“Oh s—! Get in!,” white-mohawk and pink suit-bedecked Kalise Wallace yells to a group of art lovers over the traffic of Downtown Los Angeles. She waves them over to her “trolley”, a shuttle that transports DTLA Artnight visitors through the neighborhood’s arts districts. The red light turns to green as they hustle in. “Where are you all coming from?," Rafael Gonzalez asks from the darkness of the shuttle. He is president and CEO of Grand Performances.

“The Braly,” they say. “Oh my God, that’s my gallery!,” Sidney Brocious yells from the window seat.

Wallace and her V.I.P. passengers are unofficial historians of the DTLA (the colloquial term for Downtown L.A.) art scene. They hadn’t seen a night this vibrant since before COVID. But the energy pulsing through the city reminds them of the thriving scene they knew was possible all along.

Every First Thursday, Downtown galleries, museums, clubs, and restaurants open and extend their hours for DTLA Artnight. Wallace, co-owner of a gallery and cultural arts center called CRE8, created the Artnight trolley to connect the area’s arts spaces, many of which were isolated or neglected on mainstream maps. “I cried when [it] came out of the wrapping like a big baby,” she said. “I was like, ‘It’s real. We’re all going to come together.”’

Her mission came out of a “weird COVID epiphany”: “I thought, when I get out of here, I’m going to try to unite people and bring art. I wanted to create something that would help the society, help artists, help people, bring community together.”

Downtown L.A. was hit so hard by COVID—visitation was cut almost in half, and homelessness jumped 12.7%— that many Angelenos called it a ghost town and steered clear. But Artnight shows signs of a rebirth. Food truck-lined streets filled with art lovers are a snapshot of a scene that can only be described as alive.

“It feels like [the city’s art scene] is in a renaissance. This is the time — the magic is coming alive again. Everything’s building toward a kind of burst,” Wallace said.

Right now, it’s bursting at the seams. DATALAND, self-dubbed the “world’s first museum of AI arts”, opened in June of this year. The Broad, a contemporary art museum, is in the middle of a $100 million expansion. If you drive out of DTLA (in your own car or public transit—the trolley doesn’t stop there yet), the rest of the city is changing too.

On Mid-City’s Museum Row, the David Geffen Galleries at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opened in April after a polarizing $724 million renovation. In South Central L.A.’s Exposition Park, The Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts will open in September. And down the 405, in Brentwood, The Getty Museum will close in 2027 for a year-long renovation. It’s a lot to happen at once.

L.A.’s art scene is in the middle of an over $1 billion dollar transition. The simultaneous development of galleries and museums is shaping the city’s arts landscape into something new: an ecosystem of institutions and individuals driven by community, immersivity, and innovation.

“Everybody’s on the same page,” says Wallace, “from the big players to the small players.”

Building an Arts Ecosystem

Omelet restaurant and art gallery-turned folk art museum Craft Contemporary is in a yellow and white-striped building on Wilshire, just across the street from LACMA. It was founded in 1965 by a group of women art enthusiasts.

Rody N. López, the museum’s current executive director, sees the momentum building across the city. “L.A.'s art scene is now, more than ever, more collaborative and interdisciplinary.”

Over 60 years after Craft’s opening, Downtown artists and arts business owners are similarly working together to revitalize the often overlooked area.

DTLA Artnight, organized by Happening in DTLA, is a partnership of 56 museums, galleries, performance venues, restaurants, clubs, and art spaces. Larger L.A. institutions are also partnering to create collaborative exhibitions with smaller venues and even community spaces.

A recent exhibition From MacArthur Park, With Love, was co-presented by LACMA and Charles White Elementary and Visual Arts Magnet, a satellite gallery for the iconic institution. The exhibition featured the artworks of over 100 elementary students.

This reflects what Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, says is a large-scale change in attitude towards visitors and community members. Museums and cultural institutions “are [no longer] there as part of an ivory tower of scarce and rare resources, but rather very deeply integrated into their communities.”

Craig Krull, an L.A. native art historian, says that the city’s unique sense of community establishes it within a broader arts scene.

“I’d say we’re probably one of the art capitals of the world right now for the community and the vibrancy of what’s happening here,” says Krull.

Few people have an encyclopedic knowledge of the city that could compete with that of Krull, who has owned the Craig Krull Gallery for 32 years.

“[The scene] continues to evolve,” he says. “[And] It evolves very fast.”

“The New City”

Because L.A. has less-established museum history than East Coast cities like New York and Washington, D.C., it’s long been a city of infinite potential. “I think the story on LA,” he says, “is it’s sort of ever new. It’s ever in renewal.”

One could argue the scene has been evolving since the 1960s—which Krull claims is when it really began. In this decade, artists like Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, Craig Kauffman, and Robert Irwin rose to fame. LACMA opened in 1965, just after the Craft Contemporary. Southern California artists started the Light and Space movement in the 1970s, pioneering the minimalist, light-filled art style whose influence can be seen anywhere from Drake’s “Hotline Bling” music video to Apple stores.

L.A. finally got the art world’s attention when the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA opened in 1983. Galleries opened throughout the 80s and 90s, including Bergamot Station Arts Center, home of Krull’s Santa Monica gallery, which opened in 1994. According to Krull, a wave of international and New York galleries like Matthew Marks, David Zwirner, Jeffrey Deitch, and Hauser and Wirth have come to L.A in the past 15 years, resulting in what he calls an “oversaturated” market.

“People say we have more artists living in L.A. now than any city in the history of mankind,” Krull says. “We have more galleries than we’ve ever had, certainly. Probably 300 good, strong, galleries.” According to a 2026 report, Los Angeles has 306,000 professional artists and L.A.'s art market (auctions, galleries) generated $2.1 billion in 2023.

And yet, few think of L.A. as an “art city” in the same vein of New York, or even its California neighbor, San Francisco. When most think of L.A., they’re likely thinking of Hollywood. The Walk of Fame. The Hollywood sign. “The City of Stars”.

“People think [the movie business] is all we are, but we’re growing past that,” notes Wallace. “I do feel L.A. has changed a lot artistically.”

Wallace, an L.A. native, started her career as a production designer, working on TV and movies like Sharknado, WOW: Women of Wrestling, The L Word, and Z Nation. She has two decades of experience, but when she sensed a Hollywood decline, she knew it was time to pivot to the gallery scene.

L.A. art for modern times

Wallace always wanted to go into her closet to find Narnia. So now, she builds worlds herself. “Immersiveness is so attractive—to create what’s in my head and watch people walk [through] that. Maybe it’s an ego thing, but I love it."

Upon entering CRE8 (perhaps for an upcycling night, birthday party, or other community event—it doubles as an event space), a barrage of sights and smells greet you. It’s like walking into a chopped and screwed, L.A.-set Alice in Wonderland.

Pop and EDM blast as guests walk through fog-filled sets, get their fate examined from a fortune-telling ATM machine, smell bug-like plushes that emit scents of dirt and plants, or play retro video games on Nintendo 64s. It’s a monument to play—almost everything can be touched—intentionally made this way by Wallace, who says she’s like a big kid (when she worked on the set of Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., she would go onto plane sets and play during her lunch breaks.)

CRE8 isn’t a standalone in the marketplace of immersive artistry. Toronto-based consultant and museum experience designer Matthew Dawson says that there is a larger trend across the arts industry.

According to Dawson, who uses theme park techniques to help museums boost visitor engagement, museums now have to compete for guest attention with other forms of amusement. Museums and theme parks are still completely separate industries, he assures, but now they exist in parallel.

In many ways, L.A. is the perfect testing ground for this. The city’s artistic identity, from Disneyland to Hollywood, has centered entertainment and immersive storytelling for generations. It only makes sense that this would help define the “new” L.A. too.

So, how does one compete for attention in the “Entertainment Capital of the World”? Some galleries and museums are increasing access and creating community events like DTLA Artnight; others are finding that the answer to engagement lies with the inclusion of cutting-edge technology.

The New Frontier

What if a museum could be alive? Renowned AI artist Refik Anadol, a product of UCLA’s Design Media Arts school, founded L.A.’s newest museum, DATALAND, to answer this question. He and his team at the Refik Anadol Studio programmed an AI Large Nature Model based on natural data specifically for the experience. He describes the result as a “living museum”—omnisensory (a term coined by museum staff), immersive, and shaped by the data and input of its visitors.

Click for Refik Anadol Q&A

Natural shapes and bright colors cascade across the floors, walls, and ceilings, all covered with screens. Disney Magic Band-esque bracelets track location and biometric data, which then inform the experience and shape the museum’s algorithm. Visitors, sporting shoe covers to protect the floor screens, flap their arms and legs to move the digital projections surrounding them. Earthy scents waft from a smart diffuser necklace, provided at the beginning of the visit, in response to each individual’s movements.

The resulting experience is so much on the cutting-edge that some are wondering: is it actually art? And is it even a museum?

“A museum has always been a place where humanity preserves and shares knowledge, but the ways we experience knowledge are evolving,” Anadol says.

Increasingly, across L.A., this is done through unique, participatory, otherworldly experiences shaped by interactions with the world around us—be it through personalized smells crafted by L’Oreal or walking through fog-filled handcrafted environments in hidden pockets of the DTLA streets. Anadol simply states, “The goal is to expand what a museum can be in the 21st century.”

Not asking for permission

Govan says the current moment is an “accumulation:” “L.A. has been an artist city for a long time, its cultural infrastructure has just lagged behind until relatively recently.”

But now, as the infrastructure grows — including artists, art spaces, galleries, and large cultural institutions — it’s clear that L.A.’s art scene is more alive than ever. And with all of the change on the horizon, it’s only the beginning.

It’s right at the top of the rollercoaster, excitedly teetering on the edge, ready for the adrenaline-rush that it earned with the (decades-long) climb.

By the 2028 Olympics — the city’s next big cultural milestone — Angelenos and visitors will be smack dab in a city immersed in color and creative energy, driven by experimentation, imagination, and a community of innovative minds that only L.A. can produce.

Speaking of the city’s creative spirit, Craig Krull says, “One of the things I always say about L.A. is: don’t ask permission, because you don’t need it. Just do it.” The city’s galleries, institutions, and organizing creatives like Wallace are following suit and just doing it.

At the start of DTLA Artnight, the night was young. The sun hadn’t set yet, but the streets were already buzzing with the promise of an eventful evening. Returning to The Broad pick-up spot after dropping off a group of V.I.P.s, Wallace welcomed new guests onto the trolley.

“I’m sorry if you can’t see through the window decals. I put them on myself,” she said. She assured them that some day soon they’ll be able to see The Broad, MOCA, Cre8, and the other DTLA nightlife through the windows.

Excitedly, she said, “this is a prototype.”