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Michael Asher

Michael Asher, The Temporary Contemporary, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA, In Context, November 1983–July 1985. Sign with inscription “The Michael Asher Lobby” installed in the lobby of the museum. Photograph by Michael Asher. Michael Asher Archive, © Michael Asher Foundation.

Michael Asher

Over a career spanning six decades, Michael Asher (1943–2012) played a pivotal role in developing conceptual art through site-specific interventions that made their surrounding context the active content of his work. Asher’s interrogations of these sites reveal the many ways art can critique and make visible the often unseen social, economic, and institutional structures that underpin the subjects it addresses.

This focused survey, first exhibited at Artists Space, New York, presents twenty works via their material elements, documentation, and an accompanying exhibition guide. In conjunction with the exhibition, MOCA will also present a selection of works from the permanent collection gifted to the museum by Asher, underscoring his enduring impact on the institution’s history.

While many of Asher’s projects left no trace, “fragments” exist for some, including distributed objects (household items, games, clothing, maps, and postcards) that were designed to circulate publicly. His practice also employed a broad range of 20th-century media and utilized their conventions of production and distribution—including film, television, radio, magazines, publications, advertising, and graphic identities. Among his many engagements with institutions, Asher intervened in branding and signage, patronage, as well as educational and curatorial responsibilities.

Produced for a specific time and place, Asher’s work intrinsically questions both the possibility and value of retrospective display. This exhibition draws on documentation and other resources from the artist’s extensive archive, alongside loans from friends and peers. While much of Asher’s work cannot be reconstituted, his wide-reaching methods and models offer pathways for understanding art’s relationship with broader systems of meaning.

Michael Asher is organized by Artists Space, New York and curated by Jay Sanders and Stella Cilman. The Los Angeles presentation is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Major support is provided by the Teiger Foundation.



Generous support is provided by Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa.

Additional support is provided by Karen Hillenburg.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with major funding provided by Tatiana Botton, The Goodman Family Foundation, Alfred E. Mann Charities, and Alicia Miñana and Robert Lovelace. Generous funding is provided by Michael and Zelene Fowler, The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation, Pamela and Jarl Mohn, Jonathan Segal, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, and Pamela West.