Collection

Description

The MCA’s permanent collection includes more than 2,500 artworks that span media and movements from the 1920s to the present. Although not on permanent display, works from the collection appear regularly in our many rotating exhibitions. The entire collection, with images and descriptions, is presented here for the first time. Explore it by artist, title, or creation date. Images in this section are published for educational use under the umbrella of the Fair Use doctrine.

Artist last name index

Title index

Decade index

A primarily beige-looking canvas is actually composed of many small dots of light blues, pinks, oranges, and purples.

...Pindell has said, “in graduate school I remember that a woman artist would be criticized if she used pink. If a man used pink it was considered a mix of red and white… . When I noticed this, I started using the things that I was told not to use. Glitter. Pink. This was my way of resisting.”

Short A primarily beige-looking canvas is actually composed of many small dots of light blues, pinks, oranges, and purples.

Works on View

On viewMonica Bock, Mary Carlisle, Cathy Lynn Gasser, Melissa Goldstein, Sandrine Sheon, & Catherine Smith, Untitled, 1991
On viewJennifer Bornstein, Family Pictures/Intervention #1 (Griffith Park, Los Angeles), 1999
1. Short A young woman with black hair and glasses wearing beige clothes sits on a boulder with an old man with white hair and a mustache wearing a navy shirt and blue jeans. The older man has his arm around the woman and both face the viewer.
2. Long The setting of the photograph appears to be a clearing in the woods. The man's arm, draped loosely around the woman's shoulder, holds her hand resting in her lap. Both people in the photo wear neutral expressions for the camera, despite their affectionate pose.
On viewJennifer Bornstein, Family Pictures/Intervention #5 (Los Angeles County Arboretum), 1999
1. Short In this photograph a man leans over to give a one-armed hug to a teen girl on his left. They are dressed casually in denim and sneakers and pose in front of a lush wall of heart-shaped leaves
On viewStephanie Brooks, Directory (3), 1999
On viewEnrique Chagoya, Border Patrol, 1994
Image not available
On viewLarry Clark, Untitled (KIDS), 1995
On viewLarry Clark, Untitled (KIDS), 1995
On viewLarry Clark, Untitled (KIDS), 1995
1. Short A teen girl with light brown skin and dark hair sits and stares past the camera, eyebrow arched, in front of a colorful wall decorated with a rows of various condom-like shapes.
On viewLarry Clark, Untitled (KIDS), 1995
1. Short Four young boys with different skin tones sit cramped together, shirtless, and smiling on a wide chair with stripes.
On viewLarry Clark, Untitled (KIDS), 1995
1. Short A shirtless black boy with short curly hair clasps his hands together and drops his jaw, making an "O" shape with his mouth. He is covered in beads of water and poses in front a blurry blue-and-white background.
On viewMike Cloud, Cycle and Stable, 2015
Image not available
On viewDIS, Apology, 2016
Image not available
On viewDoug Hall, The United States Crumpled, 1982
On viewDoug Hall, The United States Cut Into a Continuous Strip, 1982
On viewMona Hatoum, Measures of Distance, 1988
Image not available
On viewJene Highstein, Floating World, 1986
1. Short Photograph of a person-sized rounded outdoor sculpture made of grey, textured stone
On viewAlfredo Jaar, Cries and Whispers, 1988
On viewEmily Jacir, Mahmoud, 2002-2003, from the series "Where we come from"
Image not available
On viewEdward Krasiński, Interwencja (Intervention), 1983
1. Short A black box mounted on a black frame contains a rendering of a white box. The entire work is intersected horizontally by a thin blue line.
2. Long A black box containing an image of a rectangular white box, rendered three-dimensionally, is mounted on the right side of an empty thick black frame. A horizontal blue line, which appears to be a very thin piece of painter's tape, intersects the entire work as well as the white wall behind it.
On viewGabriel Kuri, Carretilla II, 1999
1. Short A rustic wheelbarrow is filled with purple, blue, and green shiny balls.
On viewSol LeWitt, Lines In Two Directions And In Five Colors On Five Colors With All Their Combinations, 1981
On viewSol LeWitt, The Location of Straight, Not-Straight and Broken Lines and all their Combinations, 1976
On viewSol LeWitt, The Location of Lines, 1974
On viewSol LeWitt, Four Basic Kinds of Lines and Colour, 1971
On viewSol LeWitt, Untitled, 1971
On viewSol LeWitt, Untitled, 1971
On viewSol LeWitt, Untitled, 1971
On viewSol LeWitt, Untitled, 1971
On viewSol LeWitt, Untitled, 1971
On viewSol LeWitt, Untitled, 1971
On viewGlenn Ligon, Runaways, 1993
On viewIñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Le Baiser/The Kiss, 1999
On viewIñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Assigned Identities (Part I), 1990
On viewKerry James Marshall, Souvenir I, 1997
On viewAna Mendieta, Untitled, 1982
On viewAnnette Messager, Mes Trophees (My Trophies), 1986–88
On viewGladys Nilsson, Reclyning Blackveenus Rabbit, 1971
On viewJim Nutt, She Seams Up Set, 1971
On viewHowardena Pindell, Video Drawings: Abstract, 1976
On viewHowardena Pindell, Video Drawings: Hockey, 1975
On viewHowardena Pindell, Video Drawings: Swimming, 1975
1. Short A grainy image of an outstretched person is seen in profile against a blue background and covered with numbered black arrows and dots in a seemingly random arrangement.
2. Short A grainy image of an outstretched person is seen in profile against a blue background and covered with numbered black arrows and dots in a seemingly random arrangement.
3. Short A grainy image of an outstretched person is seen in profile against a blue background and covered with numbered black arrows and dots in a seemingly random arrangement.
On viewPope.L, Crying Painting, 2016
Image not available
On viewChristina Quarles, Laid Down Beside Yew, 2019
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On viewRobert Rauschenberg, Retroactive II, 1963
1. Short A collage of images includes important moments of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including President John F. Kennedy talking and pointing a finger and an astronaut tethered to a parachute.
On viewGeorge Rickey, Two Lines Oblique, 1968
Image not available
On viewThomas Schütte, Ganz Grosse Geister (Big Spirits XL), 2004
1. Short Three yellow sculptures of abstract human figures stand as if communicating with each other outdoors in an urban setting.
2. Long Three yellow and white forms are installed on an outdoor terrace. The forms resemble human bodies, yet they have no faces. The heads of the forms are created from coiled, hard textured material and the bodies are similarly constructed of coiled material, arranged into torsos, arms and legs. The scale of the figures is about double the size of an average person and the are arranged about a half of a figure length apart from each other. The figure on the left appears to have its head tilted to the sky, while the center figure faces to the right, where the third figure bends lightly towards the ground, hand upraised. The bright color of the figures contrasts with urban scene in the background: behind the figures a black fence, green leafy trees and tall gray buildings are visible. The sky is bright blue and the bright light of mid-day casts sharp shadows below the figures.
On viewAndres Serrano, Nomads (Payne), 1990
On viewErin Shirreff, Sculpture for Snow, 2011
1. Short A matte black geometric sculpture juts out from the snowy ground. Two of its faces, one square and one triangular, are perfectly covered by a white layer of snow.
On viewYinka Shonibare CBE (RA), Alien Obsessives, Mum, Dad and the Kids, 1998
1. Short Two types of alien stand in four groups of two. The two largest of each alien type stand together. The smaller ones mingle with their foreign alien counterparts. One alien type is yellow, red, and lanky, has eyes on stalks, and stands on a dark blue circle; the other is green, red, and short, has black glossy oval eyes, and stands on a red circle.
On viewNedko Solakov, A Life (Black and White), 1998-present
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On viewThomas Struth, Familia Shimada Yamaguchi 1986 (The Shimada Family Yamaguchi), 1989
On viewTakis, Magnetic Mobile, c. 1964
On viewGillian Wearing, Self Portrait at Three Years Old, 2004
1. Short A young, dark-haired child in a white shirt looks into the camera against a grey background. The skin around the child's eyes seems a slightly rougher texture than that on the rest of its face.
On viewCarrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Black Love), 1992
Image not available
On viewEric Wesley, DPS #9 (Pomegranate), 2014
1. Short An official-looking document entitled "DAILY PROGRESS STATUS REPORT" is stained in the upper-left corner with a purple splatter.

Gloved hands review a 4x5 color transparency and a roll of 35mm black and white film over a light box with a viewing loupe.

To request images—including exhibition installation views and permanent collection works—or MCA-created text or media, fill out a media and image application.

Short Gloved hands review a 4x5 color transparency and a roll of 35mm black and white film over a light box with a viewing loupe.

Works that are titled Untitled

Short A blue-and-white graph shaped like a ring with one-sixth solid and the rest checkered is titled "As on Nov 2015."