what big art pieces are in the LA museum of art
LACMA has several big, well-known pieces , both outdoors and inside the museum. The most famous are Chris Burden’s Urban Light and Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass , plus large indoor works like Richard Serra’s Band and Tony Smith’s Smoke.
Big pieces to know
- Urban Light by Chris Burden — the cluster of 202 restored street lamps outside the museum, and probably the most photographed work on campus.
- Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer — the massive 340-ton boulder installed over a walkway, one of LACMA’s signature outdoor pieces.
- Band by Richard Serra — a huge steel sculpture noted for its scale and presence inside BCAM.
- Smoke by Tony Smith — another monumental indoor work mentioned among the key large-scale pieces on view.
- Split-Rocker by Jeff Koons — a giant plant-covered sculpture near the museum’s outdoor area.
Other major works
LACMA also has a long list of major-name artists with significant holdings, including Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Monet, Degas, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Ed Ruscha. If you mean “big” as in physically large, the outdoor installations are the standout attractions; if you mean “important,” the museum’s collection is much broader and includes major works across modern, contemporary, and older art.
Easiest picks
If you only have time for a few, start with these:
- Urban Light.
- Levitated Mass.
- Band.
- Split-Rocker.
- The major modern galleries in BCAM and the new David Geffen Galleries.
The current LACMA campus also includes the new David Geffen Galleries, which now displays a large portion of the permanent collection in a major new building.