LACMA's big gallery opening
Los Angeles’s long‑awaited David Geffen Galleries will open April 19th after roughly six years of construction, handing the city a new cultural anchor. The project has been expensive — the building cost nearly $724 million, with detailed spending broken down by the Los Angeles Times — and it’s being positioned as a piece of the city’s push to keep high‑value cultural visitors coming. (latimes.com)
On April 19, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art starts opening a building that has been argued over for years and cost nearly $724 million to finish. The new David Geffen Galleries get a ribbon-cutting that day, then two weeks of member access before a public free day on May 3. (lacma.org) (aol.com) The building is not a small add-on. LACMA says the structure is 900 feet long, crosses Wilshire Boulevard, and becomes the museum’s new home for its permanent collection. (lacma.org) Swiss architect Peter Zumthor designed it, and the shape breaks from the usual museum box. Instead of stacking rooms like floors in an office tower, the galleries sit on one long elevated level with glass, terraces, and views out to the city. (lacma.org 1) (lacma.org 2) LACMA has been trying to remake this campus for two decades, not two years. Before this opening, it had already added the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008 and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion in 2010 while planning a bigger reset around the permanent collection. (lacma.org 1) (lacma.org 2) The numbers show why the project became such a civic fight. LACMA says the new building adds 110,000 square feet of exhibition space, lifting the museum’s total gallery space to 220,000 square feet from 130,000 before. (lacma.org) The money story is almost as big as the architecture story. LACMA says it surpassed a $750 million fundraising goal in 2023, and the museum has described the project as a public-private partnership that includes $125 million from Los Angeles County and a $150 million gift from entertainment executive David Geffen. (lacma.org 1) (lacma.org 2) That helps explain the opening choreography. April 19 is the ceremonial debut, April 19 through May 3 is reserved for members and donors, and May 3 includes free access for NexGenLA, the museum’s free membership program for Los Angeles County residents age 17 and under. (lacma.org) The building is also meant to change how LACMA shows art. The inaugural installation draws from the museum’s own holdings rather than opening with a single blockbuster exhibition, which means the bet here is on the permanent collection acting like the main attraction. (lacma.org) (nytimes.com) Even before the doors fully open, the museum is using old and new symbols together. The Alexander Calder fountain commissioned for LACMA’s 1965 opening has been reinstalled at the new galleries, tying the museum’s original campus identity to its most expensive rebuild yet. (latimes.com) So the real test starts after the ribbon-cutting. Los Angeles is getting a 900-foot concrete-and-glass museum bridge, paid for with a mix of county money and private philanthropy, and LACMA now has to prove that a building this costly can become as essential to the city as “Urban Light” did in 2008. (lacma.org) (lacma.org)
