LACMA Announces Dates for Geffen Previews
LACMA has announced dates for free member previews of Peter Zumthor's (empty) David Geffen Galleries. They range from June 29 through July 7, depending on membership level. Some days offer an afternoon or sunset reception.
Sunday, June 29: Partner-level members only (includes afternoon reception)
Monday, June 30: Friend, Supporter, and Partner members (sunset reception)
Tuesday, July 1: Individual and Dual members (sunset reception)
Thursday, July 3–Saturday, July 5: Members of all levels
Sunday, July 6: NexGenLA members
Monday, July 7: Members of all levels
An individual LACMA membership costs $80. A student membership, eligible for all-level preview days, is $40. The best hack for thrifty families is NexGenLA, LACMA's free membership program for L.A. County youth 17 and under. A young person who joins NexGenLA can get into the museum and the July 6 preview free, with an adult guest in tow (also free).
Preceding the member previews is a so-called sonic preview, a performance of Kamasi Washington's Harmony of Difference within the new galleries. Washington and over a hundred musicians "will be dispersed over approximately 110,000 square feet of gallery space, making the building itself an acoustic instrument." This will take place on June 26, 27, and 28.
Tickets start at $60 ($48 for museum members). Tranches of tickets will be available on three dates at 10 AM (May 2, May 22, and June 12). The price escalates with each release, so a ticket bought on June 12 will cost $100 ($80 for members). The ticketing page, not yet live, is here.
After the previews, LACMA begins installing art in the Geffen Galleries, a process that will span the 9 months until the April 2026 opening.
Comments
"...[S]ome modern concrete structures have crumbled to the ground after only a few decades. In contrast, Rome’s famed Pantheon, the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, was dedicated in A.D. 128 and is still intact."
Several months ago I noticed the facade of the mansion of Henry and Arabella Huntington (built in the early 1900s) was done of stucco, not a more costly material like granite. I'm sure cost affected even their plans. The square footage of a building is also affected by budget.
However, today's Huntington is larger than it was as recently as 20 years ago. Same with museums throughout the world. Example: Cairo's huge new Grand Egyptian Museum.
When the Broad gave the public a pre-installation look around 2015, it wasn't as easy determining that more space would be better or more ideal. In today's age, people are increasingly jaded. So expectations of volume and spaciousness in 2025 aren't like when William Pereira's relatively modest-sized LACMA opened in 1965.
--- J. Garcin
However, I still have a suspicion that the Geffen will be good as a TikTok/Instagram moment, but will cause "er, ah, ums" as a serious space to view LA's supposedly major quasi-government-owned-run art collection. It will be great if I'm dead wrong.
In the next several weeks, the following forewarning will come closer (ie, the Geffen still will be unprogrammed) to being either pathetically evident or hopefully refuted by direct eyewitness accounts. In the next 12 months, will the exterior wall of windows (etc) be to the Geffen what the atrium and narrow galleries around it in 1965 were to the Ahmanson?
Llareviewofbooks.org, Feb 9, 2020:
"...Michael Govan acknowledged only a 10 percent reduction in space, but an audit conducted independently for the Los Angeles Review of Books by two different architecture offices concluded that the proposed design had 33 percent less space for enclosed galleries and 37 percent less museum space overall.
...the museum itself never admitted the loss of 54 percent of linear wall space for hanging artworks in this glass-wrapped building (again, according to the independent space audits).
Quoting Zumthor, Govan allegedly once said at a staff meeting that “large museums are not that great” — ignoring the MET, the Louvre, the British Museum, and LACMA itself."