The Hammer Museum Honors L.A. Icon Noah Davis With a New Show
A comprehensive exhibition of the late painter and community leader’s career is now on display in his adopted city.
Noah Davis’s life may have been cut tragically short—he died in 2015 at the age of 32 from a rare type of cancer—but the painter’s impact on both his adopted home of Los Angeles and the greater art world was profound. Now, the Hammer Museum at UCLA is presenting the first U.S. institutional survey of the artist, Noah Davis, following its debut at Das Minsk in Potsdam and the Barbican Centre in London. Featuring over 50 pieces—including painting, sculpture, and works on paper—the show charts Davis’s creative evolution during his prolific career and his influence on his community.
“Davis was something of a hero in the Los Angeles art scene,” co-curator Eleanor Nairne tells W, “But this is the first time that he has had a major museum exhibition, so it’s an opportunity to assess the full arc of his all-too-brief career.” Eleanor Nairne—the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs curator for modern and contemporary art, head of department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and former Barbican curator—co-curated the exhibition with fellow Barbican curator Wells Fray-Smith.
Noah Davis, 1975 (8), 2013. Oil on canvas in artist’s frame. 49 1/2 × 72 1/2 in. (125.7 × 184.2 cm).
Although Davis was born in Seattle, as Nairne notes, Los Angeles was his chosen home, “and the story of his relationship with the city is laced throughout the exhibition.”
That relationship included the Underground Museum, which he and his wife, sculptor Karon Davis, cofounded in 2012, in the historically Black and Latinx neighborhoods of Arlington Heights (Davis also worked closely on the Hammer Museum survey). The free, community-forward space was made up of four storefronts and was used as a studio, residency site, space to show exhibitions, and a place to gather with like-minded artists.
It was all a part of Davis’s lifelong mission to make art more accessible to everyone. Although the Underground Museum has since closed to give Davis’s family time and space to process his death, his popularity has only grown (in 2021, David Zwirner Gallery sold a Davis painting for $1.4 million at Art Basel Miami Beach).
“We hope visitors will come away with a sense of Davis’s breathtaking capacities as an artist—not just as a painter but as a thinker and builder of communities,” Nairne said. The new exhibition features many paintings in the style for which he’s best known, showcasing scenes of everyday Black life with a reflective, hopeful, and imaginative touch.
Noah Davis, 40 Acres and a Unicorn, 2007. Acrylic and gouache on canvas. 30 × 26 in. (76.2 × 66 cm).
“There are so many incredible works that visitors will have a rare chance to see,” Nairne says. “Some highlights include an early painting such as 40 Acres and a Unicorn, with its elusive figure riding a unicorn against a rich, Rothko-esque backdrop. There are also the Pueblo del Rio paintings, in which he reimagines an alternative, lyrical future for this public housing project.”
Noah Davis, Pueblo del Rio: Arabesque, 2014. Oil on canvas. 48 × 72 in. (121.9 × 182.9 cm).
The show, which is organized chronologically, also includes Davis’s more experimental works in sculpture and paper. Noah Davis will be on view at the Hammer Museum through August 31; it will then travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2026.
One last thing, Nairne adds: “Don’t miss a chance to see his cat, Pesto, amid the montage of reference photos.”
