Chocolate Factory Paul McCarthy

This November, ahead of its January 2027 opening, the Performance Art Museum (PAM) presents Paul McCarthy’s Chocolate Factory, bringing the artist’s continually evolving project to Los Angeles for the first time. Presented as a special limited-engagement benefit for the museum, the work transforms PAM’s industrial warehouse in Chinatown into a functioning chocolate factory where performance, sculpture, manufacturing, and commerce converge.

During public hours, outfitted workers will cast approximately 400 of McCarthy’s recurring Santa with Tree Plug and Tree Plug sculptures in chocolate each day. As the chocolates multiply, they will accumulate throughout the Performance Art Museum’s exhibition space, creating an installation that evolves over the course of the engagement.

Alongside the live production, a separate limited edition of 2,000 Paul McCarthy chocolate works will be available for purchase in person and online. Produced in Los Angeles by andSons Chocolatiers from 62% dark chocolate couverture, the two different sculptures, Santa with Tree Plug and Tree Plug, will be priced at $200 each, with proceeds benefiting PAM as it prepares to open in January.

First realized at Maccarone Gallery in New York in 2007, Chocolate Factory transformed the commercial gallery into a functioning manufacturing facility and retail store. Seven years later, at Monnaie de Paris, McCarthy situated the factory within the historic French mint, where chocolate figures accumulated in rooms once associated with the production of currency.

Across these iterations, Chocolate Factory has examined labor, production, consumption, and value. The chocolates produced inside the factory accumulate as a record of labor and repetition, while the limited edition enters circulation as an object to be purchased, collected, or consumed. An artwork concerned with the systems of commerce now participates in those same systems to help establish a new museum.

At the center of the project are forms McCarthy has returned to for decades. Santa Claus evokes childhood fantasy, generosity, and commercial desire, while the Plug shifts between Christmas tree, modernist abstraction, industrial object, and sexual reference. Rendered in chocolate, both figures occupy an uneasy space between sculpture and commodity, preservation and consumption.

Rather than an exhibition of finished objects, Chocolate Factory unfolds through the ongoing activity of production, with the process itself becoming the work. Set within PAM’s industrial space in Chinatown, the project offers an initial expression of what a museum dedicated to performance art can encompass. Its familiar imagery of chocolate and the holiday season provides an accessible entry point into McCarthy’s more complex examination of spectacle, desire, commerce, and value.

Chocolate Factory is located at the Performance Art Museum (109 W College St, Los Angeles, CA 90012).

Live production on view November 20 – December 26, 2026, Wednesday through Saturday from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

$5 suggested donation. Reservations at pamuseum.org.

Paul McCarthy is widely considered one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945 and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice that sought to break the limitations of painting through the use of unorthodox materials, including bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work across a variety of mediums, from performance, photography, film, and video to sculpture, drawing, and painting.

McCarthy earned a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1969 and an MFA in multimedia, film, and art from USC in 1973. For 18 years, he taught performance, video, installation, and art history in UCLA’s New Genres Department, where he influenced generations of West Coast artists.

A second-generation chocolatier located on the same corner for over 40 years, andSons is recognized as one of America’s premier confectioners. With a world-class culinary team helmed by Chef Sandy Tran, former executive pastry chef of The French Laundry, the kitchen in the Los Angeles Arts District blends classical European technique with bold California creativity. Its bonbons, ranging from timeless to inventive, are made with seasonal, chef-sourced ingredients, including produce from the Santa Monica Farmers Market, dairy from Northern California, and ethically sourced cacao.

The Performance Art Museum advances the visibility, legacy, and scholarship of artists working in performance. As an emergent nonprofit organization that centers performance art in the foreground of contemporary practice, PAM is dedicated to the presentation and preservation of performance. It is the central venue for the discovery, interaction, and study of contemporary and historically significant performance artworks. At the intersection of art and life, the Museum commissions, presents, and collects the full range of accomplishments in performance.

Shipping is from Los Angeles, CA, and will be on a rolling basis starting November 23, 2026. You will receive an email once your order is in transit with a tracking number. It will arrive in 2 days or less.

Climates experiencing warm weather, such as Florida, will require next-day priority shipping and will be priced accordingly.

We are unable to ship to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or any international destinations.

To ship to multiple addresses, please place individual orders.

For bulk orders of more than 5 sculptures shipping to multiple addresses, contact our concierge team for further assistance. Email pam@and-sons.com or text 310-276-2776.

Yes, during checkout, select the option for pickup at the Performance Art Museum located at 109 W College St, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Your order will be available for pickup during the exhibition operating hours: Wednesday–Saturday, between 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm (November 20 – December 26, 2026). Chocolate sculptures may be purchased on-site as well.

Sizes: Santa with Tree Plug is 10" tall. Tree Plug is 7.5" tall.

Ingredients include: cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter, sunflower lecithin, vanilla extract.

Proceeds from the sale of each chocolate directly benefit the Performance Art Museum’s new home and inaugural programming. As you are receiving a product for your purchase, there is no tax-deductible amount that applies.

However, you are invited to make a tax-deductible donation directly to the Performance Art Museum.

For questions about visiting the Chocolate Factory at the Performance Art Museum, contact hey@pamuseum.org.

For questions about placing an order, contact pam@and-sons.com or text 310-276-2776.