NEH Grants $500K for Zumthor Building Curtains

Peter Zumthor Atlier, rendering of David Geffen Galleries with curtains

LACMA's lagging fund-raising campaign for its new permanent collection building got a small but prestigious boost from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In its latest round of grants, the Federal agency has allocated $500,000 for "custom gallery elements" for the Peter Zumthor building, including "light-blocking curtains" and "custom case work." This is a challenge grant that must be matched by other donors. 

Zumthor used sheer and leather curtains in his Kolumba Museum, Cologne, and some LACMA renderings of a few years back included curtains. I haven't seen them in recent images, but it appears the curtains are on again. The LACMA building—the David Geffen Galleries—will be subject to direct horizontal light near sunrise and sunset.

The NEH is also making a outright grant of $100,000 for a digital interpretive guide for an upcoming LACMA exhibition, "The World Made Wondrous: The Dutch Collector's Cabinet and the Politics of Possession."

Comments

Anonymous said…
Oh, jeez, those curtains make me think of the silly looking draperies that festooned the top of the Latin American galleries designed by Jorge Pardo:

https://img.theculturetrip.com/1440x/smart/images/56-3652830-14314105829bd2a360745a4b56a2109bcb1ea74345.jpg

http://lacmaonfire.blogspot.com/2008/07/lacma-opens-latin-american-galleries.htmlhttp://lacmaonfire.blogspot.com/2008/07/lacma-opens-latin-american-galleries.html


What is it with Michael Govan and curtains? But Pardo's galleries in the old Anderson building at least didn't break the budget the way the concrete overpass is going to do.

Anonymous said…
^^^What is it with the Save-LACMA mob and Michael Govan?

They have GDS (Govan Derangement Syndrome).