The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) officially opened the David Geffen Galleries on Sunday, April 19, 2026.
Forty-five curators working across areas of study are collaborating on the initial installation of the Geffen Galleries. The building is designed to hold approximately 2,500 to 3,000 objects from the museum’s global collection at one time, filling 110,000 square feet of gallery space.
Rather than displaying artworks according to medium or period, the inaugural installation uses the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea as its organizing framework, emphasizing the cultural exchange, migration, and commerce prevalent throughout the history of art.
Visitors enjoy seeing artworks spanning the entirety of art history, including museum favorites: Georges de La Tour’s The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (1640); Henri Matisse’s La Gerbe (1953); Antonio de Arellano and Manuel de Arellano’s Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe) (1691); and more.
Notable recent acquisitions also are on view, including Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) and Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach (1888). Adding to the presentation of art from around the world and across time are special commissions by Todd Gray, Lauren Halsey, Sarah Rosalena, Do Ho Suh, Diana Thater, and others.
Among 80 galleries on the huge one-floor complex of the David Geffen Galleries, Works of Japanese art are found in the following galleries:
Pacific Ocean
10. Netsuke: Japanese Carvings, Foreign Connections
Netsuke are miniature sculptures, often intricately carved, used by men to fasten small hanging containers to kimono sashes. Though a distinctly Japanese art form, they were shaped by the world beyond Japan’s shores. Some early netsuke adapted objects of foreign origin for use – such as pendants or personal seals – and Japanese artisans also used foreign materials and lacquer techniques.
Eighteenth-century examples reflect the Japanese fascination with non-native animals and figures. In the nineteenth century, Western influences inspired netsuke carvers to render more anatomically accurate figures and realistic nature motifs.
As demand from Western collectors grew, artisans expanded their repertoire of subjects to appeal to foreign notions of “exotic” Japan, including dragons and views of Mount Fuji. Victorian tastes for ornate embellishments and exceptional craftmanship further shaped netsuke production. Eventually, many carvers turned to making okimono – small, nonfunctional works ideally suited for display in European and American curio cabinets.
11. Blue-and-White Porcelain of East Asia
The blue-and-white porcelain traditions of East Asia reflect a shared history of social and cultural practices, with each region developing its own distinctive aesthetic within the medium. Meticulous execution was hallmark of Chinese porcelain production, Korean porcelains displayed a more expressive approach to form and design, and asymmetric decoration and elaborate surface patterns were common traits of Japanese porcelain wares.
The links among China, Korea, and Japan are evident in shared forms and decorative treatments, such as the elegant meiping vase, the auspicious dragon, and motifs symbolizing wishes for longevity.
Scholars’ implements often featured landscape views, a popular theme among literati. Decorative elements such as scrolling vines, clouds, and geometric patterns likewise moved between cultures.
The popularity of blue-and-white porcelains on the export market spurred artisans working in other media to mimic these wares. In Japan, for example, enamel studio during the Meiji period (1868-1912) produced examples that closely followed porcelain models.
12, Ultramodern: Kyoto Ceramics
Kyoto, Japan’s historical imperial capital, has long been a center of aristocratic culture and artistic innovation, including in ceramics. Following World War II, the city became a hub for transformative experiments in clay. Among the early pioneers was Kawai Kanjiro, a mingei (folk art and crafts) ceramist who was one of the first to create nonfunctional ceramics and incorporate sculptural forms into utilitarian objects.
While mingei artists modernized by elevating everyday crafts and drawing on international folk traditions, younger Kyoto ceramists took more radical turn. Influenced by development in Europe and America, they aimed to sever ceramics from their functional roots. Prominent collectives included Shikosha (Society of Four Harvests, established 1947) and Sodeisha (Crawling Through the Mud Society, 1948-98), whose members pursued abstraction and individual expression. In turn, these artists became influential teachers to later generations, including the first women to gain recognition in the field, many of whose works are also presented here.
13. Japan: Living Landscapes, Flowing Waters
Water, in its many forms, has long served as a powerful metaphor in Japanese literature and visual art – an embodiment of movement, transformation, and the impermanence of life. This galley explores how waves, snow, mist, cloud, rain, and waterfalls convey shifts in mood and atmosphere, not by depicting nature literally but by evoking its power, energy, and rhythms. The artworks seen here create imagined, often idealized spaces where water becomes a means to convey nature’s power and human emotions.
Additionally, water carries significant spiritual meaning within Japanese culture. In Shinto, Japan’s indigenous religion, it is both sacred and purifying. Oceans and ponds also serve as pathways to Buddhist and Daoist paradises. Moreover, mist and cloud – especially golden ones – are used as artistic devices to mark transitions in time and space, evoking a classical, aristocratic beauty.
17. The Stuff of Alchemy: Plastic in Art
Plastic “is in essence the stuff of alchemy,” wrote French cultural critic Roland Barhes in 1957, invoking the malleable material’s almost infinite transmutability. For nearly a century, artists and designers have been drawn to its pliability, versatility, and ability to assume a broad spectrum of color.
The works in this gallery – made from materials such as fiberglass, polyester resin, and nylon – demonstrate how plastic inspired artists and designers to push the bounds of form and visual expression. Designers translated industrial innovations into novel and practical uses, while artists manipulated plastic’s sculptural form.
While many works here were made in Southern California, a hub of post – World War II experimentation fueled by the engineering and aerospace industries, other objects come from Argentina, Japan, and various parts of the United States. Together, they suggest how plastic’s promise resonated globally, representing inventiveness and unconventionality before it became emblematic of overconsumption, waste, and environmental harm.
Indian Ocean
14. China’s Influence in East Asia and Beyond
The gallery presents Chinese paintings and porcelains spanning several centuries, alongside works from Korea, Japan, and the West that reveal the enduring influence of Chinese artistic traditions.
Center to this influence is the concept of spirit resonance – the idea that art should convey the vital energy, or qi, of its subject rather than merely replicate its appearance. Chinese artists sought to capture inner essence through expressive brushwork, an approach that elevated calligraphy to the highest art form, in which the artist’s character and spirit are visible in each stroke.
Landscape painting, known as shanshui (mountains and water), embodies this philosophy, expressing both reverence for nature and the artist’s inner world. These principles later resonate with Western artists seeking new ways of seeing and representing life.
15. Pan-Asian Buddhist Art
Buddhism was founded in India in the fifth century BCE with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama – known as the Buddha, or “Enlightened One” – providing a path to escape the endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth as determined by karma (the accumulated weight of one’s actions).
Buddhism gradually evolved into distinct schools: Theravada, emphasizing personal diligence as the path of salvation; Mahayana, which introduced the concept of the bodhisattva, or Buddhist savior; Vajrayana, known for its use of visualization and esoteric ritual; and Zen, which teaches techniques for attaining enlightenment in this lifetime.
This gallery explores the dissemination of Buddhism across time and geography, especially through Asia, revealing how its art forms absorbed local spiritual practices and aesthetic traditions.
Images of Buddha and Buddhist deities – from large-scale sculptures to intricately rendered paintings – are presented alongside a wide range of elaborately carved and painted Tibetan furniture. Contemporary artists respond to the still-evolving religion, incorporating its philosophies, ritual practices, and visual repertoires.
Atlantic Ocean
9. In Conversation: James McNeil Wistler and Japan
Following centuries of isolationism, Japan opened to foreign trade in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to an influx of Japanese art and design to the West. This sparked a fascination with Japanese aesthetics that influenced European and American artists.
James McNeil Whistler and others recognized how ukiyo-e (floating world) woodcuts by masters such as Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai – which featured flattened picture planes, elevated horizon lines, and distinct bands defining water, land, and sky – could be adapted to their own depictions of contemporary life.
Whistler created more than five hundred prints, mainly etchings and drypoints, embracing these qualities. The works in this gallery are a testament to Whistler’s recontexualization of the style and ambience of Japanese art, which he transformed into striking images with a fresh conceptual focus.