Gagosian will present Richard Avedon: Hollywood at its Beverly Hills gallery, opening on 4 November 2026. The exhibition brings together more than 120 photographs spanning over half a century of Avedon's career, from his most recognisable portraits of film stars and cultural figures to images that have rarely been shown in public. It is, the gallery says, a survey of the photographer's lifelong fascination with Hollywood.

The presentation is curated by the Richard Avedon Foundation and designed by Cécile Degos. Avedon, who died in 2004, remains one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century: the New York Times credited him with helping to define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century. He began his professional career in 1942, became famous for his fashion work in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, and went on to make portraits that treated sitters — actors, writers, politicians, musicians — with the same intensity he brought to the studio. His later series In the American West, made between 1979 and 1984, is regarded as his magnum opus.

The Hollywood show draws on that whole span, pairing the glamour of the studio portrait with the directness that made Avedon's pictures unmistakable. Many of the photographs on view are icons of twentieth-century portraiture; others have seldom been exhibited, and the exhibition offers a chance to see the range of a career that moved between fashion, celebrity and documentary without ever losing its edge.

The opening reception takes place on Wednesday 4 November from 6 to 8pm at 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills. The exhibition runs to 19 December 2026.

The show opens as Avedon's work returns to wider attention. It coincides with the Netflix debut of a new biographical documentary about the photographer and the publication of Richard Avedon: The Harper's Bazaar Years, a book devoted to his magazine work.