Museums - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the central museum for the greater Los Angeles region. LACMA was founded in 1910 as part of the Museum of Science, History and Art in the Exposition Park area near the University of Southern California, and became an independent art-focused institution in 1961. The museum moved to its current location in 1965. It has major collections relating to all aspects of Western and world art.
Among its many holdings is one of the most important collections of pre-Columbian art in the United States. The collection is particularly strong in objects from the major civilizations of ancient Mexico. A significant portion, which was assembled by Proctor Stafford and acquired by the museum in 1986, represents the ceramic funerary offerings found in the tombs of the west Mexican states of Nayarit, Colima, and Jalisco. The museum’s Constance McCormick Fearing Collection contains a broad selection of ceramic sculpture from West Mexico as well as from other areas of Mesoamerica. Finely carved stone sculpture forms an important component of the Fearing collection, ranging from the exquisite jade figures produced by Olmec artists on the Gulf Coast to the massive and intricately designed basalt representation of ball game regalia from Veracruz.
The ancient kingdoms of Peru are also well represented in the galleries. The collection features an array of intricately patterned textiles, brilliantly painted ceramics, and finely worked metal objects spanning the geographical breadth and temporal history of this great region.
The museum has a costume and textile department that oversees a large collection of clothing, textiles, and accessories ranging from the pre-Columbian Americas to contemporary couture. The department has outstanding collections of Islamic, South and Southeast Asian, and Far Eastern material. It has a strong collection of Indonesian textiles, as well as significant Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Korean holdings.
The Southeast Asian Art Gallery displays works from Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Bronze and Iron Age objects from the Dongson culture of Indonesia and Vietnam and the Ban Chiang culture of Thailand are on view along with Buddhist and Hindu sculpture from all periods and regions. The collection of Sri Lankan art is one of the largest and most comprehensive outside Asia.