Who Bought Smoke?

Next to the object itself, the most incredible thing about LACMA's $3 million-plus acquisition of Tony Smith's Smoke is that the donor elected to remain anonymous. That's got to set a new world record for emotional maturity by a LACMA trustee.
This caps a stellar week of LACMA acquisition news: the Haniwa horse, the Boone ceramics, and now the Smith. Getty, Met, move over already.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Lacma has been on a roll since Govan arrived. Granted some of the things that happened early on started before him, but even those things he gave them umph. I hope he sticks around at least another 10 years and he fixes the east end of the campus.
Donald Frazell said…
Nice jungle gym, does that mean I can climb it now?
And the East end is fine, far better than the tinker toy new westies. just paint it, the Parthenon was ya know. Why the fear of color? We are at the same time as Gerome in culture, and the show perfectly timed. time to revolt, as this is absurdly and childishly revolting. Stop thinking academic thoughts, start Feeling with the eyes.

Check my blog how to fix the Times court and make it inclusive of and relevant to ALL our people, not a show piece for academically trained(like poodles) artistes. And rid of this simplistic tinker toy, take it wet, PLEASE! And put it inside one of Serra's silly leaning walls. They are good at simulating Colorado river canyons, but pale in comparison to the real thing, photos just as good.

And fill the atrium with a Bradbury style elevator like i describe, and COLOR the damn drab and liveless place. i always take the stairs at LACMA as they are so damn slow.

Truly, as with Gerome and Meisonier, art collegia delenda est