CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

MUSEUM-IN-RESIDENCE

Beginning June 15th, 2026

Through the summer, VHM will be presenting photographs and other materials from our historical archive at a much older local institution: Hama Sushi on Windward Ave!

  • As many of our supporters know, a series of classic, mostly 20th-century portraits sourced from community members and curated by VHM founder Todd von Hoffmann have been on display at Hama, tying the restaurant and its patrons' experience to the history of Venice. This summer, VHM will be placing additional elements in Hama alongside of the existing portraits in order to give supplemental context for diners looking back on the area's past. From a massive 1913 panorama photograph overlooking the Venice lagoon (nowadays the traffic circle where Hama sits) to recent oral history interviews featuring Guy Okazaki and Esther Chaing, the aim is for the museum to be present at the restaurant through subtle new details.

    Venice has a long history of food and beverage establishments playing host to local cultural activities, all the way up to today. VHM at Hama is another experiment in this tradition, with items sourced from the museum collection introduced for an exhibition project that begins today and unfolds over the next three months.

Vanished Venice: Ship Cafe + The Annual Venice Canal Festivals

March 21–September 6, 2026

VHM has re-opened to the public in a new location with two temporary exhibits featuring material from our collections.

  • Vanished Venice: Ship Cafe begins an initiative to highlight places that once were key features of the local landscape and have since gone away. It is part of the museum’s mission not only to preserve records but also to join our visitors in actively studying these departed destinations. From 1905 to 1946, the Ship Cafe, a unique restaurant and hotel, was an inseparable part of the built environment of Venice.

    In The Annual Venice Canal Festivals, photographs and documents from the VHM Community Archive create a sketch of an event that happened each year in the famed canals from 1969 to 1976. Serving as a declaration of community presence in the midst of debates about the future of the canals, the prescience of the material related to the festivals has stood out in the museum's growing collections because of its relationship to discussions of changes in Venice during recent years.

PAST EXHIBITIONS 

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THIS IS SOME PLACE

March 9, 2024–November 30, 2025

Venice, California, is a place of real-life world-building, where locals imagine and reimagine their home over and again. The numerous and simultaneous versions of what the area has been—and what it may become—have themselves defined Venice ever since Abbot Kinney ventured to reconstruct Italy’s most serene city here on Pacific shores. 

  • This exhibition, the first to be presented in the Venice Heritage Museum’s new home, spans from Opening Day in 1905 through to the origins of Venice’s counterculture and onward to questions of the community’s future. Featuring photographs, video, and archival documents and publications, This is some place collects and juxtaposes examples across eras showing different ways that Venetians have acted upon the spaces around them to create a place that remains distinct even as it continues to change.

    This is some place includes artistic and photographic contributions from Charles Brittin, Rod Bradley, Henry Diltz, Shanna Jones, Josh “Bagel” Klassman, Janet Kusnick, Earl Newman, Stuart Perkoff, Marilyn Ramirez, David Scott, Glen Small, Frank Talbott, Emily Winters, and more. Archival materials are presented courtesy of Stephen Raul Anaya, Laura Ceballos, the Getty Research Institute, Sonya Reese Greenland, Theo and Todd von Hoffmann, Dr. Naomi Nightingale, Stephen Pouliot, Carole Stein, Allyson Tabor, among others. ​​

    Videos from the VHM Oral History Project throughout the entire run of the exhibition included: Linda Azuzerta, Larry Bell, Dolores Deluce, Terrell Ferguson, Hal Frederick, Phyllis Hayashibara, Joan Huff, Robert Huff, Sharon Jacobucci, Josh "Bagel" Klassman, Francisco Letelier, Louichi Mayorga, Stanley Mitchell, Dr. Naomi Nightingale, Mary Nomura, Sergio Perez, Harry Perry, Victoria Ramirez, Karen Rosenhoover, Solo Scott, Rusty Smith, Jataun Valentine, Suzy Williams, Emily Winters, and Bob Zaugh.

    ​Curated by Anthony Carfello. ​This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

 
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BURIED YEARS

May 31–November 30, 2025

Presented at the Venice Heritage Museum by the Advanced Photography students at Venice Arts. In 2024–25, these students embarked on a special project, examining archival materials, visiting historical sites, conducting interviews, and creating artwork in response to the forced removal and internment of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles during WWII.

  • Blocks from the Venice Arts campus is the Venice Japanese American Memorial Monument, marking the historic departure point to the Manzanar internment camp in the Eastern Sierras. Our students followed the same route, traveled to Manzanar, stayed overnight, and photographed throughout the National Historic Site.

    The results of this twenty-four-week project are this exhibition in VHM's back gallery and a zine—a creative effort to connect this history to contemporary civil liberty threats and the personal lives of the participating students.

Header image: Night Scene of the Auditorium, Ship Hotel and Dancing Pavilion. circa 1907-1915. From the Elayne Alexander Collection (P-2)