Unpacking: The Marciano Collection

by Susan L. Aberth (contributor), Jamin An (Contributor), Lilly Casillas (Contributor)

This first book from the Marciano Art Foundation offers an in-depth look at one of the world’s premier private collections of contemporary art and celebrates its dynamic new public home in Los Angeles. The Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation is one of the world’s most diverse and important private collections of contemporary art. This book offers an incisive view of a wonderfully pluralistic collection and heralds its new permanent home in an architecturally and historically significant former Scottish Rite Masonic temple designed by Millard Sheets. Conceived as an "artist’s playground," the building has been transformed by contemporary architect Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture and Design into a spectacular platform for art and education, including a wide array of exhibition spaces. Highlighting the foundation’s first exhibition curated by Philipp Kaiser in its stately new location, the book also includes an interview with and biography of architect Millard Sheets; an essay on the secret Masonic rituals that once took place in the building; and insights from Yantrasast on the synergy between a historic structure, contemporary art, and the urban environment.

328 pages, Paperback

Published May 25, 2017

About the author

Susan L. Aberth received her PhD in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; her dissertation was on the art of Leonora Carrington. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art History at Bard College, New York, where she specializes in Latin American Art.