The 14th annual LACMA Art+Film Gala took place on November 1st, honoring artist Mary Corse and filmmaker Ryan Coogler with Gucci as presenting sponsor.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art pulled off what’s become an annual impossibility: gathering Hollywood’s A-list, fashion’s most influential figures, and contemporary art’s heavy hitters under one roof without the whole thing feeling forced. The 14th annual LACMA Art+Film Gala, held on Saturday, 1 November 2025, managed this feat whilst honouring two artists whose work couldn’t be more different,abstract painter Mary Corse and filmmaker Ryan Coogler, and somehow made perfect sense of it.
Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio, who’ve co-chaired this event since 2011, have turned what could be just another charity dinner into something that actually matters. The evening raised crucial funds for LACMA’s film programming whilst bringing together communities that don’t always overlap. And the guest list read like someone’s fever dream of cultural influence.
Gucci Returns as Presenting Sponsor
Gucci’s continued support as presenting sponsor marks over a decade of partnership with LACMA. The Italian maison, founded in Florence in 1921, brings more than just financial backing. Under President and CEO Francesca Bellettini and Artistic Director Demna, the house has made supporting cultural institutions part of its DNA.
Demna himself attended, alongside Francesca Bellettini, making clear that this isn’t a hands-off sponsorship. For a brand that’s part of Kering, the global luxury group managing houses across fashion, leather goods, jewellery, eyewear, and beauty, the Art+Film Gala represents exactly the kind of cultural conversation Gucci wants to be part of. Not just present at, but actively shaping.
The partnership works because it’s honest. LACMA gets the resources to push its film programme forward. Gucci gets association with an institution doing genuinely interesting work at the intersection of art and cinema. Everyone wins, and more importantly, the work gets done.
The Guest List Was Ridiculous
Let’s be clear about what “star-studded” actually meant on Saturday night. This wasn’t celebrity padding. The red carpet, which started at 6pm, saw genuine heavyweights from every corner of the creative industries.
Angela Bassett, Demi Moore, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Dustin Hoffman, George Lucas. That’s Hollywood royalty showing up for something that matters to them. Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber, and Vittoria Ceretti brought fashion’s finest. SZA, Steve Lacy, Beck, Troye Sivan represented music’s most interesting voices right now.
But here’s what made the evening more than just famous faces: the art world turned out in force. Betye Saar, Catherine Opie, Charles Gaines, Mark Bradford, James Turrell. These aren’t names casual museum-goers necessarily know, but they’re the artists reshaping how we think about light, space, identity, and history. Lauren Halsey, Calida Rawles, Harmonia Rosales, Tavares Strachan. Emerging and established voices, all in conversation.
The international presence mattered too. Lee Byung-hun, Lee Jin-Wook, Soo-Joo Park, and director Park Chan-wook represented South Korea’s cultural influence in Los Angeles, which is substantial and growing. Fashion’s next generation, Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser, Iris Law, mingled with legends. Alix Earle and David Dobrik showed how celebrity itself has evolved.
Filmmakers including Ava DuVernay, Jon M. Chu, Queen Latifah, Quinta Brunson, Kerry Washington, Kristen Wiig, and Tessa Thompson proved the depth of Hollywood’s commitment to this event. Fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, whose images have defined luxury for decades, brought their perspective.
Cynthia Erivo, Kathryn Hahn, Emma Roberts, Salma Hayek, Paris Hilton, Charlie Hunnam, Joel Edgerton turned up alongside Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem. That last name matters, when museum professionals from other institutions attend, it says something about LACMA’s standing in the field.
Chef David Shim Brought Korean Fine Dining to the Museum
The dinner was handled by Executive Chef David Shim of COTE Korean Steakhouse, which is America’s first and only Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse. Not Korean-inspired. Not Korean-influenced. Korean, full stop, with the Michelin star to prove it belongs in any conversation about fine dining.
Shim worked with Restaurant Associates to create a menu that understood the assignment: feed 600 of the world’s most demanding palates without defaulting to safe choices. Korean cuisine’s complex flavours, its balance of heat and umami and acid, can be as sophisticated as any French technique. Shim’s work at COTE has already proved that. Saturday night just gave him a bigger stage.
The service itself ran on Ginori 1735 Oriente Italiano porcelain in Castagna (brown) and Meringa (beige). The choice wasn’t accidental. Ginori 1735, Italy’s oldest porcelain manufacturer, brings nearly three centuries of craft to the table. The Oriente Italiano pattern nods to East-meets-West aesthetics that felt appropriate for an evening celebrating Korean cuisine in Los Angeles whilst honouring American film.
Wines came from JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery. Signature cocktails featured KHEE Premium Soju, bridging traditional Korean drinking culture with contemporary mixology. Tequila Don Julio handled spirits. FIJI Water and POM Wonderful kept guests hydrated between courses.
This wasn’t just catering. It was a statement about what museum dining can be when you take it seriously.
Doja Cat Performed After Dinner
Following dinner, Doja Cat delivered a special performance. The Grammy-winning artist, known for genre-defying work and theatrical live shows, brought contemporary music’s energy into the museum space.
Her presence made sense. LACMA isn’t trying to be a static institution preserving the past. It’s arguing that museums can be spaces where living culture happens. Where a light artist from the 1960s, a filmmaker reshaping Hollywood, and a pop star who got famous on TikTok can all exist in conversation.
The performance underscored what the whole evening was about: art isn’t separate from life. It’s part of it, influencing and influenced by everything around it.
Why This Gala Actually Matters
Strip away the glamour for a moment. The Art+Film Gala exists because LACMA needs money to do ambitious programming. Specifically, it funds the museum’s initiative to make film central to its curatorial work, alongside supporting exhibitions, acquisitions, and educational programmes exploring where art and cinema intersect.
LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. Its collection exceeds 150,000 objects spanning 6,000 years of artistic expression. That’s substantial. But what makes LACMA interesting isn’t just size, it’s the museum’s position on the Pacific Rim, its commitment to showing multiple art histories from unexpected perspectives, its willingness to experiment.
Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, has pushed the institution to be more than a repository. Under his leadership, LACMA works with artists, technologists, and thought leaders. It builds regional, national, and global partnerships. It takes risks.
The Art+Film Gala funds that risk-taking. It gives LACMA resources to commission new work, to bring experimental filmmakers into conversation with historical art, to create programmes that wouldn’t get traditional funding. That’s what Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio have been supporting since 2011, and why their sustained co-chairmanship matters.
DiCaprio’s involvement extends his environmental activism into cultural territory. His star power guarantees media coverage and donor interest. But he’s also genuinely passionate about both cinema and visual art, which gives his participation weight beyond celebrity.
Chow, a LACMA trustee deeply embedded in Los Angeles’ cultural landscape, brings institutional knowledge and connections across art, fashion, and entertainment. Her vision has shaped the gala into something that feels exclusive without being alienating, formal without being stuffy.
Together, they’ve created a model for how museums can work with celebrity culture productively. Not just chasing famous names for publicity, but building genuine partnerships in service of institutional goals.
Mary Corse: Five Decades of Light
Honouring Mary Corse acknowledged one of contemporary art’s most significant practitioners working with light and perception. Since the 1960s, Corse has developed an artistic language that challenges how we perceive space, surface, and luminosity.
Her innovation with materials, particularly glass microspheres originally developed for highway safety markings, created paintings that change as viewers move past them. The work literally looks different depending on where you stand. Looking becomes an active experience, not passive reception.
Corse’s practice sits at the intersection of minimalism, Light and Space art, and conceptual work. Her monumental canvases, often featuring geometric forms rendered in subtle tonal variations, demand contemplation. They also demonstrate technical mastery that younger artists still study.
What’s remarkable is her consistency. Five decades of exploring the same fundamental questions about perception without repeating herself. That’s rare. Most artists either change direction constantly or exhaust their initial insight. Corse has kept mining the same territory and finding new things to say.
Her inclusion in the Art+Film Gala makes sense beyond her individual achievement. Corse’s investigations into light connect directly to cinema’s fundamental dependence on projected illumination. Both mediums use light to create meaning. That conceptual bridge between the evening’s two honourees isn’t accidental.
Ryan Coogler: Expanding Who Gets to Tell Stories
Ryan Coogler’s recognition acknowledged his impact on contemporary cinema and his role in changing whose stories get told on screen. He’s young, born in 1986, but his influence already runs deep.
Fruitvale Station (2013) announced a major new directorial voice. The film about Oscar Grant’s death at the hands of Bay Area Rapid Transit police was powerful, controlled, devastating. It proved Coogler could handle difficult material with nuance and emotional weight.
Creed (2015) showed he could work within commercial cinema without compromising. Taking the Rocky franchise and telling a contemporary story about legacy, identity, and determination revitalized what could have been just another sequel. The film worked because Coogler understood the source material’s appeal whilst making something distinctly his own.
Then came Black Panther (2018). The film’s cultural impact was unprecedented for a superhero movie. First such film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Massive commercial success proving that stories centred on Black characters and African culture could achieve both critical acclaim and box office dominance.
More importantly, Black Panther changed Hollywood’s calculations. It demonstrated that representation isn’t just ethically correct, it’s commercially smart. Studios that had been risk-averse about “niche” stories suddenly realized the niche was bigger than they thought.
Coogler’s subsequent work, including Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), has continued merging spectacular filmmaking with emotional resonance. His films explore family, community, and history’s weight whilst delivering the visceral excitement audiences expect.
By honouring Coogler, LACMA acknowledged not just his artistic achievements but his role in expanding cinema’s cultural significance. His films spark conversations extending far beyond theatres, influencing fashion, music, and political discourse. That broader impact aligns with LACMA’s mission to explore how visual culture shapes and reflects society.
The Evening’s Broader Implications
Saturday night’s gala demonstrated something crucial about contemporary museum practice. Cultural institutions can’t afford to be insular anymore. They need to engage with fashion, with music, with celebrity, with all the forces shaping how people encounter art and ideas.
Some purists hate this. They want museums to be quiet spaces dedicated to contemplation, unsullied by commerce or entertainment. But that’s never what museums were. They’ve always been shaped by money, by taste, by social forces. The only question is whether they acknowledge it honestly.
LACMA’s approach, under Govan’s leadership and with support from trustees like Chow, is refreshingly direct. Yes, we need money. Yes, we work with luxury brands. Yes, we want celebrities here because their presence brings attention and resources. And we’re using all of it to do genuinely interesting work.
The Art+Film Gala embodies this philosophy. It brings together communities that traditionally operate separately, visual artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, actors, musicians, and puts them in conversation. Not superficially, but around shared interests in how images shape meaning, how stories get told, how culture evolves.
Does it work perfectly? No. Any event trying to serve multiple constituencies inevitably makes compromises. But it works well enough that after 14 years, the formula still feels fresh. That’s an achievement.
What Happens Next
As guests departed LACMA’s Wilshire Boulevard campus, they’d participated in something more substantial than a glamorous evening. The funds raised will support film programming, exhibitions, acquisitions, and educational initiatives that wouldn’t happen otherwise.
The conversations started Saturday night will continue. Artists who met will collaborate. Filmmakers will find inspiration in paintings they saw. Fashion designers will reference the evening’s aesthetic. This is how cultural cross-pollination actually works, not through formal programmes, but through people encountering each other’s work and ideas.
For those who didn’t attend, images are available through Getty Images and BFA. But photographs can’t quite capture what made the evening work. The energy of seeing James Turrell and Doja Cat in the same room. The sight of filmmakers and painters comparing notes. The collision of different creative worlds producing unexpected sparks.
The 14th annual LACMA Art+Film Gala succeeded because it took seriously the premise that art, cinema, fashion, and music aren’t separate domains. They’re all ways of making meaning, all shaped by the same cultural forces, all worthy of serious attention and support.
And it did all this whilst raising substantial money for an institution doing vital work. That’s the part that matters most. The glamour is nice. The celebrity is useful. But the end goal is funding ambitious programming that expands how we think about art and film.
LACMA’s film initiatives, supported by galas like this, have already changed the museum field. Other institutions have followed suit, recognizing that cinema deserves the same curatorial attention as painting or sculpture. That’s a real shift in museum practice, and events like this make it possible.
So yes, it was a party. A very good party with excellent food, impressive guests, and a great performance. But it was also a fundraiser doing serious work, a networking opportunity producing real collaborations, and a statement about what museums can be in the 21st century.
Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio understand this. So does Michael Govan. So do the artists, filmmakers, and supporters who keep showing up year after year. They’re not just attending a gala. They’re participating in an ongoing conversation about culture’s value and how we sustain the institutions that preserve and advance it.
That’s why this event mattered.
Not because of who wore what or who was photographed with whom, though that’s part of it. But because it demonstrated, once again, that cultural institutions can engage with contemporary celebrity culture productively when they do it intelligently and with clear purpose.
The 2025 LACMA Art+Film Gala honoured two artists whose work has genuinely shaped contemporary culture. It raised money for programmes that will support the next generation of artists and filmmakers. It brought together communities that don’t always interact. And it did all this with style, sophistication, and a clear sense of purpose.
That’s worth celebrating.
