R.I.P. Pereira LACMA, 1965–2020
The 1965 ads nod to the median Times reader's notions of mid-century design and art history. All 49 of the artists in the May Co. ad are male, and all but two or three are European. One is Mexican (Orozco), and one is misspelled ("Van Dyke," like the sitcom star).
Raphael? Zurburán? Van Gogh? The list must refer to the Norton Simon collection, on loan for the opening. It was then hoped that the Simon trove would land at LACMA permanently.
Maurice Utrillo? Bernard Buffet? You had to be there.
Raphael? Zurburán? Van Gogh? The list must refer to the Norton Simon collection, on loan for the opening. It was then hoped that the Simon trove would land at LACMA permanently.
Maurice Utrillo? Bernard Buffet? You had to be there.
Van Nuys Savings and Loan had the best ad, as it reproduced a Sister Mary Corita print-poem.
Have a nice tomorrow.
Comments
And now? Only one name will exist: David Geffen. Why? Because part of his, yet unfulfilled, grant agreement rides in his insistence that all other names - even if they’re Hammer, Bing, Ahmanson, etc. - are scrubbed and erased and that only one name exists.
What a nice guy. But being that Govan agreed, he was only enabled by another nice guy who both deserve each other.
Who was LACMA's director when the Wilshire Blvd buildings opened?
Wasn't there some type of small controversy about Richard Brown, which then led to Kenneth Donahue? Regardless, I don't think either one of those guys was as dishonest, destructive and unethical as the current one is.
Later, I discovered it was a cheesy riff on Lincoln Center (New York).
Buildings like the Ahmanson seem worthy of demolition as soon as they are built. Indeed, the painter Ed Ruscha set it on fire, figuratively speaking, in 1965. See his painting The LA County Museum on Fire. Unlike that great painting, Pereira's LACMA won't be around to "burn" our sensibilities for eternity.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQqs8HrzPWAJBlglJphiKFB4JX_09fPe54VIw&usqp=CAU
> our sensibilities for eternity.
Neither will a red-ink, busted-budget, operationally shredded, mismanaged quasi-publicly owned, quasi-publicly operated museum in general. At least as long as its current director is still around.
His debacle probably will outlast him too.
August 21, 2020
Editors
The following work will be conducted next week:
Final abatement in the Ahmanson Building is completed.
Interior demolition of the Ahmanson Building is completed and major structural demolition will begin.
Demolition of the foundations for the Art of Americas and Hammer Buildings will be completed.
Excavation at the Spaulding Lot continues.
Installation of dewatering system at the Spaulding Lot will be completed.
Trenching for new on-site utilities has started and will continue.
https://unframed.lacma.org/2020/08/21/building-project-august-21-update
Although any board of trustees has every right and duty to assume responsibility for policy, individual board members have forced decisions and taken unilateral action not consistent with good museum administration, which requires the full time efforts of trained specialists, and which cannot be handled by part time layman regardless of their devotion or attainments in non-related fields. Recently, this tendency has disrupted normal day-to-day professional operation and has mitigated what could and should be an ideal program of acquisition, care, maintenance, exhibition, and interpretation of art for the public good. The Director, as legally constituted head of a County governmental department, has been circumvented consistently by individual trustees in dealing with County government. Under such circumstances, the Director is not permitted to operate the museum on a proper level of professional standards nor to maintain his personal integrity without conflicting with the individual board member concerned.” ...quoted in Peter Plagens, SUNSHINE MUSE. Praeger 1974, 156 (in the notes says this was in the museum Nov. 8, 1965 press release)
Along with a justifiably proud community, I am proud as one of those who brought the new museum into being. But it was, and still is, my firm opinion that the museum could have been substantially greater in layout and design but for the unfortunate decisions in which professional recommendations were overruled in favor of a generous but misguided donor’s understandable refusal to sufficiently compromise his desire for a monument rather than build the finest community institution possible.” ...quoted in Philip Leider, “Comment,” ARTFORUM 4 (December 1965), 4.
After leaving LA Brown moved to Texas as the director of the Kimbell Art Foundation, had a pre-architectural program in a couple of months, hired Lou Kahn, and got the Kimbell built. It opened in 1972 and Brown stayed at the helm until his death in 1979.
Leider also informs that “Brown’s most implacable opponent on the board happens to be the same trustee who in 1960 had offered a considerable sum of money toward the building of the museum, provided only that the entire museum be named after him. (Dr Brown was finally able to convince the board that such money would be useless.)”
Now, over 50 years later since its completion, LACMA on Wilshire (although its version in Exposition Park was really under the title of "Natural History") again is being screwed up. But, in this instance, mainly by its unethical director and the museum's (his) board of dippy-dilettante trustees all too willing to kiss up to him.
Interesting, too, how Expo Park in 2020 is seeing a new major art museum rising within it while the museum in Hancock Park is being flattened.
Moreover, everything today is more political, more ideological, than ever before. The 1960s ain't got nothing on the 2000s. From a Govan to a Lucas, from museums to sports. The way things are going, the Lucas will have a gallery dedicated to Portland CHAZ for who knows what.
You can also blame Ahmanson for the loss of the Simon Collection. His meddling sidelined Simon. By the way, it was Brown who helped Simon build his collection.
When Ahmanson died, he did not leave his fortune to LACMA. He was no J. Paul Getty. Instead, he gave it to his crazy son, who used it to fund the passage of Prop 8. That's Ahmanson's cultural legacy in Los Angeles. Good riddance to the Ahmanson Building.
> fortune to LACMA. He was no J. Paul Getty.
> Instead, he gave it to his crazy son, who
> used it to fund the passage of Prop 8.
> That's Ahmanson's cultural legacy in
> Los Angeles. Good riddance to the Ahmanson
> Building.
No, he didn't leave it flat-out to LACMA. He instead created a foundation which has contributed both artworks and monies to the museum through the decades. Artworks as originally coaxed and supervised by curator J. Patrice Mandel.
As for good riddance, yea, that's gonna show 'em. LACMA now has mainly flattened former galleries, a ballooning debt, a still-stealthy plan of a concrete overpass, an unethical director and a "who gives a damn?!" board of trustees. People who've saddled the county of Los Angeles with "No justice, No Museum."
Um, they are in the middle of construction? How do you go from crappy buildings to new building without the demo part?
In terms of collecting, exhibitions, attendance, and new exhibition space LACMA has never been better. Thank you Govan and thank you Board.
> and new exhibition space LACMA has never been better.
LOL. Are you next going to say you have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale? Maybe swampland in Florida?
By chance, your name wouldn't happen to be Michael Govan?
You sure are spinning reality as fast and hard as he does.
August 28, 2020
Editors
The following work will be conducted next week:
Demolition of the foundations for the Art of the Americas and Hammer Buildings is complete.
Major structural demolition of the Ahmanson Building will continue.
Grading for foundation piles installation on the north side of Wilshire Boulevard began.
Installation of a concrete batch plant on the north side of Wilshire Boulevard, in preparation for the new building foundation piles, is complete.
Trenching for new on-site utilities north of Wilshire will continue.
Installation of the dewatering system at the Spaulding Lot is complete.
Excavation at the Spaulding Lot will continue.
https://unframed.lacma.org/2020/08/28/building-project-august-28-update
The Ahmanson Foundation - $130 million over six decades, a building by a secondary architect (Pereira), and a bunch of works from secondary painters.
David Geffen - $150 million over 3 years, a bulding by a Pritzker Prize-winning architect (Zumthor), and a closer relationship with a collector who own masterpieces by major painters.
... For Govan, it wasn't a difficult choice at all. Geffen was also the major donor behind the recent expansion at the Museum of Modern Art. His financial participation brought instant credibility to the LACMA expansion.
"The original Los Angeles County Museum of Art was also designed by Bill [William Pereira]. The building complex sited in the County Park along Wilshire Boulevard was a meditation on the contemporaneous activities at New York’s Lincoln Center. The nesting of three principal pavilions around a large entry plaza recalls the Manhattan truce called by Edward Durell Stone, Philip Johnson, and Gordon Bunshaft. With the addition of a good measure of decorative lacework and festive lagoons and fountains, the new project sought to morph the surrounding LaBrea Tar Pits into a celebrity work for high culture. Architectural exuberance asserted the Museum’s ambitions while masking its modest collections of the day."
--- http://laforum.org/article/william-pereira/
"In 1950, joining his former classmate from Chicago, and the prematurely retired CEO of Lever Brothers, Charles Luckman, Pereira and Luckman was founded. Bill's involvement with the studios led to the commission for CBS Television City in central Los Angeles, while Charles’ New York presence led to an initial scheme for Seagram’s Park Avenue headquarters. That scheme was, as we now know, famously overtaken by Phyllis Lambert's involvement and familial connection and the subsequent decision to commission Mies Van der Rohe with Philip Johnson to design the building we know today."
--- http://laforum.org/article/william-pereira/
Imagine if the Luckman/Pereira scheme for the Seagram's Building had prevailed. The Seagrams Building might have met the same fate as Pereira's LACMA.
The irony, of course, is that van der Rohe replaced Luckman/Pereira on the Seagram's project and Pereira replaced van der Rohe on the LACMA project.
> along Wilshire Boulevard was a meditation on
> the contemporaneous activities at New York’s
> Lincoln Center.
If that writer had looked at the US Science Pavilion - good architecture or not - designed by Minoru Yamasaki for the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, he'd have noticed a set of thin outer-columned buildings rising above a moat with Geneva-geyser-type fountains easily could have been an inspriration for LACMA.
By contrast, New York Philharmonic Hall, which opened in 1962 - all alone at the time - looked way less like something that influenced Pereira.
> a bulding by a Pritzker Prize-winning architect
> (Zumthor), and a closer relationship with a
> collector who own masterpieces by major painters.
That sounds like knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Regardless, Geffen should donate way more to LACMA since it has a lot of red ink pouring out of its ledger sheets.
Did you even bother to check the identity of the writer? It is NOT pissy-pants Joe, his Goldin "dummy," or some spammer for the Save-LACMA mob. It is Scott Johnson of Johnson/Fain Architects.
The bio of the writer is at the bottom of the article. It says there that before acquiring his own firm Scott Johnson worked for Philip Johnson (among others). That is the span of his knowledge.
Coincidentally, Scott Johnson recently completed the renovation of one of Philip Johnson's best buildings, the Chrystal Cathedral (Garden Grove).
> or some spammer for the Save-LACMA mob. It is
> Scott Johnson of Johnson/Fain Architects.
That's even worse. I thought the writer of that commentary was a person who may have thought the only world's fair in the 1960s was the one in New York City and that Minoru Yamasaki was the name of the prime minister in Japan or his neighbor's gardener.
According to the bio at the end of the article, Scott Johnson also worked for Pereira Associates?
Why do you think he calls him Bill in the article? He knew Pereira personally. Which means he probably learned about the connection between Lincoln Center and LACMA from Periera himself.
> connection between Lincoln Center and LACMA
> from Periera himself.
You don't know that. You're just assuming that.
My own eyes have sometimes at first mistaken a photo of the Science Pavilion in Seattle for LACMA in the 1960s.
Your own lying eyes, by contrast, makes you see NY Philharmonic Hall as what Pereira used for his knock-off in 1965 and perceive the Govan-Zumthor debacle as an ethical, budget-surplus, no-sleight-of-hand beauty.
I recommend a trip to the optometrist is in order.