Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical creations and Los Angeles artist Catherine Opie’s documentary photographs and will take centre stage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 2018 Art + Film Gala on November 3, the museum announced.
The event, now in its eighth year, is the museum’s premier fundraiser, a lavish affair bringing together art, film and fashion figures as well as civic leaders and celebrities.
In 2016, Lacma featured Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters, the Mexican filmmaker’s first solo retrospective at the museum. “As a filmmaker, Guillermo’s work challenges us to ignore traditional art-historical narratives and hierarchies of high and low culture,” Lacma Director Michael Govan said. “His ability to collapse time and space, history and fiction, and nature and fantasy makes him an exceptional filmmaker.”
Last year’s Art + Film Gala, honouring artist Mark Bradford and filmmaker George Lucas, raised nearly $4.5 million (Dh16.5 million) for the museum. Proceeds from the event benefited the museum’s film programme as well as exhibitions, educational initiatives and art acquisitions.
This year’s event will again be co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio and museum trustee Eva Chow.
Both Opie and Del Toro, Chow said, “share an exceptional ability to tell human stories that are relevant and important to our time.”
