Happy Mother’s Day.
Here a few “portraits” of mothers by women artists:
Mary Cassatt
Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Alice Neel
Louise Bourgeois
Berthe Morisot
Kathe Kollwitz
IN THE GALLERIES
David Kordansky gallery is featuring new paintings by Hilary Pecis, Love Letters. Pecis is known for her vivid paintngs that focus on the subjects of everyday life in both interior spaces and landscapes. May 16-June 20, 2026.
What looks like a compelling body of work is Ayin Es: Relative Strangers, the next exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery. Here is what information the gallery has provided: “Ayin Es (b. 1968) is a self-taught, nonbinary artist whose work is rooted in autobiographical storytelling. Emancipated at the age of fifteen from an abusive home, their work is often unsettling and raw. Es maneuvers between the precipice of memory and identity by disclosing their internal, lived experience while highlighting family estrangement, trauma, disability and gender politics. A native of Los Angeles who now lives in Joshua Tree, Ayin Es is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Pollock-Krasner fellowship, and is in the permanent collection of the Getty, the Brooklyn Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Their latest series of paintings originated from an old suitcase of vintage family photos. With playful, satirical tones and thick, textural oil paint, they recast these overlooked snapshots and replaced their younger self with aspects of their present self…”
May 16 – July 4, 2026
Queering the Family Album: A Panel Discussion
June 6, 11AM
Roberts Projects continues their current exhibition. Instant Theatre: Rachel Rosenthal and King Moody. The exhibit explors the experimental theatre movement founded by Rachel Rosenthal in 1955 and continued with her husband, King Moody, from 1956–1966. Thru May 23, 2026.
Don’t miss Destiny is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection continuing at Hauser & Wirth’s downtown location. Continues thru August 16, 2026.
IN THE MUSEUMS
The Huntington Library presents Laura Aguilar: Body and Landscape. Don’t miss an opportunity to view the late artist’s groundbreaking photographs, many recently acquired by the Huntington. Her groundbreaking use of self-portraiture within the natural environments of Southern California and the Southwest, reframing the Western landscape as a site of personal power, resilience, and reclamation. “Her photographs reflect her Chicana, queer identity and the experiences of her friends in the LGBTQ and Latino communities. Through her self-portraiture, she engaged the landscape as a space for visibility and self-expression. Thru September 7, 2026.
Later this month, we can look forward to visiting the Broad Museum to view Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,. Yoko Ono, the visionary artist, musician, and activist whose work has shaped contemporary culture for more than seven decades, will be celebrated at The Broad in the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Southern California, organized in collaboration with Tate Modern, London. Visitors will be invited to directly participate in many of Ono’s works that transform simple acts into expressions of peace and connection. The Broad’s olive trees on East West Bank Plaza will become Wish Trees for Los Angeles, a key installation (first realized in 1996 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica) inviting audiences to tie their own wishes to the tree branches in a living expression of hope in Los Angeles. May 23- October 11, 2026. Advance tickets are recommended.
Cut Piece, 1964, performed in New Works of Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, filmed by David and Albert Maysles, film, 16mm, black and white, and sound (stereo), 8min, 27sec.
© Yoko Ono
Of special interest is the current exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials. “The exhibit features twenty-two artists from North, Central, and South America who embrace the unpredictable nature of living materials. These artists use materials such as avocado, cacao, achiote, cochineal, stone, clay, and natural dyes to create large-scale installations, paintings, works on paper, and mixed-media sculpture. Each of these materials is alive—they evolve, decay, drip, crumble, and evaporate. They are rooted in the spirit, memory, and knowledge of Brown and Indigenous worlds. The exhibition considers ideas around materials as records of the living and repositories of cosmic memory, organic decay and transformation.” (Hammmer) Thru August 23, 2026.
Holding Time highlighting the work of Elyse Pignolet and MyungJin Kim continues at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Thru June 7, 2026.
Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer continues at Norton Simon Museum. Thru July 20, 2026. This is a painting of Galka by Jawlensky.
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