Click to skip to site content
Long Story Short

Patrick Martinez, Struggle and Progress (Frederick Douglass), 2018, neon on plexiglas, 30 × 40 inches (76.2 × 101.6 cm). The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Gift of Wonmi Kwon and Nancy Kwon Merrihew in honor of Johanna Burton.

Long Story Short

Long Story Short presents artworks dating from the 1940s to the present day, drawn from MOCA’s world-renowned, ever-growing collection of more than 7,500 objects. It demonstrates the myriad ways contemporary artists have addressed aesthetic, political, and philosophical concerns in the last seventy-five years, whether by innovating new forms of abstract art, commemorating loves and losses, rethinking the conventions of portraiture, or challenging the secondary status of craft. By exhibiting artworks that are widely regarded as hallmarks of the museum’s collection alongside lesser-known pieces, recent acquisitions, and artworks that have never previously been on view at MOCA, Long Story Short reminds us that art history, and history more broadly, is made in the present.

Long Story Short is organized by Anna Katz, Curator, with Paula Kroll and Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistants, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with generous funding provided by Jordan S. Goodman + The Goodman Family Foundation and The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation.

This exhibition is carbon calculated. The museum reduced greenhouse gas emissions through planning efforts and balanced the remaining emissions through Strategic Climate Fund donations. Support provided by the MOCA Environmental Council.