LACMA Geffen to Open April 2026
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| Peter Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries under construction. LACMA |
It looks like 2026 and not 2025 will be the banner year for L.A. museum openings. LACMA has announced that its Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries will open in April 2026. Museum members and other groups will be able to see the see the building in its raw state, before art is installed, in spring 2025. Installation of the 110,000-sf. space will then take about a year.
At last word the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is also expected to open sometime in 2026.
LACMA says that construction is 90 percent complete and that remaining scaffolding will soon be removed. The fundraising campaign has raised $793 million, more than the $750 million goal but less than some whisper numbers for the project's full cost.
Comments
> from its 130,000 square
> feet in 2007
I forgot how small the museum was before the Broad and Resnick buildings were added. The press release sort of sidesteps the fact those galleries together with the old Pereira/Hardy-Holtzman-Pfeiffer/Goff buildings contained more square footage than LACMA will now have with the Geffen/Zumthor building.
The photo of the Geffen with its scaffolding removed also indicates the new building will be less impressive on its outside than the new Grand Egyptian Museum is. I hope LACMA's interiors offset that.
However, the 1965-1986 buildings were admittedly inadequate in their own right, so something had to give. That's why I'm anxious for everything to be complete and open.
I hope the suspicion that the new LACMA will give off a sense of more flash than substance is wrong. Sure will be nice if Zumthor's building justifies a similar "Yes!" reaction that Cairo's new museum seems to deserve.
I don't want the new LACMA ending up as Govan's folly.
I take from that the collection, as is, does not merit attention.
If I lived within walking distance I'd visit twice a week. I have many friends there.