Jarl Mohn Makes Major Gift of Contemporary Art to 3 L.A. Museums

Jarl Mohn, the former CEO of NPR and head of E! Entertainment Television, has made a major gift of Los Angeles contemporary art to the city’s Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The collection that encompasses 260 artworks will be jointly owned and managed by the three institutions. The gift comes from the substantial art collection owned by Mohn and his wife, Pamela Mohn.

Jarl Mohn served as CEO of NPR from 2014-2019. He steered the E! Channel during heady growth years for cable, from 1990-1998.

The Mohn collection has been largely amassed over the last 19 years. It includes paintings, sculptures and mixed-media works by Los Angeles-based artists. In addition to the donation, the Mohns will establish an endowment for annual acquisitions as well as expenses related to the ongoing care and storage of the collection.
 
The joint effort by the three museums has been dubbed the Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA, or MAC3 for short. In addition to the Mohns’ gift, the Hammer Museum plans to enhance the MAC3 collection with 80 works previously acquired by the museum through its Made in L.A. biennials since 2012. Curators from the three institutions gathered to make the collection’s first joint acquisitions, unanimously selecting 16 works from “Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living.” In total, the MAC3 collection amounts to 356 artworks to date.
 
The co-owned collection establishes “a groundbreaking model for institutional collaboration and commitment to directly supporting the artist communities of Los Angeles. The gift will enable the three institutions to actively and collectively acquire works by L.A. artists on an annual basis, with acquisitions chosen jointly by curatorial teams from all three museums. Every other year, those acquisitions will come directly out of future editions of the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial. During the alternating, non-biennial years, curators from the three institutions will work together to identify works for acquisition by visiting studios, exhibitions, and more to inform their ongoing discussions. The full collection will be available to each institution for display and will prioritize a lending program to encourage the works’ display at other museums around the world,” the museum troika explained in announcing the Mohn gift.
 
The existing Mohn Collection includes works by more than 125 Los Angeles-based artists, including many who have appeared in one of the six editions of Made in L.A. to date, such as Aria Dean, rafa esparza, Lauren Halsey, Luchita Hurtado, Arthur Jafa, Silke Otto-Knapp, Analia Saban, Martine Syms and Kandis Williams. Some items of the donated art collection are said to be pop culture-friendly, with works by artists above and beyond those included in past biennials, including important works by artists Karon Davis, Mark Grotjahn, Rodney McMillian, Cauleen Smith and more.

(Pictured: “Bloods II,” a 2020 work by Arthur Jafa included in the Mohns’ gift)