For six days, the devastating fires in Los Angeles have destroyed private collections of works of Art, but also artists’ studios and museums.
Since January 7, the impressive fires in Los Angeles have destroyed more than 12,000 structures and left 24 dead. But in the second largest city in the United States, home to an important art scene and great fortunes, the flames also ravaged many works, private collections, artists’ studios and museums.
Questioned by the specialized media ARTnews, Simon de Burgh Codrington, director of the insurance company Risk Strategies, assures that this is “one of the biggest losses of works of art that the United States have known”.
“It’s hard to lose your whole life in one night”
In the columns of the New York Times, several local artists say they lost their works in these fires. The painter Alec Egan, who had spent two years working on an exhibition scheduled for the end of January, deplored to the American newspaper the disappearance of all his paintings, which he kept in his house in Pacific Palisades, destroyed by the flames.
“It’s terror and despair,” he says from a hotel in Beverly Hills, where he, his wife and two young children have been temporarily relocated.
The artist Diana Thater, famous for her works inspired by nature, also lost years of archives and paintings, kept in her garage which burned down with her house in Altadena. One of his works, which was to be exhibited when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art reopened in 2026, was also destroyed. “It’s hard to lose your whole life in one night,” she told the New York Times.
A prize pool set up
The artist Camilla Taylor, who was preparing for three exhibitions in 2025, mourns “more than 20 years of artistic creation”. Hundreds of prints, drawings and sculptures in metal, ceramic and glass that she kept in her West Altadena home went up in smoke in the fires.
“Usually, I am an artist who works more at the last minute, but here, I was proud of myself because I had managed to finish half of the works that I planned to exhibit in December. But, now, everything has evaporated,” she told the New York Times.
Other Los Angeles artists also saw several years of work go up in smoke in these devastating fires, like Paul McCarthy, Ross Simonini and Kathryn Andrews.
To try to compensate for these losses, the latter, who had already lost works in 2020 in a previous fire, joined forces with her colleague Andrea Bowers and four specialists from the art world in order to launch a support fund for artists. To date, it has raised nearly $245,000.
“Some people will be able to rebuild their lives, while others may not even have the same access to insurance coverage,” specify the organizers in describing the prize pool.
Rembrandt, Van Gogh et Monet
But the fires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades neighborhood continue to grow and now threaten other artistic venues like the famous Getty Museum, located in an area affected by an evacuation order.
Although the establishment’s staff left the premises, the museum’s prestigious collection, which includes 125,000 pieces – including Rembrandts, Van Gogh and Monets – and some 1.4 million documents, remained on site. On X, the Getty Museum, however, affirms that “the buildings and works are safe”.
In 2019, Lisa Lapin, communications manager for the cultural establishment, told AFP that the museum had been “built to accommodate valuable pieces and protect them from fires, earthquakes, any infringement”.
The museum is covered with some 300,000 blocks of travertine, a limestone rock that resists flames. Its structure is also made of concrete and steel bars and its roofs are covered with crushed stone to prevent embers carried by the wind from creating a hearth there.
Inside, the ventilation system can switch to a closed circuit – on the same principle as the ventilation of a car to recycle the air in the passenger compartment – which prevents smoke from entering the rooms and damage collections.
And if flames ever break out between its walls, its galleries could be separated from each other and sealed by a system of double doors, similar to the watertight compartments of a submarine.
In areas preserved by fire, the art world’s concern is nevertheless felt. Many establishments, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Broad museum or the Hammer Museum have closed their doors as a precaution, leaving their collections possibly prey to the flames.
