Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

The collection galleries at MCASD highlight the diverse historical holdings and ongoing commitment to the art of our present moment. It embraces artistic innovations from the mid-twentieth century to today with a focus on the ongoing legacies of abstraction in arts of the Americas and Europe.

In 1969, MCASD devoted itself to the acquisition and exhibition of twentieth-century art, collecting new works by artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Miriam Shapiro, Larry Bell, and Agnes Martin. Now, almost sixty years later, the collection has grown to represent the increasing multiplicity of contemporary art, taking an expansive look across time periods and national borders.

In addition to MCASD's permanent collection, this gallery features work by Sahar Khoury and Sergio Miguel as part of Prospect 2026. 

Learn more about Khoury's work here.

Learn more about Miguel's work here.

Notable installations by Vito Acconci (1940-2017) and Gary Simmons (b. 1964) anchor a new display of MCASD’s collection that also includes works by Amy Adler (b. 1966), Sadie Barnette (b. 1984), Rafael Canogar (b. 1935), and Allen Sekula (1951–2013).

Acconci’s Instant House (1980) will be displayed in MCASD for the first time since its recent presentation at The Broad in Los Angeles.

With allusions to labor, play, war and peace, the works on view evoke memories of an American past. Acconci’s interactive sculpture, assembled from multiple cloth flags, combines youthful memories playhouses and park swings into an adult meditation on global politics. Nearly erased from view, an isolated gazebo haunts Simmon’s massive blackboard drawing.

Starting June 11, this gallery will also feature works by Tania Franco Klein as part of Prospect 2026. Learn more about the works here.

In addition to MCASD's permanent collection, this gallery features a work by Candice Lin as part of Prospect 2026. Learn more about the work here.

In addition to our permanent collection works by Teresita Fernández, Byron Kim, Maya Lin, Ana Mendieta, Robert Smithson, and Mary Weatherford, Marshall Gallery also features works by Dionne Lee as part of Prospect 2026. Learn more about the works here.

Can light be a medium of art? In the 1960s and 70s, a group of loosely-associated artists working in and around Los Angeles began exploring that very question. This artistic movement of Light and Space investigated the varied methods of directing natural and artificial light, as well as the spectrum of light's perceptual properties. 

Featured in Pfister Gallery, Larry Bell and Mary Corse explored the refractive ability of glass, working in different visual vocabularies, using the medium to direct, reflect, and diffuse light. Others, like Craig Kauffman and De Wain Valentine, employed Plexiglas, fiberglass, and resin in order to create what was called "Finish Fetish." This choice of materials was in part inspired by the industrial shine and gloss of Los Angeles's urban landscape.

Stanley and Pauline Foster Gallery, Meyer Gallery, and Krichman Family Gallery are dedicated to Robert Irwin (1928–2023), a key figure in the Light and Space Movement. The works comprise a brief survey of Irwin's artistic trajectory, ranging from his early formation in abstract expressionist painting to his now-iconic perceptual experiments with light. MCASD's relationship with the artist began in 1969, when the institution mounted his first museum exhibition. Today, with ten installations, eight paintings, seven sculptures, and thirty drawings by Irwin housed in the permanent collection, MCASD maintains the largest institutional holdings of the artist's work.

Beginning in the late 1950s, artistic experimentation moved towards an explicit concentration on color, line, and form. Painted, stained, pushed, and printed, color mindfully makes its way in and onto the artworks in Carson Royston Gallery through a diverse array of applications and artistic methods. Concurrent moments of abstraction proliferated in pockets of the country and in the artistic centers of New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Frank Stella’s hard edged geometric abstraction draws viewers’ attention to form with a uniquely shaped canvas, while Sam Francis uses opacity to explore the material properties of paint on paper. These varied abstractions gesturally bounce from the loose colorful brushwork of John Altoon and Al Held to the meticulous repetitive line work of minimalist painters like Max Cole.