The English word February derives from the Latin februa, which—somewhat appropriately for a city used to unashamedly epicurean tendencies—means “to cleanse.” And so it was that the local art merry-go-round officially kicked off that very month with Frieze Los Angeles out at the Santa Monica Airport—a regional aviation center catering year-round to amateur pilots, artists, and dog walkers. Arguably a sign of things to come in the art market writ large, the fair downsized from 120 galleries in 2023 to 95 in 2024. But the contraction at the city’s most exclusive and star-studded art event was offset by a strong showing of artists from the Asia Pacific region at both small and large exhibitions throughout the year.

The Hammer Museum opened “Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s,” which had traveled west from the Guggenheim in New York; some of the artists featured included Sung Neung Kyung, Ha Chong-Hyun, and Park Hyunki. Meanwhile, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), debuted “Scratching at the Moon,” the first-ever exhibition to focus on Asian American artists in the city’s history. A month later, the wider art community, in particular the Asian art community, were shocked by the death of multidisciplinary artist, mentor, and University of California Irvine professor Yong Soon Min, whose photographic self-portraits in “Scratching at the Moon” suddenly felt elegiac. A memorial service held at the museum on May 5 drew art-world luminaries, including Paul Pfeiffer, Anna Sew Hoy, Candice Lin, Patty Chang, and Young Chung.