The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announces the date and honorees of its 2024 Art+Film Gala. On Nov. 2, the museum will honor Simone Leigh and Baz Luhrmann. LACMA trustee Eva Chow and actor Leonardo DiCaprio have championed the museum’s film initiatives since 2011 and will continue their efforts as the 2024 Art+Film Gala co-chairs. 

Musical guest Charli xx will give a special performance at the gala following the global success of her zeitgeist-capturing new album BRAT, and Gucci continues its invaluable partnership with the museum as the presenting sponsor of the annual event.

“Simone Leigh is one of the most captivating and important voices in contemporary art, brilliantly melding an array of different artistic traditions and centering Black femme subjects in powerful and moving ways,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg director. “Baz Luhrmann has crafted an emotional cinematic oeuvre over three decades, driven by his imagination and passion. We are excited to honor him alongside Simone and celebrate their remarkable careers.”

Now on view at LACMA and the California African American Museum (CAAM), Simone Leigh is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s richly layered practice and her most expansive exhibition on the West Coast to date. Presented across both institutions, the exhibition explores dozens of key works from throughout Leigh’s career, including pieces from the artist’s landmark 2022 Venice Biennale project, as well as new pieces created especially for the L.A. presentation. Simone Leigh closes Jan. 20, 2025.

Proceeds from the annual Art+Film Gala go toward underwriting LACMA’s initiative to make film more central to the museum’s curatorial programming, while also funding the museum’s broader mission. This includes exhibitions, acquisitions, and educational programming that explore the intersection of art and film.

Over the last 20 years Simone Leigh has created a multi-faceted body of work incorporating sculpture, video, and installation, all informed by her ongoing exploration of Black female-identified subjectivity. Leigh describes her work as auto-ethnographic, and her ceramic and bronze sculptures often employ forms traditionally associated with African art. Leigh first began exhibiting her work in the early 2000s and she has had one-person museum exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. In 2014 she presented The Free People’s Medical Clinic in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Her work was included in the 2012 and 2019 biennial exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and she is the first artist to be commissioned for the High Line Plinth. Her monumental sculpture Brick House was unveiled in April 2019. In 2022, Leigh represented the US at the 59th Venice Biennale with her exhibition “Simone Leigh: Sovereignty.” Her work was also included in the biennale’s central exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, for which she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Participant. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago and the ICA/Boston, among others.

Baz Luhrmann is a pioneer of pop culture working across film, opera, theater, live events, fashion, and music. His singular cinematic language continues to captivate audiences through a unique fusion of classical artistry and bold, contemporary style that has ignited imaginations around the world and made Luhrmann the most commercially successful director in Australia. The first of his Red Curtain Trilogy, “Strictly Ballroom,” premiered at the 1992 Cannes Festival. It was followed by William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), and the Academy Award-winning Moulin Rouge (2001). With these films, Luhrmann brought the movie-musical back into the zeitgeist with his infectious theatrical aesthetic and operatic sense of romance. His La Bohème (2002) went on to garner two Tony Awards, followed by the Academy Award-nominated Australia (2008) and his now-iconic Academy Award-winning The Great Gatsby (2013).

Collaborating with Jay-Z on the Gatsby soundtrack, Luhrmann redefined cross-genre music in film, with the album setting a new record for the biggest digital sales week for a soundtrack in Billboard history. Always pushing the boundaries of genre, Luhrmann collaborated with Netflix on his critically acclaimed series, The Get Down (2016), and recently created the six-part Hulu series Faraway Downs. Luhrmann's latest film, Elvis (2022), became his most nominated film to date, while also winning four BAFTAs and 11 AACTAs. The film's Grammy-nominated soundtrack was produced by Luhrmann through his label House of lona.