Los Angeles is about to celebrate one of its most visionary builders. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced “Paul R. Williams: Architect for Living,” a landmark exhibition honoring the pioneering Black American architect who helped shape his native city during its rapid growth from the 1920s through the early 1970s. The show opens on November 15 and runs through May 2027.
The exhibition arrives as part of a historic celebration across three Los Angeles museums, with companion presentations at the Getty Research Institute and the USC Fisher Museum of Art. Together they are the first museum shows to draw on Williams’s personal archive, acquired from his family in 2020, and LACMA’s presentation is the largest and most comprehensive of the three.
Visitors will discover the stylistically diverse world of an architect whose innovation and rigor touched every corner of life in Los Angeles: ambitious public housing, civic and religious buildings, and iconic hotels in Southern California, Las Vegas, and Latin America. His work is everywhere in the city he loved — from the Beverly Hills Hotel and LAX’s Theme Building to the homes he designed for Hollywood legends like Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball, and beloved gathering places for the city’s Black community such as the First A.M.E. Church.
Happy City News is proud to spotlight a figure whose imagination truly built Los Angeles. Mark your calendars: this is a show worth planning for.
Photo: USC Fisher Museum of Art
