LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced its 2016 Art+Film Gala on Saturday, October 29, 2016. Honoring pioneering Light and Space artist Robert Irwin and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, the event brings together notables from the art, film, fashion, and entertainment industries. LACMA trustee Eva Chow and actor Leonardo DiCaprio co-chair the Art+Film Gala for the sixth consecutive year, and Gucci once again provides its invaluable support as the presenting sponsor of the annual event, with Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele as Gala Host Committee Chair.

"Now in its sixth year, LACMA's Art+Film Gala has established its reputation as the touchstone annual event celebrating the intersection of art, film, and fashion,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. "The 2016 Art+Film Gala honorees, Robert Irwin and Kathryn Bigelow, are gifted artists who are fearless in their creative and social practice. Kathryn’s films are visually and thematically captivating and truly exemplify her singular vision as an artist. Bob is one of the most significant artists of our time. He creates art not of objects but of perception.”

Gala co-chair Eva Chow added, “I am thrilled to co-chair the Art+Film Gala with Leonardo DiCaprio for the sixth time. Each year, this event is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the profound impact of art and film in Los Angeles and beyond. It is a privilege to honor Robert Irwin and Kathryn Bigelow, two incredibly talented artists whose work reveals unique experiences and perspectives.”

Proceeds from the annual Art+Film Gala go toward supporting LACMA’s initiative to make film more central to the museum’s curatorial programming, while also funding LACMA’s broader mission. This includes exhibitions, acquisitions, and educational programming, in addition to screenings that explore the intersection of art and film. Last year’s Art+Film Gala, honoring James Turrell and Academy Award-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu raised over $4 million.

Robert Irwin
Southern California artist Robert Irwin was born in Long Beach, California in 1928 and spent significant time in Los Angeles where he became one of the pioneers of the L.A.-based “Light and Space” movement in the 1960s. For more than six decades, Robert Irwin has explored perception as the fundamental issue of art. Irwin, through a continual breaking down of the frame, came to regard the role of art as “conditional,” or something that works in and responds to the specific surrounding world of experience.

Irwin has conceived more than 55 site-conditional projects since 1975, ranging from the architectural and grounds design of Dia: Beacon (completed in 2003) to the lush Central Garden for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California (completed in 2005). At LACMA, Irwin began working on the Primal Palm Garden in 2010. This evolving installation is comprised of over a hundred palms, cycads, and tree ferns and includes rare and ancient plant species. Irwin’s use of “primal” varieties is a nod to the nearby La Brea Tar Pits and its ice age discoveries. Currently, the palm tree trunks and its surroundings are documented through 60 photographs by Philipp Scholz Ritterman, which are on view in the lobby area just inside the entrance to the Ahmanson Building.

LACMA has collected the work of Robert Irwin since the early 1960s and has consistently displayed the artist’s seminal works at the museum. In 2015, the museum acquired Irwin’s Miracle Mile, a site-specific installation currently on view in BCAM. Miracle Mile reconsiders the properties of light, material, and color and responds to both Wilshire Boulevard (the storied thoroughfare it faces) and Primal Palm Garden. In July 2016, Irwin debuted a new work, his largest–scale work to date, for the Chinati Foundation’s permanent collection. Additionally, a major survey of the artist’s work is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change (April 7–September 5, 2016), is the first exhibition devoted to Irwin’s work from 1960s and marks the first U.S. museum survey outside of California since 1977.

Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow is an artist of singular talent. As a film director/producer, she has crafted a body of work that challenges genre norms and offers viscerally stunning portraits of characters and conflicts resonant to contemporary culture.

Two-time Oscar winner Bigelow is currently in production on her Untitled Detroit Project, a crime drama which explores systemic racism in urban Detroit and is set against the backdrop of the city’s devastating riots that took place over five haunting summer days in 1967. The film is set to be released in 2017, which marks the 50th anniversary of the riots.

Bigelow previously directed and produced the critically acclaimed, multi-Oscarnominated Zero Dark Thirty. In 2010, The Hurt Locker earned her two Oscars, for Best Picture and Best Director. Chronicling an unseen side of the Iraq war while revealing the soul-numbing rigors of the modern battlefield, the film was hailed by Time’s Richard Corliss as “a near perfect movie,” and deemed “a classic of fear, tension and bravery which will still be studied twenty years from now,” by The New Yorker’s David Denby.

Originally trained as a painter, Bigelow graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute and was invited to study at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She then entered the graduate film program at Columbia University, where she earned her master’s degree. In 2011, MoMA honored Bigelow’s work in both film and the visual arts with a showcase and exhibition entitled Crafting Genre: Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow supports many environmental and animal welfare charities, in addition to the EOD Memorial Foundation, the Wounded Warrior Foundation, and the Naval Special Warfare Family Foundation. She also recently created the Public Service Announcement Last Days, which was awarded The Humane Society of the United States Genesis Award in 2015 for Outstanding Short Film. The award cited the "impactful story-telling to call critical attention to the link between terrorism and the ivory trade and its dire consequences for elephants.”

Bigelow will continue to shed light on the dangers of the ivory trade in The Protectors, a virtual reality short film co-created with Imraan Ismail for National Geographic. The project will expose the dangerous and grueling reality faced by rangers protecting African elephants from ivory poachers.