Museum · Brentwood
Getty Center
Richard Meier's travertine acropolis above the 405: old masters, photography and gardens.
Look for: Van Gogh's Irises.
Free · parking fee
Go further, look closer.
Cities · North America · 34°03′N 118°15′W
Los Angeles
Collections built on oil and film money, and the artists' studios that made LA the other capital of American art.
Best monthsFebruary (Frieze LA) and October–November
Art calendarFrieze Los Angeles (February) · Made in L.A. (Hammer, even years)
This guide7 essentials · 6 places off-piste
Essentials
Museum · Miracle Mile
LACMA
The county museum, with Peter Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries, opened in April 2026, spanning Wilshire Boulevard.
Look for: Chris Burden's Urban Light.
Closed Wednesdays
Museum · Westwood
Hammer Museum
UCLA's museum, free, with an Old Master collection, the Made in L.A. biennial and a strong programme of artists from the city.
Look for: The courtyard and its staircase.
Free · closed Mondays
Museum and garden · San Marino
The Huntington
Library, art collections and botanical gardens: Gainsborough's Blue Boy, and a desert garden.
Look for: The Desert Garden.
Closed Tuesdays
Museum · Downtown
The Broad
Eli and Edythe Broad's collection of postwar and contemporary art, free, in a honeycomb building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Look for: Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room, booked separately.
Free · book ahead
Museum · Downtown and Little Tokyo
MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art, in two buildings: Arata Isozaki's red sandstone museum on Grand Avenue (1986) and the Geffen Contemporary, a police-car warehouse in Little Tokyo converted by Frank Gehry.
Look for: The Geffen's open warehouse floor, made for work too big for anywhere else.
Free general admission
Galleries · Arts District · Highland Avenue
Downtown and Hollywood galleries
Hauser & Wirth in a former flour mill in the Arts District, and a strip of galleries along Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, where much of the younger scene shows.
Look for: Saturday afternoons, when the openings spill onto the pavement.
Off the list
Off-Piste in Los Angeles
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
Sculpture · Watts
Watts Towers
An Italian immigrant tile-setter, Simon Rodia, spent 33 years (1921–54) building seventeen towers alone from steel, cement, broken tiles, bottle glass and seashells.
The pressed patterns of tools and corn cobs in the cement.
Unusual museum · Culver City
Museum of Jurassic Technology
David Wilson's dark little museum of the strange and the possibly invented: micromosaics, trailer-park dioramas, a bat that flies through walls. You will not be sure what is true.
The rooftop tea room and its doves.
Architecture · West Hollywood
Schindler House
R. M. Schindler's house of 1922, built for two couples to share: concrete slabs, sliding canvas walls, sleeping baskets on the roof. Now the MAK Center.
The rooms opening straight onto the garden.
Architecture · Broadway, Downtown
Bradbury Building
An office building of 1893 with a skylit atrium of wrought iron, open cage lifts and glazed brick, where Blade Runner was filmed. The lobby is open to visitors.
The cage lifts, from the foot of the stairs.
Architecture · Hollywood Hills
Stahl House
Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #22 (1960), a glass box cantilevered over the city.
Book a tour at dusk.
Cemetery · Hollywood
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Film stars' tombs under palms, with film screenings on the lawn in summer.
A summer screening.
Now in Los Angeles · November 2026
Roy Lichtenstein: Like New
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York · until 10 May 2027
Paul R. Williams: Architect for Living
LACMA, Los Angeles · 15 Nov 2026 – 31 May 2027
Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu of Encounters, The Dream of Water
MOCA, Los Angeles · 15 Nov 2026 – 6 Jun 2027
Julian Charrière: Deep End
MOCA, Los Angeles · From 15 Nov 2026
See the full selection →Nearby
Getty Villa
Greek and Roman antiquities in a copy of a Roman villa above the ocean in Malibu; free, book a slot.
Palm Springs
Mid-century modern houses and the desert, about two hours east.
If you have one day
Getty Center at opening → lunch on the terrace → LACMA and Urban Light → the Museum of Jurassic Technology → dinner in Culver City.