Act on It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles

An exhibition investigating the Brockman Gallery and the Black Arts Movement in Los Angeles

On view Feb. 11 – Jun. 7, 2026

Launched by brothers Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis in the wake of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, the Brockman Gallery in South L.A. was central to the development of the Black Arts Movement in Los Angeles. Act on It! brings together works by artists who exhibited at the Brockman Gallery (1967–90), which served as a critical nexus for emerging artists of color and contributed to a growing network of Black-run spaces and collections. Through dozens of works from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the exhibition represents the aesthetic, political, and social statements encountered by Brockman Gallery visitors and underscores the reach and lasting significance of the Davis brothers’ project. The exhibition is organized into six major themes that are significant to the history of the Brockman Gallery—Roots, Material Experimentation, Body & Identity, Common Ground, Civic Engagement, and Uplift. Using the Brockman Gallery, Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis placed their contemporaries’ work within a historical lineage of Black artmaking in the U.S. The exhibition features work by 31 artists including John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Alonzo Davis, Dale Brockman Davis, Kerry James Marshall, and Betye Saar, many of whom were creating work that forged connections between their work and their lived experiences.

Act on It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles is presented as part of LACMA’s Local Access program and is organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Lancaster Museum of Art and History; Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; and California State University, Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery.  Local Access is a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by LACMA as part of the Art Bridges Cohort Program.