The Julia Stoschek Foundation, one of the world's largest collections of video art, will present its first major U.S. exhibition at the Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Titled "What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem" and curated by Udo Kittelmann, the show opens February 6, 2026, pairing contemporary video works by artists such as Marina Abramović, Dara Birnbaum, Cyprien Gaillard, Arthur Jafa, Jesper Just, and Lu Yang with historic films by Luis Buñuel, Walt Disney, Alice Guy-Blaché, Winsor McCay, and Georges Méliès. The exhibition spans 120 years of filmmaking and will occupy a historic 1920s Venetian-style landmark that once housed L.A.'s first women's clubhouse and a vaudeville theater.
This exhibition matters because it bridges the divide between time-based media art and popular cinema, expanding Los Angeles's tradition of welcoming European émigrés who blur the lines between fine art and film. The show also marks a significant institutional expansion for the Julia Stoschek Foundation, which has built a collection of over 1,000 artworks by 300 artists since 2002, and previously opened public spaces in Düsseldorf and Berlin. By staging the exhibition in a venue with feminist and performance history, the foundation highlights how moving-image art can engage with social and political themes while connecting to Hollywood's cinematic legacy.