The Museum of Contemporary Art on Sunday celebrates its survival after nearly going under (and temporarily closing its Geffen Contemporary branch) with a 30-year retrospective exhibition.

Collection: MOCA's First 30 Years happens through May 3 and features 6,000 pieces of art from its permanent collection, including examples from Jackson Pollock, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat and what philanthropist Eli Broad calls the finest Mark Rothko collection in the museum world.

Broad helped rescue MOCA, which had hit financial bottom in the last year and closed its Geffen branch for 10 months, with a $30 million pledge that was then matched by other donors. He told Reuters that the resulting transformation “is the biggest turnaround of any art institution” during the recession.

“In 30 years, MOCA has built one of the world's greatest in-depth postwar art collections,” stated MOCA CEO Charles E. Young. “This exhibition is a celebration of that achievement and of the ambition for which the museum is so respected.”

The exhibition will take place at MOCA Grand Avenue downtown and at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in nearby Little Tokyo.

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