Ace Gallery Los Angeles

Ace Gallery was founded in 1961 by Douglas Chrismas and expanded to Los Angeles in 1967 where it has since been Los Angeles’ longest running contemporary art gallery with a history of mounting ambitious, museum quality exhibitions. Ace Gallery’s exhibition program balances a selection of emerging and mid-career artists with artists who have become fully established over the last four decades, including artists such as Carl Andre, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Sam Francis, Roy Lichtenstein, Julian Schnabel, Robert Wilson, Jannis Kounellis, Richard Serra, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Michael Heizer to name a few.

In 1970, Chrismas mounted Robert Irwin’s critically acclaimed scrim installation. Ace also mounted acclaimed exhibitions of work by Michael Heizer’s such as his Displaced/Replaced Mass, installed at Ace/Venice, along with Richard Serra’s first large scale interior installations. The Heizer piece required huge excavations in the gallery floor to create recessed areas able to accommodate imposing boulders; the installations of both Heizer and Serra were considered a triumph for both the artist and the gallery.

The gallery further expanded in 1994 to New York where its presence was amplified by it doing exhibitions with such important cultural institutions as the Guggenheim Museum and the Cartier Foundation (Paris), which, even though Mr. Chrismas’ gallery was a commercial gallery, had gained great respect from museums worldwide. Under his directorship, Ace Gallery has had either offices or galleries in such important art centers as Mexico City, Paris, Berlin and Beijing along with its strong position in Los Angeles.

Since 1986, Ace Gallery Los Angeles has occupied the entire 30,000 square foot second floor of an Art Deco structure that fills an entire block of Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile. The 11-story building, known as the Wilshire Tower, first opened on March 15, 1929. Inside the Wilshire Tower, Ace has built a museum-quality gallery space. Mr. Chrismas continues a focused program of exhibitions in Los Angeles. ACE gallery is considered to be the oldest contemporary gallery in the Western United States and Mr. Chrismas has curated and mounted over 600 exhibitions during his 54-year career as the gallery director and chief curator.

Ace Gallery Beverly Hills

In 2003, Ace Gallery opened on exhibition space in Beverly Hills with the inaugural opening exhibition Sam Francis’s Edge Paintings. The gallery’s exhibition program also balances a selection of emerging and established artists, and becoming the home of the bi-annual Concept Los Angeles Fashion Week event. In addition to these achievements Ace Gallery Beverly Hills has been home to the ACE Concert series for the past 10 years.

Ace Museum

In 1985, Ace Gallery launched an exhibition space in a 13,000 square feet warehouse with 25-foot ceilings at 5917 Burchard St. near Venice and La Cienega boulevards in Los Angeles called the “Ace Museum.” Incorporated in June 2009, Ace Museum became a separate and independent non-profit organization. The current ACE museum, a 501c3 not for profit institution, is located at 400 South La Brea Avenue in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, less than five minutes from the Los Angeles County Museum, and consists of 90,000 Square feet of exhibition space.