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.
There's less than 2 weeks left to see Josiah McElheny’s dramatic Island Universe. This installation brings the multiverse to life through “drawings of time,” with “each rod a measure of time—every inch, time doubles.” [End quote]
^ Correction to my previous assumption that the work on display in the Resnick - for months on end - was an extended loan to LACMA. It's in the museum's collection. Okay, so the assumption that McElheny’s hanging objects aren't owned by them (and are therefore transitory or somehow less worthy of permanence) at least isn't valid. Oops. But it's more stuff that will need storage space.
However, LACMA's special exhibition building that since 2020 should have always had a *continuous* display of other objects (ie, non-modern, non-contemporary) in the museum's permanent collection still applies.
Josiah McElheny, Island Universe, 2008...purchased with funds provided by an anonymous donor. [End quote]
^ Since it has been on display going back to 2024, if the museum didn't own it, its very long exhibition schedule would be even more ridiculous. I'm not even sure if the Mona Lisa, were it loaned by the Louvre (yea, fat chance), would justify tying up that much time and space. That's even more the case when, again, too much of LACMA's permanent collection has been in storage ever since the Pereira/HHP buildings were demolished.
As with the Serra sculpture on the ground floor of the BCAM, or the space in the Resnick long set aside for the McElheny, or the area in the Geffen reserved for performance art, LACMA always gives the sense it has more space than it knows what to do with. That may be okay if it were as large as the Louvre, NGA or Met is, but it isn't.
The indulgent way that LACMA treats its various installations makes the continued storage of major works in its collection even more inexcusable or incompetent.
> going to have one
> impression
I always recall reading a visitor from Minnesota several years ago posting an online review that compared LACMA unfavorably with her Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Michael Govan mentioned how when he first started reading reviews of LACMA, they weren't too positive.
Wendy Beckett, in her 1990's-era PBS series on US art museums, noted how LACMA, by the people of LA itself, was relatively unappreciated.
I admit that as recently as 2020-2023, I didn't fully understand just how mis-managed or substandard LACMA really was. When P. Poundstone several years ago mentioned that he didn't care for its older buildings, I couldn't fully relate to his opinion. IOW, I didn't realize that, yep, I myself was a rube, a hix from the stix---a museum like the MFA Houston has made that more apparent to me.
This blog, particularly during the past year or so, has helped me better understand the engine under the hood of LACMA. Call it a Pereira-HHP-Zumthor Therapy session or a 1965-2026 12-Step Recovery Program. lol.
Look at the hand/arm in the middle of the painting. It's deformed (curved). It's a distraction. What would Caravaggio have done? Make the mocking gesture move diagonally across the canvas and enlarge the hand.
What is Horst doing instead? He's a prisoner of his own idiosyncratic composition. The arm is curved because he's trying to form a circle around Christ with the other two hands/arms. In service of that circle, he has to deform one of the arms/hands.
That is what lesser painters do.
--- J. Garcin
You call out the "hand/arm in the middle of the painting. It's deformed (curved). It's a distraction.": I don't follow. Who but Honthorst would not have intended that deformity, that flaw? Yes, it distracts. Distraction is among the essence of Caravaggism.
Aren't Honthorst's pictures allowed to distract? Says who? Give me their number!?
I love this picture. Honthorst, too, to my mind, among the best of the Utrecht School.
I'm guessing that Govan and his staff are the types who think being funky-flaky-sloppy (maybe even lazy too?) in the 2020s passes for hip-sophisticated-professional. Or that the artist's-loft, barren-warehouse look is just as good as the Beaux-Arts-polished-granite look. If so, it really doesn't.
LACMA in 2026 still gives the impression it has run out of money (as the Pereira and Hardy-Holzman-Pfeiffer buildings did) and, just as bad, it's also managed by a bunch of (wait for it) rubes.
It's so fortunate that, here is the very place to "vent," as you say. I call gratitude.
> cramped.
I'll admit that almost NO one who has reviewed the Geffen mentions how many of its walls are open concrete surfaces and floors are expanses of blank concrete.
To me, museums that look like they have more space than objects to fill them are the epitome of regional, second-rate. But this blog entry pointing out how many artworks are not on display, what's going on with LACMA is now reaching the level of hack and amateur.
I've also used the Museum of Fine Arts Houston as a test case to see if it's just me or if officials of other museums are able to do presentations in a somewhat better or more professional way. With a Met, NGA or AIC, etc, that's a given.
I recall visiting LACMA as a kid and noticing a raised platform had a baseboard not cut flush with the floor. The installer must have angled the blade of his rotary saw wrong, went oops, then ignored it. I believe that was back when Kenneth Donahue was the director.
In 2026, the current director is allowing versions of the same thing.
A few years ago, someone sighed to me (don't recall in response to what exactly, maybe in regards to museums in London), "that's LACMA for you."
By curving the arm, the artist creates a circle with the other hands/arms around Jesus. If the circle had some meaningful effect, we might be able to overlook its strangeness. But what is the meaningful effect?
Is Honthorst trying to subvert the realism and proportions of High Renaissance art. All well and good. But this is not something Caravaggio would have done. It is something a Mannerist painter might do. Caravaggism does not explain the strange arm.
Before going to Rome, Honthorst did train under a Dutch mannerist painter, Bloemaert. From a cursory review of his work, it appears that Bloemaert painted subjects with elongated and twisted limbs. That's the most likely source for this "distraction."
As to Caravaggism and its effects, you are confusing "distraction" as in a poorly-painted arm with religious propaganda and spectacle.
--- J. Garcin
I'm afraid I'm not seeing a circle. I'm seeing the lots of arms of lots of men, in a very compressed space. To me the arms are incidental. The agony and torment are key.
Re "Is Honthorst trying to subvert the realism and proportions of High Renaissance art.":
Hell's yes! That, too, is the essence of Baroque art.
Re "But this is not something Caravaggio would have done.":
And? Do you think decades after the founder's death these artists' intent was slavishly copying Caravaggio? It wasn't.
Re "It is something a Mannerist painter might do.":
And? These artists come out of an unbroken art historical tradition. Yes, they're subversives. But Mannerism was not annihilated in the Baroque.
I wait raptly for your response to my question, above: Do you believe in the greatness of the international Caravaggisti movement?
On view until Sept 13th.
> some grass before
> espousing more anti-public
> museum opinions
Huh? It's one thing if a person is ticked off at the Met, National Gallery (Washington DC or London), Louvre, Fine Arts (Boston, etc) or Chicago Institute, etc, etc, etc, but this is LACMA (which this blog's name is based on) that's being dealt with. A museum that for over 50 years has done a series of second-rate (or, okay, rube-like) things.
The entry of "What the Geffen Leaves Out" is a variation of all the miscues that occurred in 1965 when the museum's buildings designed by William Pereira first opened and the supervision of director Richard Brown didn't help offset that.
In 2026, Peter Zumthor under the guidance of Michael Govan have repeated a version of the same thing. However, this time around more blame can be placed on the director than the architect.
In comparison, over 50 years ago even a great-looking installation would have been hamstrung by a much flimsier collection (major loans from Norton Simon were required in 1965) and a "tract house" campus. Pereira's campus IMO - and if only be default - was physically worse than the Zumthor-Piano campus of today.
It may be the Centraal Museum's "first major retrospective on Gerard van Honthorst," but it's hardly the first.
The Uffizi lauded Honthorst not long ago with a world-spinning retrospective. He's been treasured by the Italians since they addressed him as "Gherardo delle Notti."
People go to the Netherlands for Holland, mostly. But you're cheating yourself if you don't hop the intercity train to Utrecht.
The Centraal is special..its sole concentration is Utrecht painters of the Renaissance and Baroque..and it's mindblowingly excellent.
It's small, and that's a flaw..like with the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland. When they put on a special show, everything permanent goes to storage. SAD!
I made a mistake of not checking on my last Centraal visit, and found a show on view that did not interest me, and a mere one or two of their greatest masterpieces hanging..including a Honthorst if I recall correctly.
I kind of lost it with the poor security guard, shouting, "I could have gone to Rotterdam, or Otterloo, or The Hague!!
My bad.
Uhh, yeah! That's like saying Andy Warhol – Different to Robert Rauschenberg.
..Or Vanilla to Rum Raisin.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Are your foreclosing the plausible event that Honthorst used a model because he had that very deformity? The examples of such "outre" personages and anonymous models are legion throughout 17th century painting.
Much has been written about the experience of aimlessness in the new David Geffen Galleries....but it is another thing to experience it firsthand. The meandering floor plan…demands that you wander, not map, your perusal of the galleries. As a result, a visitor can easily feel disoriented...a touch deconstructed. A little depersonalized, if you will.
Fortuitously, I was there to meet with multidisciplinary artist Stephanie Shih, whose photo-based compositions have the opposite effect, rounding the viewer in their personhood and experience.
To get to the small but sunny corridor that houses the work, one might take a few indirect turns and cross the gallery… Flanked by four wall-size photographs of…the deep blue Indian Ocean, it’s easy to feel small among the giant panels.
After our conversation, I stayed to wander the galleries for a few more hours. I am a completist and I wanted, no, needed to see everything. Without the prescribed navigation I was accustomed to in a museum, this became a fool’s errand. I got physically lost and a bit lost to myself…[End quote]
Those "four wall-size photographs of…the deep blue Indian Ocean" are another example of why it's BS for Govan and his staff to claim they don't have enough space for artworks like the ones listed in this blog entry.
In turn, there are expanses of plain concrete wall that, perhaps for reasons of light from windows, would be ideal for customized non-rare banners to be created and displayed. LACMA can commission a graphics company to print large images to offset too much gray monotony. If so, Govan and his people can't claim a surface has to remain barren because of too much sunlight.
Not sure if that suggestion is sarcasm or not.
Incidentally, the need to tint more walls in the Geffen is so far down the list of priorities, it doesn't even rate now.
> rube.
Given the history of LACMA, your words, when applied to Richard Brown, Kenneth Donahue, Earl Powell, perhaps Andrea Rich and, now, Michael Govan, does hit way too close to the truth.
Sooie, sooie.
Incidentally, a New-York-based writer a few years ago, in his essay on LACMA, did poke fun at the word "county." Or "county" as in count-ey sheriff. Hee haw!
The public art museum in NYC over 100 years ago did get first dibs on the word "metropolitan."