Charlotte Call's Guide to Los Angeles

Portrait of Charlotte Call outside her LA Gallery by Steve Knight.

Charlotte Call opened her first gallery, Sapling, in London’s Mayfair in 2021. Two years later she moved to LA where she inaugurated Charlotte Call Gallery in September 2025, within one of the city’s most vibrant art districts.

Charlotte Call brings a curatorial approach to her programming inspired by extensive reading and a sensitivity to nature, coupled with her Art History degree from the University of Cambridge and experience with Christie's Post-War and Contemporary in London.

Charlotte Call Gallery is situated on North Western Avenue, with neighbours including mega-gallery David Zwirner and Olivia Barrett and Nelson Harmon’s Château Shatto. Her inaugural exhibition, Fire and Life celebrated the legacy of Beatrice Wood, a Californian artist affiliated with the Dada movement, known for her exquisitely glazed ceramics and provocative love life. For the exhibition, Charlotte paired Wood, who passed at the fine age of 105 in 1998, with living artists who embrace a kindred energy: Durimel, Cecilia Granara, Amy Steel, and Yuwei Tu.

To coincide with Frieze Los Angeles 2026, Call will present Mexico-City based painter Cecilia Granara in her first solo exhibition in the city, having first exhibited her in London in early 2022. Granara’s new paintings evoke the supernatural in abstract stormy backgrounds with central figures and motifs familiar to the surrealists, particularly the likes of Leonora Carrington.

Image credits: (1, 2) Views of Brittle Stars at Sapling Gallery, London, 28 January - 26 February 2022; (3) Brittle Stars (float), 2022 (4) Holding, 2025-2026; (5) Presenza, 2026; (6) Tempesta, 5 and 8 of Wands, 2026; (7) Black horse from a dream, 2026; All works by Cecilia Granara. All images courtesy of Charlotte Call Gallery.

Also inaugurating during the Frieze Week, Call will present a selection of paintings by Elizabeth Malaska in the backroom. Previous programming at Sapling in London included projects with works by German Renaissance painter, printmaker, and theorist Albrecht Dürer and surrealist photographer Lee Miller. As an example of Charlotte’s ability to think beyond the gallery and in tune with nature, in 2022 she produced and distributed limited edition wildflower seed packets designed by Gilbert & George, in collaboration with conceptual London based artist Sam Harris.

Her London space Sapling occupied a quiet corner of Mayfair where plants filled the street-facing window and sidewalk, nurturing a space to gather as much as one to view art. Her LA space continues this motive to build community by drawing connections between past, present and future to spark connection and cultivate meaning.

We are grateful to Charlotte for sharing her insights to a city that – despite its tumultuous timing complete with fires and floods, has become home. Thanks Charlotte!

☉ Resisting the car-dependency of LA by living within walking distance of the gallery – where in the neighbourhood do you frequent by foot?

This corner of Western and Melrose has turned into a walkable spot full of galleries and some great independent places to eat and drink. In the daytime, I would head to Lab Coffee & Roasters for coffee, then to LA Grocers for the deli counter or Chainsaw for an arepa. The density of galleries here means I’m able to drop into shows on foot, which is how I grew up going to shows while in London until 2023.

Moran Moran is a favourite as well as Wilding Cran. For a longer midday pause, I’ll take a Pilates class at Folm Studios or browse the archival vintage at Ending Soon. In the evening, Bar 109 is hard to beat for a strong cocktail and thoughtful bar snacks, and The Brick’s programme adds a steady rhythm of events to the block.

☉ Can you recommend three places in the city that you’ve drawn inspiration from?

Metabolic Studio, founded by Lauren Bon, fills me with hope for what art can achieve. Their work restoring a bend of the LA River brings ecological repair and artistic thinking into direct contact. They host regular volunteer events to weed and compost alongside talks from artists and writers. I like how thinking and doing here is right together: mud and philosophy. 

The ONE Archives in USC has become a favourite place to research, though it took a London friend to introduce it to me! As well as an interesting archive of all sorts of books, magazines, and objects, ONE has a dense and rewarding exhibition space. I’m looking forward to the next show which will open during Frieze on Feb 25th which is exploring the queer history of body piercings.

The Norton Simon Museum feels like a small museum in Switzerland or France, with a select but heavyweight collection of European old masters and nineteenth century Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The Morisot and Monets remind me of home in France and the UK, and the Klees and Kandinsky pieces from Galka Sheyer’s collection speak to the modernist emigré roots of the LA art scene.

 ☉ Beyond hosting Granara’s inaugural solo exhibition, what’s on the agenda for Frieze?

I’m looking forward to seeing the Rita McBride exhibition at Blue Heights Arts & Culture, Galka Scheyer’s former home and a historic site of artistic gatherings in the 1940s, where Beatrice Wood was among the visitors. Cecilia Granara and I are planning to visit together.

I’m also curious to explore the new fair “Away From Desk,” organised by Gene’s Dispensary, and Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market with James Fuentes on Western, which always brings a welcome sense of energy and spontaneity to the week.