On Saturday night, more than 600 electric participants from entertainment, art and philanthropy were crowded with Geffen contemporarys at the 2025 MOCA Gala, raising $3.1 million for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The vortex of famous guests and presenters include House speakers Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Karen Bass, Ava Duvernay, Jane Fonda, Jane Fonda, Sarah Paulson, Candy Spelling, Lisa Edelstein, Lisa Edelstein, David Alan Grier, Tolokonnikova of the Barbara Kruger Cat Riot.

The evening was co-sponsored by BVLGARI (jewels that were presented during the cocktail party) to honor the inaugural Moca Legends Theaster Gates, Frank Gehry and Wendy Schmidt. MOCA Director Johanna Burton said the new award is a way to recognize “the people who helped write the story of Moca past, present and future.”

"It's a framework that allows people to celebrate the institution," Burton said in an interview. Hollywood Reporter Before the event occurred. “But also really celebrate these people who make us possible every day.”

The importance of community and cooperation among multiple fields throughout the evening is clearly the most important.

"Whether there is something special about MOCA, it actually always pushes the limitations of art-making, who defines it and how it looks," Burton said. "It started with a very multidisciplinary experiment, space for adventure. I think we are really encouraging and thinking about that right now."

Glittering guests mixed together during cocktail party while exploring the current exhibition at Moca Geffen, taking selfies in front of a huge mirror sculpture while exploring the Moca Geffen's current exhibition Olafur Eliasson: Open. They were then brought to the party by Taikoproject's Japanese drum band.

Inside the event space designed by Frank Gehry, a globe decorated with colorful and black desktops, guests enjoy dinner as the show begins. MOCA Board Chairman Maria Seferian launched the event and sent a battle against art.

"Museums are collections with people and places, but in their hearts, museums are really just an idea, creativity, possibility, imagination. In other words, freedom." "Liberty. We need this now, freely and act outside the different scope of the environment. Art has the ability to change our viewing and understanding of things that are past, present or future. It is a language that connects feelings with knowledge, activates actions, inspires paradigm transfer, question and creates identity."

Johanna Burton responded to this view in her speech. “I have always believed that culture is crucial to civil society and there is no more time to accept this idea,” she said.

Ava Duvernay presented the first MOCA Legend Award to multidisciplinary artist Theaster Gates, whose first major solo show on the West Coast was held at MOCA in 2001. Gates was celebrated as a modern Renaissance man, and his practice incorporates sculpture, conceptual forms, music, music, performance, land art and the theory of creating communities, conceptual forms, performance, land art and space.

"Tit Gates is the whole band," said a passionate Duvernay. "He's the lead singer, calling for something eternity. He's the bassist, holding the bottom, taking it all. He's the drummer, beating time, creating momentum. He's the guitarist, bent strings.

Duvernay also celebrates the preservation and enhancement of Black history and culture by Gates’ work. "He is the builder, but the building of buildings, heritage, spaces of joy and resistance, worship, imagination and reimagining," she said. He is the bridge between the Black Archives and the Black Future and the Black Future. Somewhere in between? Theaster. ”

Gates generously accepted his honor and pointed out the importance of supporting the creative. “It’s about living, letting your talents reproduce, and you can do that by grabbing those talents and watching them reproduce," he said.

"I feel like I've been looking at the black and brown talents nearby, and no one invested in them," he said. "In fact, they're burying the talented blacks. And, is it possible that we can take a moment to imagine the talent around us being able to do more than we do? So when the Queen comes home, talented people can create beautiful things. My job is to make talent, to achieve talent, to make all I want to give.

Jane Fonda, as passionate and witty as ever, introduced another MOCA Legend Award winner, philanthropist and investor, Wendy Schmidt. Schmidt spent decades building innovative nonprofits working with the community to build healthy oceans, renewable energy, sustainable food systems and human rights. Together with her husband, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, she funded the Wendy and Eric Schmidt Environmental and Art Awards at Moca, which recognizes and fundes artists whose practices involve key intersections in art, design, conservation, suitability and environmental justice.

"She is an avid puzzler," Fonda said of Schmidt. "She got the puzzle piece earlier this year, and it was no accident. She saw how the pieces came together, she saw the big picture, she saw the state of the world, and the rest of us only saw a mess."

Fonda also managed to do a good job of digging her ex-husband: “She is a competitive sailor. She is the first woman to win the world’s largest sailing race and the first American American. She is a petite woman who has been with all-male crew members to lead them to victory with a focus, spirit and firm attitude. She is victorious.

Schmidt joked: “After Jane Fonda is here, a microphone with a microphone is obviously a honor and a challenge.”

Schmidt continues to deliver inspiring and enthusiastic speeches that encourage multidisciplinary collaboration to benefit humanity. "Arts and science work together, and we all see the world in a richer, nuanced and promising way and face challenges. That's why our philanthropy crosses disciplines, deliberately seeing what happens at the edge of things where things intersect. That's where changes are."

"I see science and art as two aspects of the same coin; each of them is based on a necessary basis. A part of a free society, a part of a free society, is the foundation of a free society. That's why topics of ideology that are not appropriate to me in our country are communicated with me sideways if you try to suppress the habits of science. Communication.

Perhaps the most touching part of the night was the third and final MOCA Legend Award to renowned architect Frank Gehry, who renovated the old warehouse owning Moca Geffen. "Frank Gehry was a magician because his architecture allowed people to see art differently, listen to music differently, understand education differently," Nancy Pelosi said. "He was a magician who turned everything that happened into something that people understood very much."

Pelosi also has community-based themes. "Architecture is architecture, but it is art. It is the art of the community. He has listened to the structure of the community. He designs around the community in the community. It's about culture, it's about community, it's about communication."

The 96-year-old Gehry spoke from the table in a soft voice, but his words echoed throughout the hall. “To me, Moka means a lot to me,” Gary said. “The artists brought me to their club – it’s where I want to be, and they opened their eyes to another world.”

The night ended with a fierce performance by Grammy-nominated Tierra Whack. Donors, artists and curators bring table dance and mix together, a community that thrives in our uncertain future.