What the Geffen Leaves Out
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| Not at the Geffen: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Soap Bubbles, after 1739. LACMA, gift of Ahmanson Foundation |
LACMA's Geffen Galleries opened in late April with expanses of bare concrete wall and empty floor space. If you've not seen it since then, a lot has changed. As of mid June, there are hundreds more artworks on view, along with numerous empty or half-empty display cases awaiting installation.
That makes it hard to address one of the key questions about Michael Govan's thematic installation philosophy. Will it manage to keep nearly all the most interesting, significant, and popular pieces on view? (I speak of light-tolerant sculptures, paintings, and ceramics that aren't on loan or installed elsewhere on the LACMA campus.) The concern is that prize works may remain in storage because they don't happen to fit the current set of themes.
William Ahmanson, president of the Ahmanson Foundation, preferred a more traditional display. "Our greatest concern," he told the Los Angeles Times, "is that the public has access to the art we've provided throughout LACMA's history." In 2020 this disagreement boiled over with the Ahmanson Foundation halting its support of LACMA acquisitions.
Since the Geffen Galleries opened, Govan's installation strategy has been met with critical praise (mostly) and public acquiescence (at least). But some of the misgivings have proved pertinent.
Of about 139 Ahmanson Foundation gifts of European painting and sculpture listed on LACMA's collection site, 47 are now on view in the Geffen. That's about a third of the total. The ratio seems small, given that the Ahmanson trove is not a typical private collection with many lesser or idiosyncratic choices. Nearly all the Ahmanson gifts were chosen by LACMA curators and purchased with foundation money, often 7-figure sums.
Even more striking are a handful of big-name omissions. Not in the Geffen's inaugural display are LACMA's only paintings by Titian, Watteau, Chardin, and Canaletto. All are Ahmanson gifts. The Chardin Soap Bubbles (top of post) is superlative, arguably better than the versions in New York and Washington—which are always on view at those institutions, barring loans or conservation treatment.
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| Titian, Portrait of Giacomo di Andrea Dolfin, about 1531. |
LACMA's Titian was good enough for sculptor Antonio Canova, who owned it in the early 19th century.
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| Gerrit van Honthorst, The Mocking of Christ, about 1617 |
Also missing are two Ahmanson Dutch paintings by artists who aren't household names: Hendrik Goltzius' The Sleeping Danäe and Gerrit van Honthorst's The Mocking of Christ. Both are world-class masterworks that would easily rate wall space at the Rijksmuseum.
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| John Singleton Copley, Portrait of a Lady, 1771. LACMA |
The same applies to other areas of collecting. LACMA has three paintings by John Singleton Copley, the consummate portraitist of early America. Each is a solid museum picture, and not one is currently on view.
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| John Frederick Peto, HSP's Rack Picture, about 1900 |
Absent is the collection's one masterpiece of American trompe l'oeil, HSP's Rack Picture by John Frederick Peto. It was selected by LACMA curators and purchased with funds supplied by Cecile Bartman, the institution's greatest patron of American painting.
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| Henry Ossawa Tanner, Daniel in the Lions' Den, 1907–1918 |
Henry Ossawa Tanner's Daniel in the Lions' Den was important enough to lend to the Huntington during Geffen construction. It's LACMA's most notable work by an African-American artist prior to the Harlem Renaissance, and it's still off view.
Why didn't Titian or Tanner make the cut? Unlike a traditional museum, the Geffen has no default space for 16th-century Venice or early 20th-century American expatriates in Paris. Instead it is organized according to changing themes like "Grandeur in Sacred Spaces" and "Labor and Leisure in the American Metropolis." As a secular portrait of an obscure sitter, the Titian is not especially grand or sacred. Other Renaissance portraits, by Petrus Christus, Holbein, and Tintoretto, are also left out of the inaugural installation. (And yes, they're the only paintings by these artists at LACMA.)
Not just a Biblical illustration, the Tanner is an allegory of Black America, drawing on Frederick Douglass' description of emancipation as "escaping from a den of hungry lions." Tanner studied with Thomas Eakins, whose Wrestlers (bought with Bartman funds) is in the "Labor and Leisure" room. But the Tanner is a picture of lions, not labor or leisure; and it's set in the ancient past, not the modern metropolis. That apparently disqualifies it this time around.
The appeal of the thematic approach is that it presents artworks in novel contexts. Each installation is a new shift of the kaleidoscope. I don't see that this premise depends on keeping a tranche of important works off view for each rotation. As it is, most of the themes are fluid and open to interpretation. If curators hung the Titian portrait next to the two Veronese allegories in "Mediterranean Crossings," would any visitor say hey, that doesn't fit the theme!?
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| "Mediterranean Crossings" with newly installed artworks |
Comments
> misgivings have
> proved pertinent.
> LACMA has three
> paintings by John
> Singleton Copley...
> and not one is
> currently on view.
Thanks for clarifying the status of the installation. Your details make me realize what's going on is not just a sign of incompetence, it's actually tactically, technically, operationally irresponsible too.
The displays in the Geffen since May have given me a nagging sense that LACMA's collections are more shallow or flimsy than I recall they were. Or that the museum was more hack or regional than I thought it was.
I've been jocular in using "rube" as applied to LACMA, but that word regrettably does seem to fit.
I now don't even mind all the gray concrete walls (at least if they have objects on them), intrusive glare, too many windows, not enough seats, mis-colored wall brackets, dollar amount listed above names of donors. But having important works still in storage is a big FU to the professionalism of a museum---be it for art, science, natural history, movies, "narrative," etc, or otherwise.
I originally hoped the idea of comparing LACMA 2026 with LACMA 1965, or Michael Govan with Richard Brown, or Peter Zumthor with William Pereira, was a case of laying it on too thick. Now, as with the critiques expressed by people like Christopher Knight, it actually has been more easygoing than deserved.
> Govan is a spiteful
> person...
All the various miscues of the Geffen, as apparently ignored, tolerated or even supported by Govan (etc), give me the sense the museum is supervised by an oddly unsophisticated group of people. A few errors are understandable, but all of them added together are too much.
The second-tier museums of America, much less the top-tier ones, do things that aren't as easy to second guess. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (as one good example to me) may trigger the stereotype of - okay - hee-haw, giddy up, partner. But the MFAH actually has a track record of professionalism (at least in terms of presentation) that's more noticeable than what has long been true of LACMA.
LA's public art museum often gives the impression of being supervised by people who aren't as aesthetically, creatively, operationally-technically or financially (although Govan for the past 6 years has admittedly pooled together lots of money) as skilled as one would hope.
If the Met, NGA, MFAB, AIC, etc, are to US art museums what the San Diego Zoo is to American zoos, LACMA is more like the LA or Orange County Zoo. "Waa waa waa."
> prints and drawings...
> are removed
That doesn't even have to be done. The installation is so indulgent, a large area, where valuable (and limited) floor and wall space is left barren, is set aside for performance art directed by Tino Sehgal. Something apparently commissioned (ie, by Govan, no doubt) and paid for - and what I'd describe as wasted by - by the museum.
LA Times, 2023: "LACMA might be a de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly it's not a very good one."
Meanwhile, a much too large section of the Resnick, where some of the artworks listed in the "What the Geffen Leaves Out" entry could (or should) have been on continuous display since 2020, is instead turned over to objects that mimic chandeliers in the Met Opera House in NYC.
I like to think artist Josiah McElheny is at least paying LACMA a sponsorship fee for otherwise free publicity .(Not sure if that should be meant sarcastically or seriously).
Again, "...frankly not a very good one."
Where do they find these people?
Not missing a thing.
--- J. Garcin
> a thing.
Michael Govan is a rube. Okay, although he does sip lattes from Erehwon, restores mid-century houses and socializes with hipsters from the world of contemporary art, that doesn't mean he isn't a hayseed at heart.
Sooie, sooie.
We disagree.
Goltzius was Raphael's greatest student. It is a crime of negligence to keep the Danäe away from the public. Grotesque negligence!
It's absence speaks volumes that this leadership is unfit.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTi8KPA4tRTj0fcpuA0ovMiB5b7s1bOoabg8E0WkTtQCK1p66LPXaP7GqKJ&s=10
^ That's why it's BS for LACMA's staffers, including its director, to claim that because they don't have as much floor and wall space as they'd like, more of the collection has to remain squirreled away.
Plenty of reputable alternatives to drop my green on.
> with newly installed
> artworks
The Damascus Room remains an installation in progress. Okay, LACMA has only so many employees who have only so much time per day to start and finish tasks. Errors or oversights due to a lack of time is excusable.
And, okay, installing wall brackets for marble friezes has to be done without damaging what's being displayed. Safety and preservation comes first, looks come second. But does the museum's staff not have eyeballs to detect, "whoa, those brackets are distracting! Tolerating that makes us look like amateurs!"
But I did notice that security mounts of certain objects like Roman urns on tables were at least painted to blend in with the color of the item being protected.
As for other works in that photo, the sophistication of LACMA's staffers seems to be just the opposite of what has long been more typical of first-class museums. Or a sense of: "Damn, that must have taken 1,000 hours to spec, organize, arrange and install. How'd the museum do that?!"
In comparison, sections of the Geffen evoke a parking garage that's hosting a swap meet.
During my last visit, I happened to start with a 19th century canoe prow from New Guinea. It felt as if it radiated a life-force. Nearby, I saw a mid-century Dutch quilt, which then felt as if it radiated a similar life-force. When I then walked through a Korean gallery, I saw several pieces that seemed to do the same, followed by a gallery of Indonesian batiks, which started doing the same. In the old Ahmanson Building, had I gone into the basement or attic to study these geographically curated departments, I never would have had that sort of pan-global and multimedia experience. That is an example of how the Geffen and its curation work for me.
Unfortunately, the Geffen and its curation have taken away my ability to go sit with old favorites. Although I have been able to sit and enjoy old favorites like the de La Tour Magdalen, or the the Carter Collection or the Singer Davis double portrait or the Rivera Calla Lilies because of rather than in spite of the new galleries, I have sorely missed not just the old favorites mentioned already, but also missing are the Singer Buloz portrait and the nude man study as well as the Rivera Dunbar and Kahlo portraits. These (as well as some other) gaping holes in the curation really are huge drawbacks to the Geffen and its curation.
After six plus years of missing these old friends after the old LACMA buildings were closed and razed, I deeply regret that the new curation in the Geffen continues to deprive me of any reconnection with them. I fervently hope the curators manage to get their act together and dedicate wall space for these pieces that should almost never be taken off view while continuing their highly successful intermingling of pieces that can benefit from rotation and repositioning.