"Split-Rocker" Update
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| Construction view of Jeff Koons' Split-Rocker, 2000. LACMA, gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick |
Construction of Jeff Koons' Split-Rocker at LACMA is complete. The steel structure is now covered in a Chia Pet-like green skin. The site has beds of flowers, some in bloom, awaiting planting. While the other Split-Rocker at Glenstone, Maryland, goes dormant in the winter, the plantings for the California version have been chosen for year-round bloom.
Split-Rocker is visible through the construction fence on the south side of Wilshire, to the east of the David Geffen Galleries.
Comments
I hope it turns out better than the other cultural building, the one in NYC, named for the same funder of LACMA's new building.
With LACMA's new black-mold basement, it appears Mr. Geffen simply can't catch a break.
In the remodeling, a classic metal sculpture from the 1960s by Richard Lippold that used to hang from the ceiling was torn out. Pathetic. But I just read that it was relocated to La Guardia, so I'm now not as resentful.
Big money was poured into redoing NYC's Geffen (listed by Google/AI as $550 million), so the excuse of limited resources (at least financially) doesn't hold water.
An article about the elite published years ago noted that some homes in Beverly Hills showed even affluent people sometimes had really mediocre taste.
Okay, LACMA, yea, beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder. But at a certain point, the emperor's new clothes really don't look so good.
> black-mold basement
The museum's website has posted an article about the installation of its Assyrian Reliefs into the Geffen building. A photo shows them set against the mottled gray concrete of the wall.
Since the objects are not light sensitive, they can be at least displayed in the numerous spaces that face windows. Between that and the reduced square footage of usable walls in general (not to mention reduced floor space), along with the Broad/Resnick/Price buildings having one kind of exhibition aesthetic and the Geffen having another, I hope LACMA 2026 doesn't turn out being a variation of LACMA 1965.