NY Times on Geffen Installation Plans
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| David Geffen Galleries. Photo (c) Museum Associates/LACMA |
LACMA watchers may want to check out Robin Pogrebin's New York Times piece on installation plans for the David Geffen Galleries. With eleven months to opening, director Michael Govan and four senior curators still have more to say about philosophy than specifics. But the article describes three planned installations on Kashmir shawls, Neoclassical prints, and depictions of the Southern California urban landscape.
Govan's controversial vision for the Geffen Galleries is to display the museum's permanent collection in changing thematic installations that span media, geography, and historical periods. For what it's worth, the three installations mentioned sound worthy and not necessarily much different from what LACMA has done in the past. Pogrebin, however, is left speculating how and how much the museum's higher-profile paintings and sculptures will be displayed.
There appears to be an intention to show light-sensitive works more regularly than in the past. Sharon S. Takeda, who is head of both the departments of Costumes and Textiles and Japanese Art, told Pogrebin that the new building will have "more costumes and textiles on display at once than any time in the history of LACMA."
Comments
As an overarching theme and “kind of muse,” Lehmbeck said, the curators will highlight the idea of oceans, with art related to the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. “It’s sort of loosely geographical,” she added, “where you have inherently baked into it these areas of crossings, connections, diasporas.”
Curatorial practice has been stuck in the 19th Century. Here's an opportunity to catch up to literary studies (the discourse of the sea) and even philosophy (Deleuze on material flows).
--- J. Garcin
That big overhanging concrete roof does give me pause, if only because it means the area under the roof is smaller than the roof space itself is. So aerial shots of LACMA make it look larger than it actually is---and the Geffen's exhibition rooms will need all the square footage they can find.
I still wonder if the outer wall of glass windows will be LACMA's new version of the 1965 Ahmanson Gallery's atrium and narrow surrounding display spaces?
A truly great museum (of art or otherwise) can stretch the boundaries of merit and excellence without becoming too compromised or too regional. I'm not sure if LACMA can afford that type of luxury. However, in the age of TikTok-Instagram, with increasingly short attention spans and cell-phone-Google-type gimmickry, the museum in certain (or ironic) ways may be judged more easily in 2026 than it was in 1965.
WWWWEEEEEEEEEE!
It's all happening!