Hammer Museum, LACMA, and MOCA Establish MAC3

The directors of the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, have created a jointly owned and managed collection to be founded through the acquisition of 260 artworks from the collection of Los Angeles philanthropists Jarl and Pamela Mohn. The Mohn collection, largely amassed over the last 19 years, is comprised of paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works by Los Angeles-based artists. The initial gift of artworks seeds what will become a continually growing collection as the Mohns will additionally create an endowment for annual acquisitions in addition to expenses related to the ongoing care and storage of the collection.

The collaboration is being dubbed the Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA, or MAC3 for short. On top of the Mohns’ gift, the Hammer Museum will enhance the MAC3 collection with 80 works previously acquired by the museum through its Made in L.A. biennials since 2012. Additionally, curators from all three institutions gathered to make the collection’s first joint acquisitions, when they unanimously selected 16 works from Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living. In total, the MAC3 collection amounts to 356 artworks.

The co-owned collection establishes a groundbreaking model for institutional collaboration and commitment to directly supporting the artist communities of Los Angeles. The gift will enable the three institutions to actively and collectively acquire works by L.A. artists on an annual basis, with acquisitions chosen jointly by curatorial teams from all three museums. Every other year, those acquisitions will come directly out of future editions of the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial. During the alternating, non-biennial years, curators from the three institutions will work together to identify works for acquisition by visiting studios, exhibitions, and more to inform their ongoing discussions. The full collection will be available to each institution for display and will prioritize a lending program to encourage the works’ display at other museums around the world.

The existing Mohn Collection includes works by more than 125 Los Angeles-based artists, including many who have appeared in one of the six editions of Made in L.A. to date, such as Aria Dean, rafa esparza, Lauren Halsey, Luchita Hurtado, Arthur Jafa, Silke Otto-Knapp, Analia Saban, Martine Syms, and Kandis Williams. The collection features numerous works by artists above and beyond those included in past biennials, including important works by artists Karon Davis, Mark Grotjahn, Rodney McMillian, Cauleen Smith, and more.