MOCA Los Angeles Will Close Its Pacific Design Center Location After Nearly 20 Years

The museum's satellite space in West Hollywood will close for good on February 24.

Installation by Jacob Hashimoto at the MOCA Pacific Design Center in 2014. Photo: Rochelle Brodin.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has announced plans to shutter its satellite space at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, which it has operated since 2001. Over the past nearly two decades, the space has hosted exhibitions of work by artists including Takashi Murakami, Catherine Opie, Jean Prouvé, William Kentridge, and Rick Owens. Moving forward, MOCA will return to being a two-venue, rather than three-venue, museum.

A joint statement from the museum and the design center stated that the “programming agreement between the two organizations has reached the end of its term.” Representatives for both organizations declined to comment on precisely when and how they arrived at the decision not to renew the agreement. It is unclear whether the decision was made before or after the arrival of the museum’s new director Klaus Biesenbach this past October.

The space will shutter after its current exhibition, “One Day at a Time: Kahlil Joseph’s Fly Paper,” closes on February 24.

In a statement, MOCA’s board chair Maria Seferian said the museum will consolidate its architecture and design program at its two downtown locations on Grand Avenue and at the Geffen Contemporary. “We are proud of MOCA’s record of achievement at the PDC,” she said.

The MOCA Pacific Design Center debuted in 2001 with a major exhibition of Japanese contemporary art, “Superflat,” curated by Takashi Murakami. The center, located on LA’s affluent West Side, was established by former MOCA director Jeremy Strick. Under the terms of the initial deal, according to a 2001 article in artnet Magazine, the building’s owner Charles Cohen would provide free use of the gallery as well as operating expenses, including the salary of the then-architecture and design curator Brooke Hodge. It is unclear if and how the terms of the agreement evolved over time.

“We have enjoyed a successful relationship with MOCA, and on behalf of our many showroom tenants in the design community, are appreciative of MOCA’s many wonderfully curated exhibitions,” Cohen, the owner of the PDC, said in a statement.


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