Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art
Before the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opened its building on Wilshire Boulevard in 1965, it was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art at this location near the University of Southern California in Exposition Park. In 1951, the museum’s first curator of modern and contemporary art, James Byrnes, altered the museum’s annual exhibition of local artists. He restructured it to include national and international artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Mark Rothko, alongside California artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Lundeberg, and Ynez Johnston. Though this created an outcry among Southern California artists who had grown accustomed to being included each year, it made great strides in introducing the Los Angeles audience to more avant-garde artistic practices.