David Geffen Galleries: First Look

Modern art curator Stephanie Barron shows off Matisse's ceramic mural La Gerbe, 1953. Fun fact: the space is named for Mellody Hobson and George Lucas

LACMA is holding media previews for its David Geffen Galleries. Some of my first takes on the museum's new permanent collection wing:

Zumthor's building. I'm OK with the concrete, I love Reiko Sudo's curtains, and the stairway isn't steep, it only looks that way.

In all Peter Zumthor has delivered on the promised experiential qualities. The Wilshire overpass melds city and museum, letting you hover just above the metropolis.

European Renaissance and Medieval sculpture

Eucharistic Urn in the Form of a Pelican, Potosi, Bolivia, about 1760

Dog, Colima, Mexico, 200 BCE–500 CE

The outer ("terrace") spaces, near the windows, rock. Many ceramic and sculptural works are shown on handsome casework tables without glazing. The result is nothing short of spectacular. The winsome little dog of ancient Colima, a popular favorite, inhabits your own space under perfect light. It's not like seeing it in a museum, it's more like having it in a sunny corner of your home. 

(I just hope they know what they're doing. I'm less concerned about theft than the inquisitive fingers of the next generation of art lovers. It's said the tables' dimensions have been engineered for safety.)

Core gallery installation with Issey Miyake's Plastic Body, 1980–1981 (right) and Robert Mapplethorpe's 1982 photograph of Lisa Lyons wearing the Miyake. This is an example of a black-tinted wall

The enclosed "core" galleries, with the tinted walls, are deeply weird, in a good way. It's a museum setting unlike any other you've experienced. Call it Zen-like or Goth or Zumthoresque. 

Courtyard gallery of African textiles and African-American quilts

The in-between "courtyard" galleries are hit and miss. In the right slant of light, with brightly colored art, they work. More often, they're left in murky shadow. It's hard for your eyes to adjust with the terrace galleries' sunlight in your peripheral vision.

Hubert Robert, Stair and Fountain the Park of a Roman Villa, about 1775

Glare is a problem for Elaine Wynn's great Bacon triptych and also for most of the works on paper and textiles outside the core galleries. The chrome curtains may help but don't eliminate the issue. There's even glare on some unglazed oil paintings, such as the big Hubert Robert park scene.

Silhouettes of Hindu deities

The flipside of glare is silhouetting, when you view works against the blaring L.A. light. In most cases you can position yourself to avoid glare and silhouetting, but that's a distraction.  

Govan's installation philosophy. Michael Govan decreed thematic and ever-changing displays of the permanent collection. As I said in a 2024 post, a thematic strategy works well enough at the Museum of Modern Art. But I was skeptical of how well it could work with LACMA's wider-ranging but far spottier collection.

I'm delighted to report that the 78 themes on view here are smart, interesting, and fresh. Introductory text panels don't talk down to the audience, and they can quote Barthes without sounding like pretentious AI. In fact, the themes are more art-wonk than populist ("The Evolution of Abstract Painting in Modern Korea"; "Indigenismo in Latin America"; "In Conversation: James McNeil Whistler and Japan").

Lauren Halsey, Sphinx, 2026

There are contemporary pieces in almost every installation, even among archaeological objects. Mostly it works, as the themes often treat the persistence of artistic concerns across time. The Lauren Halsey Sphinx adds scale to LACMA's second- and third-rate collection of Egyptian antiquities. Incidentally, there's another monumental Halsey relief and a Tavares Strachan bust, both new to the collection. 

It was said that the Geffen would have 2500 to 3000 objects on view. That was dialed back to "over 2000," and at the media preview Govan called it "2000 and counting." (Talk about your incredible shrinking museum.) In any case, these are respectable numbers for a U.S. art museum that's not the Metropolitan.  

My biggest concern with the thematic philosophy is that it might leave too much of the best, most representative, and most interesting art off view. To be shown, an object must fit a theme, and this presumably leaves some worthy objects to fall between the cracks. I'll have to reserve judgment on this until I'd have a chance to see the installation in full. 

Gustave Surand, St. George and the Dragon, 1888. LACMA

Here's one clunker they did find room for, Gustave Surand's St. George and the Dragon. It's a hoot, but it might work better at the Lucas Museum than LACMA. 

I didn't expect to see Buddhist art in the Geffen, for that's in "Realms of the Dharma" in the Resnick Pavilion through July 12. But there's a truly amazing core gallery of Buddhist art, anchored by the museum's great collection of Tibetan furniture. There are also installations of Japanese art, with the Japanese Pavilion still closed.

Perenchio gifts by Monet, Gauguin, Degas, and Caillebotte

Perenchio gifts and more. The collection has improved considerably since the East Campus was torn down. A big reason is the Perenchio gift of Impressionist and Modern art, being shown in full for the first time. Museums generally avoid organizing art by donor, but most are happy to make an exception for a temporary installation introducing a new gift.

The red tint in the Perenchio room is Venetian red, a velvety pigment associated with Titian but used by artists from Jan van Eyck onward. Zumthor's red rooms remind me of Matisse's The Red Studio, in which the artist used Venetian red to incorporate chromatically adventurous paintings into a gesamtkunstwerk. 

Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom (Pensive Lion), 1846–1847

Maria and Conrad Janis gave a collection of modern and folk art in 2024. This Hicks is the most significant early American painting that LACMA has acquired in decades.

Guarani artists, Franciscan missions, Cabinet and Writing Desk, 18th century

Being shown for the first time is this 18th-century Paraguayan cabinet, a gift of the 2022 Collectors Committee.

Loans. One of Govan's talking points was the possibility of securing long-term loans from large foreign museums. It's an appealing idea, but I didn't see much evidence of it. I noticed two ancient Egyptian pieces from the Brooklyn Museum. That's worth pursuing: Brooklyn probably has Egyptian antiquities in its storeroom that would outclass anything on the West Coast.

Navigation. It's not easy to find your way around. I suggest ignoring the "oceans" and focusing on the city views for navigation.

"Turmoil and Optimism in Latin America" assembles avant-garde art and design from the 1950s to 1970s

Within a few months, van Gogh's Tarascon Stagecoach has hopscotched from two exhibitions in the Resnick to the Geffen installation. To the right is Gauguin's The Red Cow

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000

Here's a Geffen's-eye view of the Jeff Koons topiary.

This is the least engaging view out the Geffen windows. Let's hope the trees will give the neighbors some privacy.

Alexander Calder, Three Quintains (Hello Girls), 1964 

Here's the reinstalled Calder mobile, commissioned by the museum for its 1965 opening on Wilshire Boulevard.