field of contemporary sculpture. Walk beneath oversized tables and chairs, encounter enormous hanging beards, and navigate stacked plates that seem to shift before your eyes.
This exhibition marks the 70th anniversary of the Grunwald Center, celebrating its history through a selection of significant works that reflect the collection’s breadth and diversity. It features nearly 100 works by over 90 artists, including Vassily Kandinsky, Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, Corita Kent, Ruth Asawa, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Analia Saban, and Toba Khedoori.
In the summer of 1941, Arshile Gorky, his soon-to-be wife, Agnes ‘Mougouch’ Magruder, and Isamu Noguchi set out from New York City to Los Angeles in Noguchi’s brand-new Ford station wagon. Their legendary two-week road trip marked Gorky’s first visit to California. Focused on the influence of this pivotal journey, ‘Arshile Gorky. Horizon West’ will present a selection of Gorky’s landscapes from before and after the transcontinental trip
See how an incredible range of African American and Afro-Atlantic diaspora artists –from studio and street photographers to graphic designers and community organizers – used photography as a tool for social change amid the turbulent decades of the mid-20th century.
Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by David Salle, arguably the leading postmodern painter of the last forty-five years. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in LA since 1997.
Alfred Preis (1911-1994) was an Austrian-Hawaiian modernist and cultural advocate, best known for his acclaimed USS Arizona Memorial, completed in 1962. This traveling exhibition showcases the broader oeuvre of one of the leading regional architects of his time and supplies valuable context for his most outstanding project by giving a rigorous review of his other less documented work.