LA Opera has commissioned Cuban-born artist Enrique Martínez Celaya to create “The Things We Know,” a curtain artwork that will become a visual centerpiece of the company’s 2026-27 season.

The approximately 70-foot-wide artwork will be installed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for all mainstage performances throughout the season.

“A curtain is different from a painting on a wall because it has a life in time,” Martínez Celaya said, per an official press release. “A curtain waits. Then it moves. I wanted that movement to be part of the work rather than merely something that happened to it.”

“’The Things We Know’ transforms the curtain from a boundary into a kind of visual prelude, making the audience’s arrival part of the artistic experience before a single note is heard,” added LA Opera President and CEO Christopher Koelsch.

Martínez Celaya’s work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in more than 60 public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has also created major projects and installations for institutions including the State Hermitage Museum, The Phillips Collection, the Berliner Philharmonie and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana. He is Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California and lives and works in Los Angeles.

“The Things We Know” is generously underwritten by Mei-Lee Ney.