The event, set in Little Tokyo, included a Taiko drum ensemble and the introduction of MOCA Legends honorees
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
“Theaster Gates is a force of nature,” said Johanna Burton, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, as she welcomed the artist and a roomful of guests to The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Little Tokyo for the organization’s annual gala on Saturday, May 31. This year’s celebration, in partnership with Bulgari, included tributes to three visionaries, called MOCA Legends, who helped shape the museum over the years. Burton began with Gates. “Artist, urbanist, archivist, musician, builder, preacher. His work shows us that art isn’t separate from the places we live or the people we live with,” she said, describing the Chicago-based artist and urban planner whose first West Coast solo museum show opened at MOCA in 2011.
Guests who arrived for the evening’s cocktail reception got a look at Olafur Eliasson: Open, an exhibition of large optical devices that reflect patterns and colors playing with perception and creating communal experiences, before Taikoproject’s Japanese drum ensemble, an organization also based in the neighborhood, performed. Gates, Eliasson, Ava DuVernay, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Karen Bass, Catherine Opie, Rubi Neri, Analia Saban, Jeffrey Deitch, Edythe Broad, Barbara Kruger, Doug Aitken, MOCA board chair Maria Seferian, MOCA board president Carolyn Clark Powers, Terri Smooke, Alex Israel, Max Hooper Schneider, Sarah Paulson, Jane Fonda, Jonas Wood, Liz Glynn, Ann Philibin, Andrea Bowers, Michael Govan, Charles Gaines, Laurie Lipton, Henry Taylor, Kelly Akashi, Lisa Edelstein, Zoë Ryan, Hamza Walker, Wendy and Eric Schmidt, Frank Gehry, and many more made their way toward tables for dinner.
Burton also addressed the other two inaugural MOCA Legends at the dinner, thanking philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, who established the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize, a nonprofit Burton credited with expanding the reach of the museum’s Environmental Council. Then she turned to architect Frank Gehry, the final honoree on hand for the evening. Calling him “an artist whose vision has literally reshaped our city, and the world,” she noted that he’s the mastermind behind the Little Tokyo space now known as the Geffen Contemporary and formerly called the Temporary Contemporary. She called his work for MOCA “a transformational renovation that blew open, and holds open still, the parameters for what a museum can be and do.”
The event, which raised $3.1 million in support of exhibitions, programming, and museum operations, also gave DuVernay a chance to reflect on Gates’ work and community building, Fonda a moment to honor Schmidt’s environmental stewardship, and Pelosi an opportunity to comment on Gehry’s transformation of urban landscapes before rapper and singer Tierra Whack took the stage followed by DJ Linafornia.
June 5, 2025
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