LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announces six new acquisitions for its permanent collection during the museum’s 39th Collectors Committee fundraiser. Led by Collectors Committee Chair Ann Colgin and Co-Chair Mary Solomon, the event took place over two days and included art presentations by LACMA curators, private dinners in the homes of museum supporters, and a gala dinner. This year, 62 members raised over $2.5 million for art acquisitions. The 2025 event was generously sponsored by Cartier.

Funds for artwork acquisitions were raised through Collectors Committee membership dues, with additional funds provided by The Buddy Taub Foundation, Stephanie and Dennis Roach, Directors; Kelvin Davis and Hana Davis; Sarah de Blasio; The Law-Warschaw Foundation; Jackie and Jeff Schaffer; The Walske Foundation; and an anonymous donor. A live auction, conducted by LACMA trustee Viveca Paulin-Ferrell, added additional funds for acquisitions.

“This weekend always brings together a deeply committed community of LACMA supporters, and we’re so grateful for their generosity toward the museum’s collection, especially at such a monumental moment in the museum’s history,” said Colgin.

“So many people contribute to making this event possible,” added Mary Solomon. “Our deep appreciation goes to all the donors who have contributed to this incredible weekend, and the extraordinary chefs, vintners, and others who donated their time and talents.”

“The contributions of the Collectors Committee continue to have a profound effect on the collection,” said LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan. “From 15th-century textile innovations to contemporary iconographies of resistance, this year’s acquisitions will play key roles in a wide array of narratives, and will help bring our new vision for the David Geffen Galleries to life.”

Collectors Committee Weekend

Since 1986, Collectors Committee weekend has been one of the museum’s most important fundraising events and continues to enable major acquisitions for every area of its encyclopedic collection. This year’s event brings the number of acquisitions made through the event to 272, with donations nearly $54 million.

The weekend began with members attending one of five dinners in the homes of LACMA trustees and patrons on Friday, April 25, prepared in person by renowned chefs and paired with wines from notable vintners.

Friday night’s dinners were prepared by Josiah Citrin (Charcoal Venice, Citrin, Mélisse); Evan Funke (Funke, Felix, Mother Wolf, Tre Dita); Mei Lin (88 Club, Daybird); Travis Passerotti (Marea Beverly Hills); and Gregorio Stephenson (Nobu Malibu).

With pairings by Ann Colgin and Joe Wender (Colgin Cellars); Amanda Harlan Maltas and Max Kast (BOND); Timothy Irwin (Penfolds); Christopher and Ariel Jackson (Vérité Winery); Armand de Maigret (Bonneau du Martray); and Mary Margaret McCamic (Screaming Eagle).

On the morning of Saturday, April 26, members attended a viewing of the proposed artworks at LACMA followed by curator presentations. At the Collectors Committee gala that evening, committee members voted to select which artworks to acquire.
Guests at the gala enjoyed a special dinner prepared by chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Jon & Vinny’s, and Patina Catering. Beverages were provided by FIJI Water and POM Wonderful. Champagne provided by Maison Ruinart.

For every Collectors Committee, an artist whose work is in LACMA’s collection creates an edition for committee members who donate at the highest levels. This year, artist Todd Gray created a limited-edition print titled Other Tellings (Fontainebleau) (2025).

Acquired Artworks

The 2025 Collectors Committee made possible the following acquisitions:
A group of six works by Chiura Obata, Tokio Ueyama, and Miné Okubo represents a historic acquisition for LACMA, as the first by each of the artists to be purchased by the museum. Based in California, Obata, Ueyama, and Okubo played an influential role in the development of American modernism, experimenting with innovative styles, subjects, and techniques. Working during the Exclusion Era (1882–1965), all three artists were unjustly incarcerated during World War II following Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. The six works—Obata’s Eagle Peak Trail (1930) and Untitled (Cliff with Lone Tree) (1945); Ueyama’s Creeping Shadows (1924) and Untitled (Still Life with Persimmons) (c. 1924); and Okubo’s Untitled (Portrait Head) (c. 1937) and Sunday Morning (1937)—stand as testaments to the artists’ accomplishments and creative resiliency in the face of xenophobia and racial discrimination.

Gift of Kelvin Davis and Hana Davis through the 2025 Collectors Committee

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1624–26) is a rediscovered painting by Virginia Vezzi, also known as Virginia da Vezzo, whose story is a typical one for a female artist in the early years of the 1600s. Despite her success as a painter in Rome and Paris, her reputation was ignored by contemporary chroniclers and then ultimately lost to the writers of art history in the centuries that followed. Only in the past few decades have details of her life been pieced together, and along with them, her artistic accomplishments. Her facility with a brush is on display in Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the translucent white cloth that rests on the saint’s shoulders, the sparkle of jewels on her neckline, and the billow of her gold dress. Given the scarcity of works attributed to this accomplished artist, LACMA will be the only museum in the world to have a portrait by her husband, Simon Vouet, next to one of her own.

Gift of the 2025 Collectors Committee

Sea of Buddha 049 (Triptych) (1995) is one in a series of 49 photographs depicting 1,001 Buddhist statues at a temple commonly known as Sanjūsangendō (Hall of Thirty-three Bays) in Kyoto. In this work, Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto captures the statues as religious icons and embodiments of time, memory, and transcendence. Sugimoto views the collective presence of these seemingly identical figures as a form of “conceptual art” from 12th-century Japan. Different from photographers who capture a split second, Sugimoto uses an 8 × 10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures to create works that embody an extended period and are naturally contemplative. Culminating ideas expressed in Sugimoto’s earlier work, Sea of Buddha unites a sense of infinity with the concept of salvation, and explores the tenuous line between life and death.

Gift of the 2025 Collectors Committee

Manuel de Arellano’s Creole Woman from the City of Guadalajara and Creole Man from Mexico City (c. 1710) are groundbreaking precursors of the famous casta (caste) paintings—an 18th-century pictorial genre invented in Mexico to depict biracial families. They are exceptional in terms of their execution, innovative subject, and place in the history of 18th-century Mexican painting. The figures wear a combination of local and European clothing, including the man’s elegant European three-piece suit, and the woman’s exquisite Indigenous blouse (huipil). Intended for export to Europe, the works are the first to codify Mexico’s diverse population and ingenious sartorial practices.

Gift of the 2025 Collectors Committee and anonymous donor

The Mary Hunt Kahlenberg Collection consists of 101 Indonesian textiles of great historical and artistic importance that display a wide array of geometric, figurative, and abstract designs produced by meticulous, time-consuming techniques such as warp- and weft-resist dyeing (ikat), wax-resist dyeing (batik), and gold leaf patterning (perada). Seven of the earliest known extant Indonesian radiocarbon-dated textiles from the early 15th to the third quarter of the 17th century are included in the collection, along with 18th- to early 20th-century heirloom, ceremonial, and sacred textiles. Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, who spent nearly four decades assembling this private collection, served as head of LACMA’s Costume and Textiles Department from 1969 to 1978 and curated the first Indonesian textile exhibition organized by an American art museum.

Gift of the 2025 Collectors Committee with additional funds from Jackie and Jeff Schaffer

Considered the most important German artist of his time, Max Beckmann created only eight sculptures among his extensive oeuvre of more than 1,000 paintings and works on paper. Beckmann was widely celebrated and collected until 1933 when the Nazis came to power and subsequently launched an aggressive campaign attacking modern art. Known for creating over 80 self-portraits—more than any artist since Rembrandt—Beckmann modeled the over-life-size Self-Portrait in his Berlin studio in 1936 shortly before fleeing Germany for Amsterdam where he remained during the war. Beckmann depicts his highly recognizable visage—large, round head, receding hairline, and intensely focused eyes—which confidently commands the viewer’s attention. The broad, expressive mouth, its corners turned down, seems poised to speak a weighty truth. The eyes, coolly fixed on the distance, reveal the reserved gaze of an observer, not of a man of action. The sculpture’s heft alone testifies to a vital force that is hard to suppress. Self-Portrait joins the museum’s distinguished collection of German Expressionism and will go on view shortly in the modern galleries in BCAM.

Gift of the 2025 Collectors Committee with additional funds provided by The Buddy Taub Foundation, Stephanie and Dennis Roach, Directors, The Law-Warschaw Foundation, and The Walske Foundation