Jori Finkel covers LACMA’s annual art-buying clambake where donors show their taste and commitment by voting for works and then putting their money where their convictions lie:

the L.A. County Museum of Art bought $2.5-million worth of artwork to add to its permanent collection, including two larger-than-life works: a 60-foot-long Robert Rauschenberg screenprint that shows a collage of newspaper articles from 1970, bought for $775,000, and a nearly 10-foot-tall elevator surround that Louis Sullivan designed around 1892 for the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, bought for $177,500. […] At the gala, the 79 committee “members” — typically couples who bought tickets for the event  starting at $15,000 —got to vote on which artworks the museum would purchase, using a fund created by their ticket fees.

This year’s acquisition pool was $1.1 million, with $384,000 more raised Saturday night by an auction. As has increasingly been the case with this annual collecting event, individuals donors also stepped forward to pledge more money — about $1 million in all — for particular works they liked.

LACMA buys seven works, led by Rauschenberg and Sullivan (Culture Monster/LA Times)