NHMLA Receives Largest-Ever Gift, for Ice-Age Science
 |
| Fossil exhibit at George C. Page Museum |
The transformation of the La Brea fossil site received a boost with a cash gift from the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation. The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County calls it the museum's largest-ever donation. Though the amount has not been disclosed, it's likely to be a large chunk of the $131 million the museum has raised so far for the La Brea site. The funds will go to establish the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Science.
Last week the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the first phase of Weiss/Manfredi's design for the La Brea site. Construction is expected to begin this fall.
 |
| Rendering of Manfredi/Weiss design |
Comments
Aerial photos of the Geffen Galleries, however, in another way do make the building look larger than the actual square footage is. The overhang of the roof regrettably doesn't equal the floor space under it.
Also, a dry-wall-type exhibit space is standard for most major museums. So the BCAM (or Resnick) will make an interesting contrast to the Geffen.
Since Govan and his staff are way too much into contemporary, the modern/contemporary art in the Broad building may end up symbolically (if not visually too) shining more than what's in the Geffen.
I don't know what the tinted-color concrete of certain rooms in the Geffen will look like, but I'm worried that too much of the space will feel (and look) like a warehouse, while the Broad and Resnick buildings will seem more like "that's the way you do it."
I joke about the windows, but that may be the one feature that makes LACMA's Geffen stand out from other museums---for both better and worse. Hopefully for the better since the windows already greatly reduce wall and floor space for exhibitions.
It's more common on the east coast. Marion Weiss likely encountered the type at Yale where she studied architecture.
The Yale Residential Colleges have extensive underground spaces. The Cross Campus Library was built under a green space in front of Sterling Library. Expansion often takes place underground in order not to change the character of the historic core. See the former Hall of Graduate Studies.
At the Page, Weiss creates the type by activating the berm under the original building. She completes that gesture by having the underground space (with its eyebrow window) frame a lawn of its own. Together with the urban wall that the Zumthor building forms to the south, it's very collegiate in the Yale-style.
This is great design.
--- J. Garcin