Jarl Mohn , the former CEO of NPR and head of E! Entertainment Television, has made a major gift of Los Angeles contemporary art to the city’s Hammer Museum , Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The collection that encompasses 260 artworks will be jointly owned and managed by the three institutions. The gift comes from the substantial art collection owned by Mohn and his wife, Pamela Mohn.
Jarl Mohn served as CEO of NPR from 2014-2019. He steered the E! Channel during heady growth years for cable, from 1990-1998. The Mohn collection has been largely amassed over the last 19 years.
It includes paintings, sculptures and mixed-media works by Los Angeles-based artists. In addition to the donation, the Mohns will establish an endowment for annual acquisitions as well as expenses related to the ongoing care and storage of the collection. The joint effort by the three museums has been dubbed the Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA , MOCA , or MAC3 for short.
In addition to the Mohns’ gift, the Hammer Museum plans to enhance the MAC3 collection with 80 works previously acquired by the museum through its Made in L.A. biennials since 2012.
Curators from the three institutions gathered to make the collection’s first joint acquisitions, unanimously selecting 16 works from “Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living.
” In total, the MAC3 collection amounts to 356 artworks to date. The co-owned collection establishes “a groundbreaking model for institution.