Los Angeles’ newest art museum, the Marciano Art Foundation, opens to the public Thursday, although reservations must be made in advance and tickets have already been sold out through the month of June.
The museum established by Guess co-founders Paul and Maurice Marciano is opening in the refurbished Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in the Wilshire Park section of Los Angeles, a short distance northwest of Koreatown, with tickets and parking free of charge. The brothers were reported to have bought the building for $8 million.
The collection boasts over 1,500 works by more than 200 artists dating from the 1990s to the present day, and includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations performance, digital and film work.
The museum will also feature a special exhibition though Sept. 17 called Jim Shaw: The Wig Museum. The artist’s first Los Angeles solo show incorporates actual backdrops and wigs from the old temple and “can be understood as a metaphor for the wig wearing Masonic and judiciary Anglo-Saxon power that is coming to an end.”
The museum received a mixed review from Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight, who wrote, “The Marciano Foundation would benefit from some deeply informed professional guidance.” Knight also called it “not exactly a museum,” but “merely a private collection open to the public.”
