The Los Angeles County Museum of Art closed its grand opening weekend and block party with a first for Los Angeles: the Art Parade, a sprawling procession that transformed Wilshire Boulevard into a moving canvas in front of the museum’s David Geffen Galleries.
New York art dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch created the concept of the Art Parade 20 years ago and was behind its L.A. debut, which served as the capstone of the museum’s opening celebration.
The parade drew more than 1,400 artists featuring over 146 projects into a single procession. Mobile sculptures, elaborate costumes, hand-painted banners, oversized inflatables and movement-based performance pieces filled the street, turning the boulevard into what organizers described as a living gallery.
The parade followed a full day of free museum access and family programming, and it was presented by the East West Bank Foundation, which also backed the day’s block party, as part of its broader commitment to expanding access to arts and cultural programming across Los Angeles.
A ‘biennial event’
Deitch staged his first iterations of the Art Parades in New York City between 2005 and 2008, envisioning “the parade as an art medium,” he said in an interview with Flaunt magazine.
“I love the tradition of Carnival in Rio and the Love Parade in Berlin. So (the Art Parade) is a natural extension of my interest in art that’s inclusive and connects with the public,” he told Flaunt.
The grand opening weekend, aligned with the Art Parade, held particular significance for the region, given the city’s turn in hosting the global attention of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which started on June 12. The 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games are on the horizon.
For the museum, the procession offered a preview of the kind of large-scale public spectacle LACMA hopes to keep staging on its expanded campus, where new plazas and street-level space were specifically designed to accommodate exactly this kind of programming.
“We’re going to make this a biennial event and are already starting to gear up for 2028,” Deitch said in his interview.
