On Saturday November 2, 2024, notables from the art, film, fashion, and entertainment industries will gather at LACMA for its thirteenth annual Art+Film Gala. LACMA will honor artist Simone Leigh, whose multifaceted practice situates questions of Black female-identified subjectivity at the center of contemporary art discourse, along with the visionary auteur Baz Luhrmann. LACMA trustee Eva Chow and actor Leonardo DiCaprio will co-chair the event for the thirteenth consecutive year.
Past honorees of the Art+Film Gala include artists Judy Baca, Helen Pashgian, Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, Betye Saar, Catherine Opie, Mark Bradford, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Barbara Kruger, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, and John Baldessari, and filmmakers David Fincher, Park Chan-wook, Steven Spielberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, George Lucas, Kathryn Bigelow, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, and Clint Eastwood.
Proceeds from the annual Art+Film Gala go toward underwriting 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.
The Art+Film Gala is once again made possible by Gucci’s longstanding and generous support.
For more information about tickets and table sales, contact @email or 323 857-4770.
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About Simone Leigh
Over the last 20 years Simone Leigh has created a multi-faceted body of work incorporating sculpture, video, and installation, all informed by her ongoing exploration of Black female-identified subjectivity. Leigh describes her work as auto-ethnographic, and her ceramic and bronze sculptures often employ forms traditionally associated with African art. Leigh first began exhibiting her work in the early 2000s and she has had one-person museum exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. In 2014 she presented The Free People’s Medical Clinic in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, a project commissioned by Creative Time. Her work was included in the 2012 and 2019 Biennial exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and she is the first artist to be commissioned for the High Line Plinth; her monumental sculpture Brick House was unveiled in April 2019. In 2022, Leigh represented the United States at the 59th Venice Biennale with her exhibition Simone Leigh: Sovereignty. Her work was also included in the Biennale’s central exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, for which she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Participant. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the ICA/Boston, among others.
About Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann is a pioneer of pop culture working across film, opera, theater, live events, fashion, and music. His singular cinematic language continues to captivate audiences through a unique fusion of classical artistry and bold, contemporary style that has ignited imaginations around the world and made Luhrmann the most commercially successful director in Australia.
The first of his Red Curtain Trilogy, Strictly Ballroom, premiered at the 1992 Cannes Festival, and was followed by William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) and the Academy Award–winning Moulin Rouge! (2001). With these films, Luhrmann brought the movie-musical back into the zeitgeist with his infectious theatrical aesthetic and operatic sense of romance. Luhrmann’s La Bohème (2002) went on to garner two Tony Awards, followed by the Academy Award–nominated Australia (2008) and his now-iconic Academy Award–winning The Great Gatsby (2013). Collaborating with Jay-Z on the Gatsby soundtrack, Luhrmann redefined cross-genre music in film, with the album setting a new record for the biggest digital sales week for a soundtrack in Billboard history. Always pushing the boundaries of genre, Luhrmann collaborated with Netflix on his critically acclaimed series, The Get Down (2016), and recently created the six-part Hulu series Faraway Downs. Luhrmann’s latest film, Elvis (2022), became his most nominated film to date, while also winning four BAFTAs and 11 AACTAs. The film’s Grammy-nominated soundtrack was produced by Luhrmann through his label House of Iona.
Image credits: Simone Leigh, photo by Shaniqwa Jarvis, Baz Luhrmann, photo by Trent Mitchell.