Three LA Museums Plan New Initiative to Share Mohn Collection

One of the country’s most important collections of art from Southern California will now have a new home—or, technically, three of them.

A trio Los Angeles museums—the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art—have agreed to jointly acquire some 350 works from LA collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn.

The Mohns, who have appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list several times over the past decade, are known for collecting in two distinct areas: historical works from the Minimalist and Light and Space movements and emerging LA-based artists. This gift, officially called the Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA (MAC3), will draw from their holdings in the latter category, which they began nearly two decades ago. Typically, the Mohns have displayed these works in their New York residence.

In a statement, Jarl Mohn said, “Pamela and I are ecstatic to make this gift, not only to make these outstanding artworks by Los Angeles artists available to the public, but to do it in such a way as to foster collaboration among three of the city’s most extraordinary museums in the spirit of this tight-knit community of artists.”

Some of the pieces in the gift have technically already entered the institutions’ collections, but the lion’s share of them, some 260 works in total, are new gifts. Artists from this portion of the donation include Kelly Akashi, Kathryn Andrews, Carmen Argote, Awol Erizku, Diedrick Brackens, Carolina Caycedo, Gisela Colon, Matt Connors, Beatriz Cortez, Karon Davis, Aria Dean, rafa esparza, Nikita Gale, Samara Golden, Todd Gray, Mark Grotjahn, Lauren Halsey, EJ Hill, Arthur Jafa, Deana Lawson, Rodney McMillian, Gala Porras-Kim, Amanda Ross-Ho, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Brenna Youngblood.

The Mohns have already donated 80 works to the Hammer after each edition of its now closely watched Made in L.A. biennial. Those works, including pieces by Analia Saban, Zackary Drucker, Meleko Mokgosi, Liz Glynn, Anna Sew Hoy,Wu Tsang, Tala Madani,Huguette Caland,Daniel Joseph Martinez, and Luchita Hurtado, will now be shared by the three institutions.

The final 16 works that make up the MAC3 gift are drawn from the 2023 edition of Made in L.A. and were selected by the three museums together; Guadalupe Rosales, Teresa Baker, Luis Bermudez, Jackie Amézquita, Roksana Pirouzmand, and Pippa Garner are among the artists whose work were acquired.

“The Mohns’ extraordinary gift is a profound commitment to the artists of today and a promise to future generations,” MOCA director Johanna Burton said in a statement. “The collection reflects the dynamic creativity and innovation that define our city. And this collaboration allows us to come together to continue supporting and showcasing the incredible talent within our local arts scene, ensuring that our artists’ voices are heard and that their works are seen around the world.”

These 356 works, however, are just a start. Each year, the three museums’ curatorial teams will choose works to add to the MAC3 collection; during Made in L.A. years, those additions will come directly from works included in the biennial. The Mohns have also established an endowment to fund these future purchases, as well as the ongoing care and storage of the MAC3 collection.

The Mohns are major philanthropists in Los Angeles, having given millions to various local arts institutions. In 2012, when the Hammer launched Made in L.A., the couple endowed the Mohn Award, a $100,000 prize that goes to one participating artist. Additionally, they also gave the funds for two additional prizes, the Career Achievement Award and the Public Recognition Award, which come with $25,000 each. (Mohn had initially proposed a $100,000 prize to go to an LA artist as a shared initiative between these three institutions as well as the Getty Museum.)

“Jarl and Pamela Mohn’s passion and generosity for the artists of Los Angeles is simply unparalleled,” Hammer director Ann Philbin said in a statement. “Their support helped to launch the Made in L.A. biennial 12 years ago and continues to sustain the exhibition well into the future. They doubled down on that support when they created the Mohn Awards, which provides L.A. artists with a level of notoriety—and financial resources—to further their careers on a global scale.”

Over the past two years, they have also announced major gifts to two of the city’s smaller but influential art spaces. The Brick (formerly LAXART) received $1 million in 2022 to aid in its $5 million campaign to relocate to a new home, which just reopened. In May, the Mohns gave $4.4 million, through their family trust, to help the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles secure the purchase of its $5 million building in downtown LA.

Over the past two decades, joint acquisitions by museums have been on the rise. The Whitney Museum, Tate, and the Centre Pompidou’s purchase of a Bill Viola video is one of the earliest examples of such an acquisition partnership. Institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have shared a William Kentridge installation since 2013, while SFMOMA and the Dallas Museum of Art agreed to split the ownership of a Walter De Maria sculpture in 2016.

In 2021, the Dia Art Foundation in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston struck a deal to share Sam Gilliam’s Double Merge (1968), one of the artist’s most well-known examples of his unstretched abstract canvases. “It seems like a great way forward for all our institutions,” Dia’s director Jessica Morgan told ARTnews at the time.

Each of the three LA institutions has entered into such acquisitions before, though never on such a large scale. LACMA and MOCA went in on Chris Burden’s Hell Gate in 2007; the Hammer and MOCA did so with Hito Steyerl’s Factory of the Sun in 2017; and LACMA and the Hammer’s agreed to share the print archives of LA publisher Edition Jacob Samuel in 2010. Additionally, in 2020, LACMA jointly purchased 21 prints by late Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar and a four-panel adobe painting by rafa esparza with another nearby institution, the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California.

“Only in L.A., a city that champions experimentation and out-of-the-box thinking, can such an unprecedented joint acquisition be made,” LACMA director Michael Govan said in a statement. “Jarl and Pamela’s generous gift to local museums is a testament to the wonderful friendship and collaboration our three institutions have fostered over the decades, and, more importantly, highlights L.A.’s stature as a vital hub of artistic creativity.”