New Abstracts showcases an expansive range of practices constituting abstract art today. Despite strong counter currents in the contemporary art world, such as the resurgence of figurative painting, innovations in augmented reality, and the development of NFTs, abstraction continues to offer rich possibilities for innovation and introspection. Many artists working with abstract vocabularies today interrogate not only the possibilities of color, material, gesture, and form, but also the potential for injecting abstract art with political, spiritual, or personal meaning.

LACMA has a long history of presenting abstract art, dating to the 1964 exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museum in Exposition Park. All of the works in New Abstracts are recent additions to the museum’s permanent collection, many on view for the first time since being acquired. Featured artists include Tanya Aguiñiga, Peter Bradley, Sarah Crowner, Jadé Fadojutimi, Marley Freeman, Channing Hansen, Naotaka Hiro, Alex Hubbard, and Lee Ufan.