Did you guess? Did you guess that it’s the Marciano Art Foundation (MAF) museum building and home to one of the Gagosian gallery’s Los Angeles exhibition spaces? If so, you would be correct. Bravo, you cheeky art-world know-it-all, you!
The building is an L.A. landmark. Prior to its conversion into a contemporary art museum housing part of the Paul and Maurice Marciano’s (the brothers who founded Guess Jeans) extensive private art collection and Gagosian gallery shows, the building was the Scottish Rites Masonic Temple. It was built in 1961 on the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that borders L.A.’s original old-money enclave of Hancock Park.
Technically, the MAF, no longer exists as a museum, as such, in its original sense owing to its official shutting down after an effort by employees to unionize shortly after its opening several years ago.
But it still has a permanent collection on display of the the best pieces from Marciano’s immense, first-rate trove of contemporary, post-modern and pop art. It’s accessible to the public under the guise of visiting exhibitions organized by Gagosian gallery in the building’s gargantuan ground-floor show space.
.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 