Wilshire's museum stretch condensed to six things actually worth the queue — Iñárritu's immersive commission, LA vernacular painting, Miyazaki production art, and two galleries to clear your head.
LACMA
This multisensory installation draws from unused footage created during the making of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s debut feature Amores Perros. Never-before-seen film fragments are presented through an array of 35mm projectors, accompanied by recorded sounds of Mexico City. Removed from narrative structure, the work treats film as material composed of time, light, and space, reframing discarded images as an immersive visual environment.
Feb 22 - Jul 26
Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.: In Between Stops presents 12 benches installed along LACMA’s Kendall Concourse. Drawing on rotulismo mexicano and his background as a second-generation sign painter, Gonzalez replaces bus stop advertisements with personal and socially conscious messages. Some works reference LACMA’s history and collection, connecting the museum to the surrounding urban landscape and traditions of public art in Los Angeles.
Feb 21 - Dec 1
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Studio Ghibli’s PONYO celebrates the artistry behind Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved 2008 animated film through more than 100 original drawings, storyboards, art boards, and production materials from Studio Ghibli. Featuring interactive animation experiences and immersive environments for all ages, the exhibition explores the beauty of hand-drawn animation while highlighting the film’s enduring themes of transformation, imagination, and human connection.
Feb 14 - Mar 21
Craft Contemporary
Tierra—the word itself carries weight. It names earth and land, ground to stand on and homeland carried across distances, material and ancestor all at once. Craft Contemporary's latest iteration of its Clay Biennial expands beyond ceramic to embrace broader practices rooted in earth and land, centering the work of Latinx, Indigenous, and Black artists whose relationships to soil are marked by kinship rather than ownership. Here, earth appears as teacher and relative, a holder of knowledge shaped through making, tending, and embodied care.
May 31 - Oct 25
Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles
Celebrating a decade of the gallery's Los Angeles program, this ambitious group exhibition fills the 10,000-square-foot space on Wilshire Boulevard and spills into the disused dining room of a former Sizzler restaurant down the street. Artists across generations, from John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Robert Irwin and Bridget Riley to younger voices, are loosely organized around the periods and movements that have shaped Spruth Magers' program since 2016.
May 15 - Aug 8
Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles
Mucki Botkay: IMAGINARY WINDOWS marks the Brazilian artist’s first U.S. solo exhibition. Botkay creates shimmering, tapestry-like works by hand embroidering thousands of colored glass beads into richly textured landscapes and still lifes inspired by Brazil’s forests and coastlines. As viewers move closer, recognizable forms dissolve into intricate fields of light and color, blurring the boundary between representation and abstraction. Expanding the language of painting through embroidery and craft traditions, her meticulous works reflect themes of growth, time, and the natural world.
Jul 11 - Aug 22