Twenty-One Shows and a New Museum Open This Fall. Eight of Them in Eight Days.

Four museums have dated 21 new exhibitions between September and December, and on September 22 the Lucas Museum opens in Exposition Park with 35 galleries in it. Seven of those shows and the museum land between September 20 and September 27. Here is the whole calendar, with what each one costs and which ones make you book — checked against the museums' own pages on August 25, 2026.

The fall museum calendar in Los Angeles is not a season. It is a pileup, and then a long quiet stretch. Between September 1 and December 31 the Getty, LACMA, the Hammer and MOCA have put dates on 21 new exhibitions, and on Tuesday, September 22, Exposition Park gets a whole new museum: the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, 35 galleries across 100,000 square feet, drawing on a collection the museum puts at more than 40,000 works. Seven of the 21 shows open in the eight days from Sunday, September 20 through Sunday, September 27 — and the museum opens in the middle of them.

So the useful thing this piece can do is not tell you the season is coming. It is to tell you which eight days to protect, which four institutions will still have something new for you in November when everyone else has stopped paying attention, and — the part nobody puts in one place — which of these museums will let you walk in and which will turn you away without a reservation you were supposed to make at home.

The criteria, stated once. Everything below is dated on the institution's own upcoming-exhibitions page or its own press material, read on August 25, 2026. We counted the openings, we compared the four calendars against each other, and we priced admission from each museum's own ticket page the same day. Two institutions you might expect here are absent, and their absence is a finding: the Academy Museum and the Broad have published nothing new opening between September and December. Both have things ending in that window, which is a different kind of deadline and gets its own section. Museums add shows; this is the calendar as published today, and the date on it is the honest part.

September 20: three open, one closes, and MOCA holds three at once

The busiest single day of the fall is a Sunday. At LACMA, Textile Alchemy: The Art of Reiko Sudō and NUNO opens and runs to March 7, 2027 — a long run, which means this is the one from the pileup you can genuinely postpone. Downtown at MOCA Grand Avenue, two open the same day and both close January 3, 2027: In These Times: Recent Acquisitions at MOCA and Alexander Apóstol, Regime: Dramatis Personae.

September 20 is also the last day of The Expanding Field: MOCA's Collection from the 1940s to 1970s, which has been up since April 18. Read those three MOCA dates together and the twentieth turns into the only day of the year when all three are on the walls at the same time: one collection show on its closing date, two new ones on their first. MOCA Grand Avenue is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays and closed Mondays, so that overlap is seven hours wide and then it is gone.

September 22: the new museum, on the day it is normally dark

The Lucas Museum opens on a Tuesday. Its posted weekly hours read "Tuesday: CLOSED." Take the opening day as the opening day, and then write down the real schedule, because the second Tuesday you try will not let you in: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday 10 to 9, Saturday 9 to 9, Sunday 9 to 5, last entry 45 minutes before closing. Friday and Saturday are the long days by four hours. Use them.

Admission is $25 for adults and $21 at 65 and over, and it is free for teens 13 to 17, children 12 and under, and active military, per the museum's own timed-entry page. Two adults and two children is $50 for the whole family and not a dollar more. The rule to actually plan around is the booking one, and the museum states it plainly: everyone — "including members and accompanying children and infants of all ages" — needs a timed-entry ticket reserved in advance. There is no version of this where you park in Exposition Park and decide on the spot. The address is One Lucas Plaza, 90037.

The same Tuesday, the Getty Center opens The Holy Family at Home, up through January 10, 2027 — Northern European painting around 1500, built around a Gerard David the museum acquired recently. A hilltop above the 405 and a new building in Exposition Park, opening on the same Tuesday. Pick one.

September 27: three more, two of them in the same building

The following Sunday LACMA opens two at once, both running to March 14, 2027: Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias and The Kitchen and Its Discontents. Domestic utopias in one room and the kitchen's discontents in the next, opening the same afternoon: whoever scheduled that was making an argument. See them in one trip. And note that LACMA is closed Wednesdays, which is the trap in every LACMA plan.

Across town the Hammer opens Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines, through February 28, 2027. Of the five institutions opening work this fall, the Hammer is the only one that is both free and takes walk-ups: its own visitor page says advance reservations are not necessary. On the busiest weekend on this calendar, that is worth more than it sounds.

Before the rush: five shows that beat the crowd

The Hammer starts early and starts small. Hammer Projects: Vibeke Mascini opens Saturday, September 12 and runs to January 17, 2027; Hammer Projects: Gê Viana opens Saturday, September 19 and runs to February 7, 2027. Two Saturdays, two single-artist projects, and both of them are still up long after the September traffic clears.

The Getty opens two on September 1, both through January 3, 2027: Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography and "Every minute is history": Five Views of Los Angeles. The second is the Los Angeles one — the Getty's press listing names Laura Aguilar, Reynaldo Rivera, George Rodriguez, Patssi Valdez and Ricardo Valverde. It opens three weeks before the pileup and closes three months after it, which makes it the single easiest thing on this calendar to schedule.

October has three, and they are spread out on purpose

The Hammer opens Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images on October 11, through February 28, 2027. LACMA opens The Brockman Gallery: Los Angeles, 1967–1990 on October 18, through January 24, 2027. And the Getty opens Reggie Burrows Hodges: A Theater of Passions on October 20, through February 28, 2027: new paintings the Getty says were made in response to the Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi works in its own collection, by an artist the museum identifies as Los Angeles-born.

November and December, and the two Paul R. Williams shows

November 15 is the fall's second pileup, and it is a Sunday too. MOCA opens both Cecilia Vicuña, Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water and a Julian Charrière exhibition, and both run all the way to June 6, 2027. LACMA opens Paul R. Williams: Architect for Living the same day, through May 31, 2027. The Hammer follows on November 21 with Felipe Baeza: Anima, through April 4, 2027, and the Getty on November 24 with A Light in the Dark: Joseph Wright of Derby, through March 14, 2027.

Then December does something two museums do not appear to have coordinated. On December 15 the Getty opens Paul R. Williams: Architecture Across the Color Line — thirty days after LACMA opened its own Paul R. Williams exhibition, at a different museum, with a different subtitle and a different frame. Two shows, two institutions, one architect, one winter. Whatever else the fall is, it is a very good season to be interested in Paul R. Williams. LACMA closes the year on December 20 with Roberto Gil de Montes: Water Drops on Burning Rocks, through June 20, 2027.

What is leaving while all this arrives

The openings get the announcements. The closings are the ones that actually cost you something, and fourteen exhibitions across six museums come down between this Sunday and December 6. The Hammer's Arthur Jafa: The White Album ends August 30 — this Sunday, which is as much notice as we can give you. SPACE IS THE PLACE: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection ends September 6. LACMA's Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures ends September 13.

Then the October wall. The Broad's Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind closes October 11, and the Broad's own page says the show is free every Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. — seven of those Thursdays left, counting from tonight. LACMA's Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity closes October 12. October 18 takes three at once: the Getty's Lost. Found. Returned. and Stendahl's World: Marketing Ancient Mexico and Modern Art in Los Angeles, and the Academy Museum's Barbie to Anna Karenina: The Cinematic Worlds of Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, which has been up since May 2025. The Hammer's Five Centuries of Works on Paper: The Grunwald Center at 70, Part II ends October 25.

December takes the rest: LACMA's Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.: In Between Stops on December 1, and both Danse Macabre: Death in Print from Dürer to Dix and Pablo Picasso—Portraits in Disguise on December 6. At the Getty Villa, Sculpted Portraits from Ancient Egypt ends November 9 after nearly three years.

One building is on neither list. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA is temporarily closed for deinstallation and installation, per MOCA's own visitor page, and MOCA's exhibition calendar currently schedules nothing there at all. Every MOCA date in this piece is Grand Avenue.

What it costs, and who makes you book

This is the part that decides your Saturday, so here it is in one place, all of it from the museums' own ticket pages on August 25.

The Hammer is free and takes walk-ups; no reservation, no ticket, no window. MOCA Grand Avenue is free too, but the free part comes with a timed-entry reservation — the free part is "courtesy of Carolyn Clark Powers," in MOCA's own phrasing, and the museum asks for an advance booking, with a limited number of same-day tickets sold on site, first come, first served. The Broad's general admission is always free and it welcomes walk-ups, with timed tickets offered to skip the standby line; some exhibitions there carry a separate charge, which is what the free Thursday evenings on Yoko Ono are for.

The Getty is free and requires a timed-entry reservation, and then charges you for the car: parking is $25, $15 after 3 p.m., $10 after 6 p.m., and free on Saturdays after 6 p.m. The Getty Center is open Saturdays until 9. That is the whole trick — a Saturday evening at the Getty is the only visit on this entire calendar where the museum and the parking are both free, and it is three hours long.

LACMA charges $25 for L.A. County residents with ID, $21 for seniors 65 and over and students 18 and up, and nothing for anyone 17 and under; from outside the county it is $30, $26 and $15. Everyone gets in free on the second Tuesday of every month, and county residents get in free after 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Run that against LACMA's posted hours and the free window is not one window but four different ones: three free hours on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, which close at 6; five on Friday, which closes at 8; and none on Wednesday, when the museum is shut. Go on the Friday. Metro pass holders get $2 off the paid ticket, which is the only transit discount anyone on this list prints.

The Academy Museum is $25, $19 at 62 and over, $15 for students, and free for anyone 17 and under and for EBT cardholders — and $18 after 4:30 p.m. The Lucas Museum is the $25 above, with everyone booking. Three $25 tickets — LACMA, the Academy Museum and the Lucas Museum — and LACMA's becomes $30 if you live outside the county. That is the entire paid tier of the Los Angeles museum fall. Every other door in this piece opens for nothing.

The pick you will argue with

Skip the Lucas Museum's opening weekend.

Here is the case, and it is not about the museum. It is about what has a deadline and what does not. The Lucas Museum is opening with permanent galleries and no closing date on anything in them; it will be there in February, on a Friday night when it stays open until nine. Meanwhile the same eight days ask you to choose between seven other openings — four of them free, the other three covered by one $25 LACMA ticket — and the stretch from September 20 to the end of October closes seven exhibitions that are not coming back: Yoko Ono on October 11, Barbie to Anna Karenina on October 18 after seventeen months up, the Getty's Stendahl's World the same day. A closing date is a real constraint. An opening date, at a museum with no closing dates in it, is a preference.

The counter-argument is real, so here it is stated fairly: a first day is a civic occasion, a hundred thousand square feet of new galleries is not a thing Los Angeles gets often, and some people want to be in the room for it — which is a legitimate reason for doing almost anything. Fine. Then book it as the thing it is. The reservation rule covers members and infants alike, the posted schedule goes dark the following Tuesday, and Friday and Saturday run four hours longer than every other day the museum is open. If you are going in September, go on Friday the 25th, not on the twenty-second.

And if you take one piece of this calendar and ignore the rest: the Getty Center, on a Saturday after six, any Saturday from October 20 on. That is the day Reggie Burrows Hodges opens, and it joins The Holy Family at Home and "Every minute is history", both up into January. Free museum, free parking, three hours, three shows, no ticket price at all. Reserve the entry slot before you leave the house.