LACMA's Art + Film Gala blurs boundaries between the museum world and Hollywood
The 2018 Gala honored Catherine Opie and Guillermo del Toro
"Despite Los Angeles’ growing position as an international cultural hub, the art and film communities here still exist largely in parallel but separate tracks. You wouldn’t know that, though, from the crowd assembled Saturday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s eighth Art + Film Gala, where artists and filmmakers mingled freely, alongside luminaries from the worlds of fashion, music and architecture.
Honoree Catherine Opie, left, with her partner Julie Burleigh, second from right, and family arrive for the 2018 LACMA Art+Film Gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. (Chris Delmas / AFP/Getty Images) “When I came to L.A., I thought artists and filmmakers would all hang out, and they didn't really, but now they do,” said LACMA Director Michael Govan. “I don't know that it's just at this gala, it’s also the coming of age of Los Angeles.”
As more than 850 guests entered through Chris Burden’s Urban Light sculpture onto a bright orange carpet, this synergy was evident. Filmmaker Jon Favreau embraced artist and director Julian Schnabel, the two looking like they could be cousins. Klaus Biesenbach, the new director of MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, could be seen chatting with Maurice Marciano, the Guess co-founder who opened the Marciano Art Foundation with his brother Paul in an old Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard last year.
Jared Leto, dressed in a white suit and hat, strolled past, emulating David Bowie’s Thin White Duke persona. Other notables included Ryan Murphy, the tireless creator of several popular television series; Peter Zumthor, architect of LACMA’s expansion; artist Tacita Dean, who works in film; and Oscar winner Damien Chazelle.
The guests of honor Saturday night were artist Catherine Opie and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, a pair who embody this blurring of boundaries and breaking of barriers, not only artistically but socially and politically as well. Opie is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose work focuses on both marginalized and ubiquitous groups, from the LGBTQ community to surfers and high school football players. Opie made her first foray into cinema recently, with her film of still images, “The Modernist.”
“It’s very much an L.A. story,” told through the city’s iconic modernist architecture, said Opie, smartly dressed in jacket and slacks, with a jeweled tiger collar broach, all furnished by Gucci, the event’s sponsor."— Matthew Stromberg, Nov. 4, 2018
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
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