Old and New Dreams: Recent Acquisitions in a Collection highlights acquisitions made over the past two years, situating them in relation to hallmark historical examples from MOCA’s renowned collection. Recently added works by Camille Henrot, Ian Cheng, Essie Bendolph Pettway, and Trulee Hall, among many others, share space with canonical works across four distinct galleries, each oriented towards themes that have been present in MOCA’s Collection from its earliest days. These include figuration, as artist’s have pursued it in various media; representations of technological sentience; the intersection of geometric modernism and self-taught or vernacular art; and occultism in California art. Neither a full picture of MOCA’s recent collecting, nor a survey of its collection as a whole, the groupings are meant as case-studies from a history caught mid-stream.

Old and New Dreams: Recent Acquisitions in a Collection is organized by Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with generous funding provided by Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation and Nathalie Marciano and Julie Miyoshi.