How Do “The Kitchen and Its Discontents” and “Home of the Future” Compare at LACMA?

The Kitchen and Its Discontents and Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias are two exhibitions in LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion, on view from September 27, 2026 to March 14, 2027. The first examines the kitchen as a place of design, labor and domestic tension. The second follows visions of future homes and asks who those visions were made for. You can visit both with museum admission. A useful starting question is: whose life does this image or design imagine making easier?

What should you know before visiting?

• Venue: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036.
• Exhibition location: Resnick Pavilion. These are separate exhibitions with the same published dates.
• Dates: September 27, 2026 to March 14, 2027.
• Hours: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 11 am–6 pm; Friday, 11 am–8 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 10 am–7 pm. Closed Wednesdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. All times are local Los Angeles time.
• Adult admission: $25 for L.A. County residents with valid ID; $30 for visitors from outside the county. Other rates and free-entry categories apply.
• Tickets: advance timed entry is recommended. Walk-up timeslots can sell out. LACMA’s FAQ says admission includes the entire museum and all current exhibitions.
• Information checked October 13, 2026. This guide is based on published museum materials, not a firsthand visit. Recheck the visit page before travelling.

What is The Kitchen and Its Discontents about?

LACMA describes the kitchen as a historical site of women’s labor and a subject of design research and cultural critique. Its exhibition brings two kitchens from the collection into conversation: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s 1926–30 kitchen for the New Frankfurt social housing program in Germany, and Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier’s 1948–50 kitchen for L’Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, France.
According to the museum, these designers used efficiency and modularity with the aim of improving women’s lives. The exhibition also examines the complications of those aims through photographs, prints and advertisements. A room that promises to save time can still carry assumptions about who works in it.
The exhibition page supplies that framing. It does not require you to decide that every design failed or that every kitchen has the same meaning. You can compare the stated ambition with the person, task or relationship a particular object brings into view.

How can Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #3 help you start?

LACMA illustrates the exhibition with Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #3, dated 1977. Treat the photograph as an entry into looking, rather than as evidence of an actual household or a complete account of the exhibition.
Begin with what you can point to in the image: a gesture, the placement of a figure, the arrangement of a room. Then ask what makes the scene look familiar. Does that familiarity come from your own experience, or from pictures you have seen before?
Those questions do not supply a hidden plot. They help distinguish observation from inference. A photograph can suggest a role or a situation without telling you what happened before or after it. Use the museum’s caption and exhibition context to test your reading, not to erase your first response.
This is an example of cultural mediation: building a relationship between a viewer and an artwork through context and conversation. Antre uses adaptive cultural mediation for its own approach to interpretation that responds to a visitor’s questions. That is Antre’s term, not the name of a LACMA service.

What does Home of the Future add to the comparison?

Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias looks beyond the kitchen to ways the American home of tomorrow was imagined, packaged and sold. LACMA names self-cleaning kitchens, plastic houses assembled in a day, push-button appliances and desktop computers among those visions.
The exhibition uses architectural models, drawings, photographs, films and objects ranging from sinks to television sets. The official page asks who was excluded from these promised futures and who imagined alternatives.
Its illustrated example is Rick Guidice’s Cutaway of Torus Wheel Habitat, made for NASA in 1975. The title alone offers a comparison with the kitchen: one image proposes a habitat on another scale, while the kitchen designs address the organization of daily domestic tasks. Let the differences in scale prompt a question about the people assumed to inhabit each space.
Do not treat an architectural proposal, a photograph and a household object as interchangeable evidence. Ask what each was meant to do: show a possible environment, stage a situation, or organize an activity. The comparison becomes more specific when you keep their different purposes in view.

What connects the two exhibitions without making them identical?

Both address the relationship between a promised way of living and the conditions of everyday life. Their scopes differ. The Kitchen and Its Discontents concentrates on a space associated with labor and the tensions around it. Home of the Future follows a longer history of domestic aspirations, technology and exclusion.
You might carry one question between them: who is visible, and who is assumed? A design may specify an efficient task without representing the person doing it. An image may show a person while leaving other work outside the frame. These are prompts for attention, not claims that every object in either exhibition follows one pattern.
There is no need to see both in a prescribed order or finish them within an invented time budget. Start with the object that gives you a concrete question, then compare it with something in the other exhibition.

How do tickets and free admission work?

LACMA’s ticket page separates county-resident rates from those for visitors outside the county. Seniors 65 and over and students 18 and over with ID pay $21 or $26 respectively. The same two rates are listed for visitors with disabilities.
General admission is free for L.A. County residents with valid ID on weekdays after 3 pm, and for all visitors on the second Tuesday of each month. These offers do not mean every visit is free. Check your category and reserve the appropriate timed-entry ticket. The museum closes on Wednesdays, even though its resident offer is described as a weekday offer.
The FAQ advises arriving 10–15 minutes before the booked entry time and says ticket sales are final and non-refundable. It also gives a contact route for rescheduling when a visitor feels unwell. Do not assume a general cancellation refund from that specific rescheduling guidance.

What should you know about accessibility?

LACMA says every gallery, restroom, dining service and outdoor space is wheelchair accessible. Complimentary wheelchairs are available at the Ticket Office, first come, first served. Its accessibility page lists seating in the Resnick Pavilion and other galleries.
A professional personal care attendant accompanying a paying visitor who needs such care can receive complimentary admission. Ask at the Ticket Office; the museum says these disability and attendant tickets do not require formal documentation.
Both exhibition pages offer large-print label downloads. Availability of digital content in multiple languages does not establish that every exhibition text or audio recording is available in Spanish. Check the resource you need before relying on it.

What else can you read for an LA art visit?

The guide to Huguette Caland at the Hammer Museum offers a separate exhibition context. The ICA LA visit guide covers another museum. These links are alternatives for planning and reading, not a claim that one LACMA ticket covers different venues.

FAQ

Are these one exhibition or two?

Two. They share the Resnick Pavilion and published dates, but have different titles and subjects.

Does museum admission include both?

LACMA’s current FAQ says admission includes all current exhibitions. Verify the current ticket information when you book.

Is LACMA open on Wednesday?

No. Its published museum hours list Wednesdays as closed.

Is this guide a report from inside the galleries?

No. It uses LACMA’s published exhibition and visitor information, checked October 13, 2026. Looking prompts are suggestions, not firsthand observations of the installation.

Sources

• The Kitchen and Its Discontents: dates, location, kitchen designs, curatorial framing and Sherman caption.
• Home of the Future: dates, location, scope and Guidice caption.
• Plan Your Visit, Museum Hours, Tickets, FAQ and Accessibility: current visitor facts.

Sources read in full October 13, 2026. Dates, rates and access arrangements can change.

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