Punch List,
New York Review of Architecture, and
L.A. Material will present
"A LACMA Therapy Session" June 7 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre. Panelists including Frederick Fisher, Christopher Hawthorne and Carolina A. Miranda will assist the public in processing their "complicated feelings" about Peter Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries and "consider a range of responses to… the most polarizing work of architecture to appear in Los Angeles in the 21st century."
Comments
> Frederick Fisher,
> Christopher Hawthorne
I wonder what another Christopher, Christopher Knight, thinks of the Geffen/LACMA right now?
His comment a few years ago about the museum being a "de facto museum of contemporary art [but not a very good one]" - and it being generally no different today - made me look most closely at the special exhibition schedule of, in particular, the Met. At that point I realized, whoa, if anything, Knight has been too kind.
I realize LACMA is stuck with a much smaller budget and a much smaller staff, but Govan's judgment also makes me realize he's not exactly the most sophisticated guy around---PR spin (and BS?) notwithstanding.
But the same apparently has been true of his predecessors, including Earl Powell, Kenneth Donahue, Richard Brown. Not sure about Andrea Rich, however, although when she promoted the idea of ripping down the Pereria/HHP campus, I thought she was more ambitious than wise. But back then I also didn't realize just how bad the museum actually was and has long been. Mea culpa.
Beverly Press:
She led LACMA from 1995 to 2005 and is credited with increasing the institution’s endowment from $50 million to $100 million during her tenure.
During her time at LACMA, the museum acquired “numerous significant” collections of Korean, Modern and Latin American art, he said.
“I knew her at UCLA when she was executive vice chancellor and basically the alter ego to Chancellor Charles Young,” he said during the meeting. “.... And I think it pays to say that Andrea took a floundering museum that was in financial trouble and turned it around...”
“Even while she worked for [LACMA] for many of those years, she would come to work under the greatest duress,” [Zev] Yaroslavsky added. “But [she] put in her full day’s work — more than a full day’s work.” [End quote]
The controversy with the Geffen/Zumthor building continues the regrettable legacy of LACMA since at least 1965. Or "as much as things change, some things never change."
But the campus is better today, if only because Pereira's "tract house" layout wasn't ideal for the Bruce Goff/Joe Price building. I also don't even mind the potpourri arrangement of art styles and categories, but the look of the museum having more wall and floor space than it knows what to do with (ie, overly indulgent installations) is inexcusable.
And black-metal wall brackets and black wall labels on walls in galleries tinted red or blue are "rube." Not to mention donor walls that list the dollar amount contributed.
Sooie, sooie.
> added this today
Thanks for posting that, I'd otherwise have missed it.
christopher.knight.7, Instagram:
My friend directed that the painting should be sent for conservation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she later made it a gift. Today, the Sienese triptych....is in LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries.
Unfortunately the installation is rather poor... Nonetheless, I was pleased to see it. Many of LACMA’s first-class objects – Asian, European, Oceanic, American, Ancient, etc. - still languish in storage, despite the museum’s brand new, $835 million building project for the permanent collection. [End quote]
That's now why all the blank gray concrete walls, open concrete floors and the many windows where walls (even temp ones---for displaying objects) should be annoy me less than the Geffen giving a sense the museum has more space than it knows what to do with.
If Govan and his staffers were more professional, they'd realize that too
They're instead the opposite of what the great museums of the world are all about. Or where exhibit spaces and installations (not to mention the quality of artworks) are so impressive, you go, "damn, how'd they do that?! This must have taken a million hours to put together!"
So LACMA over 60 years later still has too much of the quality of a local "rube" municipal organization.