Milton Wichner Collection

Since its founding in 1950, the Long Beach Museum of Art has developed a renowned permanent collection of twentieth-century paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, with a special focus on contemporary and Southern California art. As the Museum celebrates its 75th anniversary, it continues to honor the collectors who have greatly enriched the collection. One of the most notable of these contributions is the Milton Wichner Collection. This impressive group of works by five modernist pioneers—Alexej Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Fischinger, László Moholy-Nagy, and Lyonel Feininger—represents an innovative and expressive force in early twentieth-century abstraction. The collection highlights a significant chapter of Southern California’s art history.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Southern California region became a creative sanctuary for European artists fleeing the devastation of World War II. Wichner, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1936 to establish his law practice after graduating from Harvard Law School, deepened his interest in European modern abstraction after meeting Galka Scheyer, the influential dealer who represented all five artists. Through Scheyer’s exhibitions, Wichner encountered European modernist painting on the West Coast for the first time. Although her efforts to cultivate a Southern California audience for this work met with limited success at the time, Wichner was deeply persuaded and became especially enthusiastic about its bold use of color.

Through his connection with Scheyer, Wichner assembled a historically significant collection of more than 50 artworks between 1938 and 1953. Although he was not a native of Long Beach, he believed that a smaller museum would make the collection more accessible to the public. After his passing in 1978, his estate executor, Eva B. Mason, chose the Long Beach Museum of Art as the collection’s recipient—honoring Wichner’s vision of sharing these works as a lasting cultural resource.