News / Ed Ruscha / Events

Art for a Safe and Healthy California is a benefit exhibition and auction presented by Jane Fonda, Gagosian, and Christie’s to support Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California. Artworks donated by artists including Charles Gaines, Frank Gehry, Alex Israel, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Catherine Opie, Christina Quarles, Ed Ruscha, Jonas Wood, among others, will be sold to help the coalition of voters campaigning to stop oil companies attempting to repeal Governor Gavin Newsom’s SB1137 on the November ballot. The bill provides safe setbacks from oil wells for homes, parks, schools, and playgrounds, as well as requirements to make already pumping wells safer.

The benefit launches on April 9 with a ticketed fundraiser in Beverly Hills hosted by Jane Fonda, Larry Gagosian, Aileen Getty, and Susan and Mark Buell, with cohosts Edythe Broad, Frank Gehry, Wendy and Eric Schmidt, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, and Sean Penn. Highlighted artworks will be on view. A selection of works will be auctioned in the Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale during their marquee sale week in May, while another group of works will be presented for sale in an exhibition in summer 2024 at the Beverly Hills gallery.

Monday, April 8, 2024
Tribeca 360, New York
bombmagazine.org

Bomb magazine’s annual gala and benefit art auction will celebrate its forty-second anniversary in New York on April 8, and honor art luminaries including Cecilia Alemani and Deana Lawson. The auction benefits Bomb, a nonprofit that has been publishing conversations between artists from all disciplines since 1981. This year’s auction will be hosted on Artsy through April 9 and features work by eleven artists including Ed Ruscha.

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Online auction: February 13–27, 2024
Live auction: February 27, 2024

This online benefit auction, hosted by Sotheby’s for the Iovine and Young Center for High School Education, features eleven donated works by contemporary artists including Jennifer Guidi and Ed Ruscha. The Iovine and Young Center is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and all proceeds from the sale will directly support its educational programming and contribute to the advancement of its impactful initiatives.

Tuesday, October 3, 2023, 7:30pm
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
hammer.ucla.edu

Join the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles for a screening of the 3D documentary Westermann: Memorial to the Idea of Man If He Was an Idea (2023), which tells the story of artist, combat veteran, and acrobat H. C. (Cliff) Westermann, whose dramatic history can be traced through the surreal artworks he made to process the horrors he witnessed on the front lines of the Korean War. The film was directed by Leslie Buchbinder and features narration by Ed Harris, as well as interviews with Frank Gehry and Ed Ruscha, among others. The event will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Buchbinder, Gehry, and Ruscha, and is free to attend.

May 24–June 8, 2023

This online benefit auction for Printed Matter features over sixty donated artworks—some of which were created especially for the fundraiser—by contemporary artists, including Richard Artschwager, Piero Golia, Adam McEwen, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, and Jonas Wood. Proceeds from the auction, which is hosted by Artsy, will support the nonprofit organization’s mission to further the distribution, understanding, and appreciation of artist’s books and related publications.

Launching May 22, 2023, 10am edt

Limited-edition bone china plates produced by Prospect and featuring artwork by more than forty artists—including Virgil Abloh, Derrick Adams, Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Amoako Boafo, Mark Grotjahn, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Anna Weyant, and Jonas Wood—will be sold through Artware Editions to raise funds for the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. The funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed one hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers.

Launching November 16, 2021, 10am est

Limited-edition bone china plates produced by Prospect and featuring artwork by more than forty artists—including Virgil Abloh, Urs Fischer, Helen Frankenthaler, Alex Israel, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Ed Ruscha, Sarah Sze, Tom Wesselmann, Jonas Wood, and Christopher Wool—will be sold through Artware Editions to raise funds for the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. The funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed one hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers.

April 28–May 12, 2021

Venice Family Clinic presents its annual benefit auction, a fundraising event whose proceeds will provide essential health care services to people in the community regardless of their income, immigration, or insurance status. Since its inception forty years ago, this charity event has raised more than $23 million. This year’s auction, hosted on Artsy, is honoring Mary Weatherford as the “signature artist” and features more than two hundred works by nationally recognized contemporary artists, including Piero Golia, Ed Ruscha, Robert Therrien, as well as Weatherford. To register to bid, visit artsy.net.

Monday, December 14, 2020, 2pm EST (11am PST)

As part of Gagosian’s Building a Legacy program, Andrew Perchuk, deputy director at the Getty Research Institute, and Rani Singh, director of special projects at Gagosian, will take viewers through the interactive website 12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive. Launched by the Getty in October 2020, the site allows users to browse more than sixty-five thousand photographs of Sunset Boulevard taken by Ed Ruscha between 1965 and 2007. The photographs are drawn from Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles Archive at the Getty, which presents a unique view of one of LA’s quintessential streets over the past fifty years. The pair will discuss how the Getty acquired the archive, the digitization and website creation processes, and the importance of this collection in understanding the artist’s oeuvre. To conclude, cultural historian Josh Kun will speak about the musical legacy of Sunset Boulevard and discuss a few of Ruscha’s photographs with an accompanying song to reveal the music behind each location. To join, register at zoom.us.

October 15, 2020–March 23, 2021

The benefit exhibition Ice and Fire features works by more than forty artists who have enduring relationships with the Kitchen in New York. Installed within the organization’s three-story space in Chelsea, which is currently closed due to the global pandemic, the three-part exhibition is viewable online. Proceeds from sales will go toward a planned renovation on the occasion of the Kitchen’s fiftieth anniversary, ensuring that the nonprofit space will remain a platform for artistic experimentation in its historic and beloved building. Work by Cecily Brown, Roe Ethridge, Mark Grotjahn, Alex Israel, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, Mary Weatherford, and Christopher Wool is included.

November 30, 2020–January 31, 2021
gagosian-deitch.com

Gagosian is pleased to announce The Future, the sixth in a series of annual thematic exhibitions presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch during Art Basel Miami Beach. Previously staged at the historic Moore Building in the Miami Design District, this year the collaborative project will be hosted on a new stand-alone website.

November 16–December 14, 2020

Gagosian is pleased to support the Coalition for the Homeless’s Artist Plate Project fundraiser. Artwork by fifty artists, including Cecily Brown, Katharina Grosse, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Sarah Sze, Andy Warhol, Jonas Wood, and Christopher Wool, is featured on limited-edition dinner plates produced by Prospect and made available through Artware Editions to support the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. All of the funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed seventy-five homeless and hungry New Yorkers.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 9pm edt

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presents its biennial art auction, a fundraising event featuring both live and silent auctions hosted by Artsy. Donated works by early career and internationally recognized artists, including Sterling Ruby and Ed Ruscha, will be available. All proceeds support MCASD exhibitions and acquisitions. The live auction begins at 9pm edt on October 14, and the silent auction closes on October 15 at 8pm edt. To register to bid for both auctions, visit artsy.net.

October 2–8, 2020

Artists for Biden is an online-only sale of works by leading contemporary artists to support the Biden Victory Fund—a joint fundraising committee authorized by Biden for President, the Democratic National Committee, and forty-seven state Democratic parties. All proceeds from the sale will provide resources needed to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and support other Democratic candidates across the country in the lead up to Election Day. Work by Cecily Brown, Michael Heizer, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Sze, Stanley Whitney, and Christopher Wool will be available. To register for early access on October 1, visit secure.joebiden.com.

September 15–29, 2020

The nonprofit visual art space LAXART is hosting a benefit auction, featuring works by Katharina Grosse, Jennifer Guidi, and Ed Ruscha. Proceeds will help the organization continue its mission to promote emerging and under-recognized talent and engage with key issues of our time through exhibitions, publications, and public programs. The live auction begins at 5pm edt on September 15 on Artsy. The works will also be available for viewing at LAXART by appointment beginning September 15. To register to bid, visit artsy.net.

Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue: Drawings 1974–1984 is available for online reading from September 16 through October 15 as part of the From the Library series. Published on the occasion of the artist’s 2017 exhibition at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York, this catalogue features over seventy-five text drawings by Ruscha, rendered in pastel, dry pigment, and various edible substances. An essay by Lisa Turvey, editor of the Ed Ruscha catalogue raisonné of works on paper, examines the artist’s use of humor in this body of work.

You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
—Timothy Leary

Gagosian is pleased to present Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video, an online exhibition of artists’ films and videos viewable exclusively on gagosian.com. The exhibition will be organized into a series of “chapters,” each lasting two weeks. The first chapter begins on Tuesday, May 19, 2020.

Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video employs the innate immediacy of time-based art to spark reflection on the here and now, taking the words of famed psychologist and countercultural icon Timothy Leary as its starting point. 

Thursday, March 5, 2020, 6:30pm
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London

Join Gagosian for a tour of the group exhibition American Pastoral. The show juxtaposes modern and contemporary works with historical American landscapes ranging from Albert Bierstadt’s depiction of the sublime in Sunset over the River (1877) to Edward Hopper’s tranquil seaside scene, Gloucester Harbor (1926). Gagosian’s Alice Godwin will focus on a select grouping of exhibited works that seek to challenge the idealized vision of the American Dream that has long been a rich topic of inquiry for artists in the United States. To attend the free event, RSVP to londontours@gagosian.com. Space is limited.

Opening reception: Tuesday, December 3, 5–8pm
December 4–8, 2019
Moore Building, Miami

Gagosian is pleased to announce The Extreme Present, the fifth in a series of annual exhibitions at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District during Art Basel Miami Beach, presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch. The Extreme Present will explore artists’ reactions to the conditions of our accelerating and increasingly complex world. The title is inspired by The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, a book by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, published in 2015. Their provocative thesis addresses the rapidly evolving digital era, half a century after Marshall McLuhan’s groundbreaking study on technology’s influence on culture, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in which he coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Works in this exhibition explore concepts of media, communication, togetherness, and isolation.

Download the full press release (PDF)

Opening reception: Saturday, October 12, 6:30–8pm
October 12–20, 2019
Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées, Paris
galerieslafayettechampselysees.com

In celebration of FIAC in Paris, Gagosian is pleased to collaborate with Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées on a two-floor pop-up takeover featuring products related to Gagosian artists. On the first floor, the Coin Culture section will feature catalogues, posters, apparel, and audio productions. The second floor, the Library, will house an additional selection of limited-edition books, publications, and catalogues raisonnés.

Download the full press release in English (PDF) or French (PDF)

Friday, February 15, 2019, 6:30–8pm
Paramount Theatre, Los Angeles
frieze.com

As part of the curated film program for Frieze Los Angeles, Tom Sachs’s Paradox Bullets (2018), directed by Van Neistat and narrated by Werner Herzog, will be screened in the historic Paramount Theatre. The short film follows a man, played by Ed Ruscha, who loses his keys in the Mojave Desert and has to use nine bullets, or rules, to get home. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Sachs, Herzog, and Neistat, moderated by Frieze editorial director, Jennifer Higgie. The event is free with fair admission.

January 14–18, 2019, 10am–6pm
USC School of Architecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
arch.usc.edu

The five-day pop-up screening showcases Premium (1971) and Miracle (1975), two rare films made by Ed Ruscha. Both films, featuring Ruscha’s signature deadpan humor and keen translation of the contemporary American condition, offer an exploration of storytelling and the conventional narrative codes of Hollywood. The event is free and open to the public.

Saturday, October 20, 2018, 6:30pm
Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles
www.sexybeast.org

The Sexy Beast Gala is an evening of art and activism benefitting Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. The event will include performances, a silent auction, a pop-up shop, and more. To attend the event, purchase tickets at www.sexybeast.org.

Friday, June 8, 2018, 6:30–7:30pm
National Gallery, London
www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Ed Ruscha has shaped the way we see the American landscape over the span of his influential six-decade career. Hear him discuss his upcoming exhibition, Ed Ruscha: Course of Empire, opening at the National Gallery on June 11, with Christopher Riopelle, the museum’s Neil Westreich curator of post-1800 paintings. To attend the event, purchase tickets at www.nationalgallery.org.uk.