Something monumental in art is in the works

A few museum exhibitions that opened in the summer are extending into the fall, so the post-Labor Day lineup for new visual art shows is not extravagant.

- CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT ART CRITIC

Still, a number of notable offerings are on the docket — although it’s disappointing that virtually all of it is Modern and contemporary. Global art’s history is on hiatus, narrowing the mix. Two standouts include one on the controversial topic of vandalized and decommissioned Confederate monuments at MOCA and the Brick, and the other is a full retrospective of the late Los Angeles-based artist Robert Therrien at the Broad. Here’s a selection of what’s coming up, in chronological order of their opening dates.

SEPT. 13-FEB. 15, 2026 TRANSGRESORAS: MAIL ART AND MESSAGES, 1960S-2020S California Museum of Photography

In the U.S., the emergence in the 1950s of the first lively American market for new art led to some artists developing strategies for getting around the limitations of galleries and commerce. In Latin America, meanwhile, artists often faced censorship. Mail art that could circulate through the post office was simultaneously invented in both places to serve those situations, as this intergenerational survey plans to explore.

SEPT. 14-JUNE 21, 2026 GROUNDED LACMA

Featuring 40 works, spanning the 1970s to today, by 35 artists based in the Americas and around the Pacific, “Grounded” continues LACMA’S ongoing emphasis on contemporary rather than historical art. The diverse work, primarily sculpture and installation, is billed as investigating “ecology, sovereignty, memory and home.”

SEPT. 20-JAN. 10, 2026 HABITAT: MAKING THE CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENT Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, UC Irvine

Between the late-19th century California genocide of Indigenous people and the state’s urban upsurge that took off in the 1920s, radical change came to the region's natural environment. Landscape paintings from the period will be examined through that vividly shifting lens.