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| Modern art curator Stephanie Barron shows off Matisse's ceramic mural La Gerbe, 1953. Fun fact: the space is named for Mellody Hobson and George Lucas |
LACMA is holding media previews for its David Geffen Galleries. Some of my first takes on the museum's new permanent collection wing:
Zumthor's building. I'm OK with the concrete, I love Reiko Sudo's curtains, and the stairway isn't steep, it only looks that way.
In all Peter Zumthor has delivered on the promised experiential qualities. The Wilshire overpass melds city and museum, letting you hover just above the metropolis.
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| European Renaissance and Medieval sculpture |
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| Eucharistic Urn in the Form of a Pelican, Potosi, Bolivia, about 1760 |
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| Old Dog, Colima, Mexico, 200 BCE–500 CE |
The outer ("terrace") spaces, near the windows, rock. Many ceramic and sculptural works are shown on handsome casework tables without glazing. The result is nothing short of spectacular. The winsome little dog of ancient Colima, a popular favorite, inhabits your own space under perfect light. It's not like seeing it in a museum, it's more like having it in a sunny corner of your home.
(I just hope they know what they're doing. I'm less concerned about theft than the inquisitive fingers of the next generation of art lovers. It's said the tables' dimensions have been engineered for safety.)
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| Core gallery installation with Issey Miyake's Plastic Body, 1980–1981 (right) and Robert Mapplethorpe's 1982 photograph of Lisa Lyons wearing the Miyake. This is an example of a black-tinted wall |
The enclosed "core" galleries, with the tinted walls, are deeply weird, in a good way. It's a museum setting unlike any other you've experienced. Call it Zen-like or Goth or Zumthoresque.
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| Courtyard gallery of African textiles and African-American quilts |
The in-between "courtyard" galleries are hit and miss. In the right slant of light, with brightly colored art, they work. More often, they're left in murky shadow. It's hard for your eyes to adjust with the terrace galleries' sunlight in your peripheral vision.
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| Hubert Robert, Stair and Fountain the Park of a Roman Villa, about 1775 |
Glare is a problem for Elaine Wynn's great Bacon triptych and also for most of the glazed textiles and works on paper outside the core galleries. The chrome curtains may help but don't eliminate the issue. There's even glare on some unglazed oil paintings, such as the big Hubert Robert park scene.
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| Silhouettes of Hindu deities |
The flipside of glare is silhouetting, when you view works against the blaring L.A. light. In most cases you can position yourself to avoid glare and silhouetting, but that's a distraction.
Govan's installation philosophy. Michael Govan decreed thematic and ever-changing displays of the permanent collection. As I said in a 2024 post, a thematic strategy works well enough at the Museum of Modern Art. But I was skeptical of how well it could work with LACMA's wider-ranging but far spottier collection.
I'm delighted to report that the 78 themes on view here are smart, interesting, and fresh. Introductory text panels don't talk down to the audience, and they can quote Barthes without sounding like pretentious AI. In fact, the themes are more art-wonk than populist ("The Evolution of Abstract Painting in Modern Korea"; "Indigenismo in Latin America"; "In Conversation: James McNeil Whistler and Japan").
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| Lauren Halsey, Sphinx, 2026 |
There are contemporary pieces in almost every installation, even among archaeological objects. Mostly it works, as the themes often treat the persistence of artistic concerns across time. The Lauren Halsey Sphinx adds scale to LACMA's second- and third-rate collection of Egyptian antiquities. Incidentally, there's another monumental Halsey relief and a Tavares Strachan bust, both new to the collection.
It was said that the Geffen would have 2500 to 3000 objects on view. That was dialed back to "over 2000," and at the media preview Govan called it "1700 and counting." (Talk about your incredible shrinking museum.) In any case, these are respectable numbers for a U.S. art museum that's not the Metropolitan.
My biggest concern with the thematic philosophy is that it might leave too much of the best, most representative, and most interesting art off view. To be shown, an object must fit a theme, and this presumably leaves some worthy objects to fall between the cracks. I'll have to reserve judgment on this until I'd have a chance to see the installation in full.
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| Gustave Surand, St. George and the Dragon, 1888. LACMA |
Here's one clunker they did find room for, Gustave Surand's
St. George and the Dragon. It's a hoot, but it might work better at the Lucas Museum than LACMA.
I didn't expect to see Buddhist art in the Geffen, for that's in "Realms of the Dharma" in the Resnick Pavilion through July 12. But there's a truly amazing core gallery of Buddhist art, anchored by the museum's great collection of Tibetan furniture. There are also installations of Japanese art, with the Japanese Pavilion still closed.
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| Perenchio gifts by Monet, Gauguin, Degas, and Caillebotte |
Perenchio gifts and more. The collection has improved considerably since the East Campus was torn down. A big reason is the Perenchio gift of Impressionist and Modern art, being shown in full for the first time. Museums generally avoid organizing art by donor, but most are happy to make an exception for a temporary installation introducing a new gift.
The red tint in the Perenchio room is Venetian red, a velvety pigment associated with Titian but used by artists from Jan van Eyck onward. Zumthor's red rooms remind me of Matisse's The Red Studio, in which the artist used Venetian red to incorporate chromatically adventurous paintings into a gesamtkunstwerk.
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| Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom (Pensive Lion), 1846–1847 |
Maria and Conrad Janis gave a collection of modern and folk art in 2024. This Hicks is the most significant early American painting that LACMA has acquired in decades.
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| Guarani artists, Franciscan missions, Cabinet and Writing Desk, 18th century |
Being shown for the first time is this 18th-century Paraguayan cabinet, a gift of the 2022 Collectors Committee.
Loans. One of Govan's talking points was the possibility of securing long-term loans from large foreign museums. It's an appealing idea, but I didn't see much evidence of it. I noticed two ancient Egyptian pieces from the Brooklyn Museum. That's worth pursuing: Brooklyn probably has Egyptian antiquities in its storeroom that would outclass anything on the West Coast.
Navigation. It's not easy to find your way around. I suggest ignoring the "oceans" and focusing on the city views for navigation.
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| "Turmoil and Optimism in Latin America" assembles avant-garde art and design from the 1950s to 1970s |
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| Within a few months, van Gogh's Tarascon Stagecoach has hopscotched from two exhibitions in the Resnick to the Geffen installation. To the right is Gauguin's The Red Cow |
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| Adler & Sullivan, Elevator Surround from the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, 1892–1894 |
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| "The Evolution of Abstract Painting in Modern Korea" with Do Ho Suh's Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace, 2026 |
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| Rembrandt etchings adjacent to Rembrandt paintings. The horizontal display case minimizes reflections. |
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| Jean-Antoine Houdon, Seated Voltaire (plaster), about 1779–before 1828 |
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| Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000 |
Here's a Geffen's-eye view of the Jeff Koons topiary.
This is the least engaging view out the Geffen windows. Let's hope the trees will give the neighbors some privacy.
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| Alexander Calder, Three Quintains (Hello Girls), 1964 |
Here's the reinstalled Calder mobile, commissioned by the museum for its 1965 opening on Wilshire Boulevard.
Comments
I was looking for other museums with LACMA's concrete profile.
Google search Tadao Ando's Benesse Museum in Japan. Although, I don't see evidence that, there, they have used their walls' concrete as an actual backdrop for their art displays.
There's nothing wrong with LACMA's concrete wall construction, per se, except that they are using it to display an important art collection. If the only art on display were pedestaled sculptures in the round, I'd have less objections. As it is, it's as appealing as a salt mine.
The Potosi Eucharistic Urn in the Form of a Pelican is riveting.
On security: It's a red-letter day for the museum security guard industry.
I adore no vitrines, but I predict a lot of loud choruses: "NO TOUCHING, PLEASE!"
> on this until I'd have a chance
> to see the installation in full.
I was browsing LACMA's online list of European art and a lot of it was marked as "not on view." But that did include also the de la Tour and a Rembrandt, which I know are on display, so I'm not sure if the museum's technical crew has updated everything.
Seeing all the "not on view" really annoyed me because certain photos of the Geffen look like there's more blank wall space and open floor areas than what I'd consider ideal. In one image, Todd Gray's "Octavia's Gaze" is shown displayed not far from a large blank gray concrete wall.
So does Govan and his staff think gray plain concrete is a visual respite?
Although I didn't like the idea of space outside of BCAM and Resnick being set aside for contemporary art, I now just want the Geffen to not look like the museum has more square footage than artworks. I recall even sections of the Ahmanson Gallery made me feel that way.
It's the opposite effect of the gargantuan old-time museums of the world where everything but the kitchen sink seems to be on display.
The lower level of the Simon Museum has so much of its Indian-Southeastern-Asian art, mainly sculptures, to browse through, it can become visually fatiguing or overwhelming. In such locations, I'd almost welcome contemporary interspersed with older art or, of course (most people's favorite), Impressionist paintings, etc.
As for Zumthor's display units, I sure hope they won't tip over in an earthquake. To me, they look flimsy, and that goes triple if the objects sitting on them aren't latched down either. I'd be really surprised if objects with a rounded or bowl-like bottom are affixed to the tables.
But I can see the different paradigm of looking at items reminiscent of being in the comfort of one's living room compared with a museum that's so visually heavy, it's similar to being in a room where someone is wearing way too much perfume.
All I know is places similar to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (much less a Met, National Gallery, Louvre), have been like getting hit with a blast of cold water, a wake-up call that LACMA since 1965 has been asleep at the wheel.
LACMA and the Geffen Galleries have weaknesses that are a variation of Pereira 1965 (eg, lack of space for staffers, conservation, storage), but the museum before 2020 was even more not ready for prime time.
Is the Kahn building a salt mine? Are Roman villas? ... If we start with the cave paintings, humans have been hanging art on stone/concrete longer than they have been hanging art on velvet or white walls.
--- J. Garcin
> a salt mine.
Lots of traditionalists (which I've been when the Beaux-Arts-enfilade format was preferred by me) and connoisseur-type visitors to museums will probably be non-plussed about the Geffen. But the person who gave a negative online review of LACMA compared with her Minneapolis Institute of Art might not be as dismissive of Goff-Piano-Zumthor as she was of Pereira-Hardy/Holzman/Pfeiffer.
This image makes me wince:
https://p-news-upload.storage.googleapis.com/2023/06/lacma3-e1686936818203.jpg
If LACMA's main buildings were created in the early 1900s in the Beaux-Arts tradition (with galleries to match), then their demolition would have been pathetic. The Ahmanson Gallery's atrium was also no match for the impressive old-time entry spaces that exist in lots of museums created in the early 1900s (or before) in both large and small cities throughout the US.
What's kind of jarring is the lack of floor-bolted metal barriers in front of precious artwork including the Van Gogh, and tables where objects usually behind glass cases are just sitting there. They look vulnerable, where I'm sure it was done to be more accessible. It'll take some time to get used to the privilege of being so close, just from never having seen them displayed like that.
The commissioned works by Pedro Reyes, Do Ho Suh, Jeff Koons, and Sara Rosalena are all great additions from what I see in the photos being posted. I love the placement of the Calder in relation to the building. It's an improvement from its previous location.
There's not much out there concerning the space underneath the building and what they've done with all this added public space. I see a palm tree here and there and the sculpture garden, but I really hope they did something more with it where people will want to walk around and leisure.
There's an Erewhon cafe for the instagram crowd who can selfie their smoothies in front of the street lamps. A smoothie costs $20. Did LACMA really need to make a visit more expensive with the ticket costs already being $30? Not even a gesture. Erewhon is famously ridiculed for their out-of-touch prices.
Tint. That'll do it.
> Wainwright’s in The
> Guardian).
The Guardian:
It’s a treat to sit and watch the world go by from this elevated perch, and Bruce Goff’s eccentric pavilion for Japanese art has never looked so wondrously life-giving next to all the grey concrete. [End quote]
It didn't occur to me how the old Pereira buildings didn't make a good foreground or background for the Bruce Goff structure. I just saw an image of it in the context of the Geffen, and, yep (and as with the Calder once sort of hidden below the old cafeteria), it now doesn't come off as misplaced as it once did.
> Where did I see El Anatsui's
> metal tapestry...?
When the museum had it on display last year, they switched the angle:
https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/attachments/scroll%202.jpg
As for all the gray concrete walls, I think there are too many of them. Although W. Poundstone thinks otherwise, I believe more of the outer walls should be tinted, not just the walls in the "houses."
However, I now have a sense that too much wall and floor space isn't used for displaying objects. Although the clutter of a traditional encyclopedia museum can be visually oppressive too, the opposite extreme (at least for me) creates the vague sense that a museum doesn't have enough worth looking at.
It's sort of the MOCA-on-Grand phenomenon. Although that museum now provides free entry, its square footage and number of objects on view are so modest, more people likely have the feeling of "why bother?...let's go to the beach instead!"
Michael Govan has mulled over statistics that show more people each year make an effort to visit The Grove instead of LACMA.
I don't recall any art hanging on Kahn's concrete at Yale. But in any case, Kahn's concrete is more gold-hay colored, and uniformly so. Eye-pleasing.
The British Center, in contrast, has loads of naked, muddled-color concrete, like LACMA's. But it's not used as surface for the art.
Again, no issue with stone/rock recipes..it's the bad color backdrops that offend good art.
*
Contrast LA's measures with Japan's. They use clear fishing wire wrapped 5 ways from Sunday. Most unattractive. But, hey, they're THEIR national treasures, so when in Rome.
More so, unfortunate, because the Japanese have been ravenous collectors of Chinese ceramics since the Southern Song (12th c.). One can only truly learn Chinese ceramic history by traveling as well to Japan.
As an aside, having read 8 millenia of ceramic history, I'm convinced most great leaps forward in their ceramic tech history came as a result of accident.
I really want LACMA to consider hanging paintings on a system like Lina Bo Bardi's glass easels. Her philosophy to using those easels jibe almost perfectly with Govan's vision and would be all of a piece with Zumthor's architecture. They should give it a go, it would be a total gas.
https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2026/04/lacma-francis-bacon-1024x768.jpeg
^ That's giving me the vibes of "we don't have enough to put on display, so the warehouse look will have to do: And, okay, the Bacon triptych is nice and all, but so much space around it has to be bare?
And they couldn't find something to go with the Ardabil carpet?
https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2026/04/17-ardabil-carpet-lacma-1024x768.jpeg
Walls like these would look better if they were tinted:
https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2026/04/16-model-lives-in-baroque-italy-1024x768.jpeg
And the way the wall and floor space is used here, you'd think that Govan and his curators were working with something like 1 million square feet----not even caring that such objects are more ideal for BCAM.
https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2026/04/23-dora-de-larios-lacma-2-1024x768.jpg
^ That's why seeing all the "not on view" designation on objects in LACMA's online collection yesterday really annoyed me.
I had no idea what you meant. See Google Images!
Arrays of paintings as splendid as the field of columns inside the Mosque of Cordoba.
You've gone full monty, LACMA. What have you got to lose?
The gold that you see may be an effect of the lighting/reflections off the wood floor. The concrete color is a neutral gray with a slight pink hue. You really need to look to see the pink hue.
I know the building very well. I used to sit and read in front of Night Cafe. Night Cafe used to hang on a pogo wall (next to the window wall). There was a sofa/sitting area directly in front of it. On most nights, I was the only one there. It felt like I owned the place.
--- J. Garcin
> complained that it was too
> much work to fill in the
> building by opening day,
It's easy for me sitting a million miles away to nitpick about something. I've worked on projects where I at first think I've done a good or thorough job, then I come back and go, "that's crap! You missed this or that!"
I've also sometimes thought one thing when dealing with an issue theoretically (or from afar), and then when I'm up-close-and-personal, my perspective changes.
As for W Poundstone's review today, I'm relieved about most of it, but his description of LACMA's Egyptian collection (vis-a-vie the one in NYC---and not even at the Met) did make me pause and lol. Or where I admit that LACMA's collections do sometimes require a Michael Govan to be a rube (Hi, J Garcin!).
Columns. Yes. Some of my best friends are columns. Kahn's not hanging Dugento panels on them either.
Re "The gold that you see may be an effect of the lighting/reflections off the wood floor. The concrete color is a neutral gray with a slight pink hue. You really need to look to see the pink hue.": Yes. Interesting. I have to look again.
PS- The circular staircase at the gallery entry is raw, raw, raw. Again, no pics a'hangin'. Just sayin'.
Re "On most nights, I was the only one there. It felt like I owned the place.":
It's nice to have made art pieces like close members of the family.
PS- Based on the featured photo, LACMA's handling of Hubert Robert's
"Stair and Fountain in the Park of a Roman Villa" is an ongoing art crime.
The chrome curtains are a master stroke. Just no competition against LA's SPF-5000 light.
> look emptier than
> it is.
Good to know, but so many other images of certain areas in the Geffen have what I'd describe as too much blank wall space and too much wide-open floors.
I know curators of contemporary art museums love the "less is more" format, and the opposite extreme is the crammed-to-the-rafters look of a traditional art museum A, B or C.
After going through LACMA's online list of artworks yesterday and seeing all the "not on view" notations, my impression of the Geffen crashed a lot. Your review today, however, helped switched that around. But I'm still not confident in the judgment of LACMA's staffers---eg, their Youtube page indicates they're not a serious, scholarly museum.
In turn, after reading comments made today by Peter Zumthor, I perceive him more positively.
Before 2020, If I had known what I know now, I'd have given more latitude to both him and Govan, etc.
I recall once assuming that Govan had exaggerated (or even made up) the notion that Jerry Perenchio donated his collection on the condition that LACMA rip down and redo its 1965-1986 campus. That's in spite of my being aware for decades of the Pereira-1986 buildings not receiving a lot of praise.
But something about looking more closely at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, really forced me to realize I had long been (in the words of J Garcin) a rube. lol.
Mea culpa.
> glass easels.
https://youtu.be/zmzZp7KlQLM?si=G0XMhENs95FjkdoS
^ That format would really throw off traditionalists and connoisseurs of art museums, but it does shows much much thinking outside of the box exists throughout the world.
There are also what I'd think of as obscure institutions internationally giving everyone a run for their money. Assuming various of those canvases in a Brazilian museum are authentic, and knowing what the presentation (ie, overall looks of galleries) of a Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) is like, the Geffen didn't arrive a second too soon.
https://youtu.be/4t6cuh5ilX0?si=9a1L6n_FoNgO8IB1
The set of galleries in LACMA since before and after 2020 has never seemed as consistently visually acceptable to me as what Houston's major museum looks like. Details of the precise quality of what's displayed notwithstanding, I don't believe LACMA even has as many large European paintings (width- and length-wise) that evoke what various major museums in both America and Europe take for granted.
A lot of the objects I'm seeing in the Geffen make me think more of a natural history museum or Hauser-Wirth-type installation.
The *look* of a traditional enfilade format of MFAH is common in all the older museums of the US of both larger and smaller cities. So if Govan thinks the style of a parking garage is a good new paradigm for an art museum in the 2020s, I'm not sure if people from Houston (or Kansas, Detroit, St Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, San Diego, much less a New York City, Paris, London, etc) will necessarily agree.
If I were hosting out-of-towners from Houston (who've been to the MFAH) and took them to the Geffen Galleries, I don't know if their gut reactions would make me feel confident or sheepish.
Despite the building’s music and movie mogul namesake and benefactor’s deep roots [in music], the evening was mostly notable for the way the acoustically harsh concrete chambers caused cacophonous sonic bleed.
Sound? Not so great. Visually, a stunner.
Special curtains were commissioned to shade the priceless artifacts from the damaging rays pouring in through the window walls that some thought might be a distraction from the art. Far from it — the experience is one of bringing art into the present, and the city into the experience.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, major donator the Ahmanson Foundation ended a fifty year partnership with LACMA in 2020 over what the LA Times reported as “disagreements with the Zumthor plan.” Foundation President William H. Ahmanson remains a museum trustee, however.
One of the laborers, James Anderson, a journeyman in the glaziers union, Local 636, called the building a “beast” — one he wrestled with for over a year, he told The Post. “The work on the Galleries was interesting from a logistical standpoint,” he said of installing the custom-made glass framed in brass. The sheer weight and tight spaces to install the giant windows on the first level presented unusual challenges — especially on the long span across Wilshire.
“Every tiny movement was critical. With the glass being so heavy it quickly overloaded standard equipment,” said Anderson.
“You can imagine being suspended over that road for weeks, trying to get a perfect swipe of vertical silicone caulking down a 13 foot window,” he recalled. “One hand controlling a machine, and the other keeping the exact same pressure and angle all the way down.”
What does he think of the result?
“For me,” says Anderson, “the design of the building can be ugly, being honest. But once you get the perspective of the architect, seeing his other work, it takes on a different character. The raw bronze, the lighting, yeah, it’s beautiful after all is said and done.” [End quote]
I've been wondering if all the people who donated to create the 1965-1980's buildings have been honored in 2026? That includes Howard Ahmanson, Armand Hammer, Anna Bing Arnold, Times-Mirror, etc.
If LACMA's current CEO and board of trustees are on the ball, after tearing down an admittedly inadequate campus in 2020, that's the least they could have done. Money is money, donations are donations.
As with a museum like the one in Houston (etc), I now go beyond the issues of concrete (other than tinting it), windows, echoes, not enough landscaping, etc. I now focus on the installation, which in the future can be at least changed.
People overseeing an art museum hopefully have a good aesthetic sense. How come LACMA since 1965 (and before then when the Pereira buildings were being designed) always gives the sense of being analogous to a tone-deaf singer?
I was talking to relatives a few years ago after their trip to London. One of them said the museums there were better than the ones in LA. That comment also came out of the blue. I had never previously spoken with them, one way or the other, about an interest in that subject.
Cue the rube music. LOL.
> Brigade to Save LACMA
> (Joseph Giovannini and
> Greg Goldin)
They were just rubes, hicks, hayseeds. For shame on them.
Not much better are the old fogeys who oversee boring, enfilade-style, Western-centric art museums like the Met, Chicago Institute of Arts or Louvre.
The Beaux-Arts piles in Detroit, St Louis, Minneapolis, Houston, Philadelphia, etc, are better left to hick towns.
Although out-of-towners visiting today's LACMA may not be as derogatory as they would have been about it in the past, they may not necessarily see it as way less of a place for rubes either.
Everyone is a rube, hick and hayseed. Damn. Too bad.
Incidentally, the namesake of the Geffen Galleries didn't attend last night's grand opening gala. I think that's because he's too much of a hick. 3 or 4 years ago, I also don't think he attended the gala opening of the building named for him in NYC.
Rubes tend to like keeping a low profile.
I give credit to Michael Govan through the years for at least being aware of the modest attendance figures of LACMA.
However, people accustomed to the big leagues (per art museums), such as folks in Boston (their Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics notwithstanding), if they do happen to be in LA in 2026, I'm not sure they'll cringe way less about Goff/Piano/Zumthor than they certainly would have about Pereira/Hardy-Holzman-Pfeiffer.
If a museum has a so-so collection, at least have a great presentation. Or if a museum has a great collection, a 1965-2026-LACMA-type campus might be okay.
Although the Geffen's parking-garage look and echo-y sound are offset by the windows, the current installation is too much in the category of "Rube" to help raise LACMA's score enough. Maybe they'll eventually get there.
> seat of empire and
> colonization for
> centuries,
When I first heard the comments, I didn't say anything. But I later thought about the point you raised. It would have made a good rebuttal, but I instead just let the comment go by.
P. Poundstone described LACMA's Egyptian collection as being "second or third rate." That's why the Lauren Halsey work that riffs on a sphinx made me think of the hollow nature of major segments of the museum's collection. So if a lot of LACMA's objects can't be world-class, at least don't also foster the impression the museum has more wall and floor space than it knows what to do with.
> When there aren’t any
> clearly defined routes
> leading to the biggest
> destinations, you can’t
> really do that. In fact,
> the space that held the
> Impressionists and
> Surrealists was virtually
> empty when I wandered
> into it.
What I don't like about the traditional enfilade format is it reminds me of the Met or (the much smaller) Norton Simon. That's where certain galleries (often of Impressionist works) are busy while other galleries are not.
And even though the layout of Beaux-Arts-type galleries of older European art front and center, such as in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, is visually impressive, the more diffuse layout of the Geffen is a nice change of pace.
I'm now less unimpressed by a gray-concrete-wall design and more bothered by the look of "we don't have enough stuff to fill our galleries with."
The museum's Diego Rivera is nice and all (and dates back to the institution's era in Expo Park), but do Govan and his staffers think it being around a lot of blank gray concrete is better? Do museums like the Louvre (other than for a Da Vinci) favor the same look---ie, blank wall space?
https://www.beatique.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/LACMADavidGeffenGalleries-1-1024x768.jpeg
The recent museum buildings in LA are arguably better.
I don't see the planned Kuma building changing that. The design is too conservative.
--- J. Garcin
Point taken. But the original writer's comment treated London's art collections en masse, and not just the subgenre of contemporary art. If he had made his comment narrowly focused, it would not have appeared so fantastical, as you say.
I then asked her if there were too many blank spaces. Or areas void of something to look at. She said yes. I was surprised she didn't have an opinion, however - either one way or the other - about the gray concrete. She was also neutral about all the windows.
She also mentioned how the building felt smaller than she assumed it would. She said she reached the side looking out over the apartment building, referred to by W Poundstone, faster than expected. But as common with many women, she's a shopholic. Those types are accustomed to large floor spans of a big-box or department store.
I wanted to razz LA by telling her (a native of the Seattle area) that, unlike even smaller town in the US, the city didn't even have a free-standing public art museum until 1965. But I already felt like the sound effect of a player's loss on the old "Price is Right" show had just played.
There's a flaky or indulgent-permissive quality about some of the staffers of LACMA, likely most influenced by its CEO. The museum's Youtube page is another example of that, signs of people being latte-sipping rubes.
Read it, unlocked, below:
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/dazed-and-confused-at-the-new-lacma-8f7af35f?st=B8xUWe&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
> LACMA.
Their architecture critic said this:
Wall Street Journal, Michael Lewis:
In its transparency and boundless views, the Geffen Galleries speak of sunshine and mobility... But the sunlight ends at the building’s skin. The rest of the interior suggests a vast loft that has been crammed with boxy concrete pavilions that vary only in size. There are 29 of them, and they are unrelievedly and oppressively gloomy. Here is all the Cold War Brutalism you could ask for, in all its fallout-shelter glory.
Most have only a single entrance, so unless something catches your eye, you are likely to poke your head in and move on. One of the benefits of those “prescribed paths” in conventional museums is that you see a good amount of art as you move along.
The dimness does not help. The light levels are distressingly low—low enough to protect sensitive works on paper or a woven carpet but unnecessary for oil paintings. Not one of the galleries has a skylight... You have the unhappy feeling you are underground, and not atop a building in sunny Southern California.
The pavilions are scattered in seemingly haphazard fashion... Such a building is maddeningly difficult to navigate. The extravagant gesture of its shape is undercut by its refusal to give us any great room, any place of gregarious gathering.
On one hand we have endless flowing space and on the other a multitude of small cabinets, but nothing in between.
--- Mr. Lewis teaches architectural history at Williams College and writes about architecture for the Journal. [End quote]
That's why I've been shaken out of a stupor, not so much by the biggies of a Louvre, Met, National Gallery (London or Washington DC), etc, but by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The hee-haw stereotype of the largest city in Texas does run counter to what its main public art museum *looks* like---disregarding whether its collections are A class, B class or C class.
Whatever LA's stereotype is or isn't, its public art museum *looks* like a strange mix of both earnest intentions and regional boondocks.
When J Garcin said that LA has a lot of rubes, he wasn't necessarily being sarcastic or hyperbolic.
2026 is regrettably not exclusive to 1965.
BTW, Peter Zumthor showed up at yesterday's pre-gala unveiling dressed in a "who gives a damn?!" way. I don't know how William Pereira was outfitted in 1965, but I've seen photos of LACMA's gala back then showing guys wearing white ties.
What about the Carter collection? Are they all on view?
At one point the cameraman goes through the Egyptian room. I thought I remember there being a mummy on display in the past. Did LACMA decide to remove it from view? Maybe it was too controversial to display a corpse in this day and age no matter how ancient.
The Van Gogh has a more modest placement than expected. It's outside the wall of the Perenchio room. It seems there are no seating areas in any of the rooms? I'm trying to find a photo showing how they display the Giacometti sculptures. None posted yet.
There are an Egyptian mummy coffin and mask on view. I'm not aware that LACMA has human remains. If I remember correctly, there was a mummy on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts a while back. I don't think that's on view now.
The seats are large and truly comfortable, but most/all are near the windows. The enclosed core galleries generally have display cases in the middle.
The Giacomettis haven't been moved. They're still on the opposite side of the campus, in the Broad Contemporary Art Museum.
> to remove it from view?
I believe it was on loan from LACMA's sister operation, the Natural History Museum.
W. Poundstone characterized LACMA's Egyptian collection as sub-par. It's made up of largely small fragments or trinkets. If I didn't know better and saw them sitting around my backyard, I'd consider throwing them out. They're just the opposite of large pieces associated with galleries in major museums in London, NYC or, of course, Cairo.
LACMA's items, particularly for an art museum, are study pieces. I don't know if even a natural history museum would have them on display. So it's not a given that various things in LACMA's collection deserve to be taken out of storage.
Even if the quality of artworks isn't Louvre-grade, the galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which were built only in 2000, at least *look* good. They were designed by Rafael Moneo. They mimic a classical, wide-wall, enfilade format format so well, I assumed they were from the early 1900s. Every gallery on its main floor also has natural rooftop lighting too.
Zumthor's original plan for LACMA contained a few galleries with clerestory type openings and raised ceiling heights. But the budget forced them to be cut.
The museum in Houston is described as the 2nd largest in the US. That means LACMA's claim to be the largest museum west of Chicago/Mississippi (I believe referring to square footage too) is false.
The rubes of Houston, Texas have outplayed the rubes of Los Angeles, Calif. lol.
The Geffen at least has a pseudo sphinx in its area for Egyptian art. So take that, Grand Egyptian Museum of Cairo. The Geffen also has plenty of blank gray concrete walls too. So take that, parking garages of America.
> Boston Museum of
> Fine Arts
I posted my comment before seeing yours. Pardon my error. But, whoa, your description of LACMA's Egyptian collection - which made me cringe - was spot-on.
> the windows
Although the current installation and gray concrete walls may not be ideal to me, I can see the windows and overall vibe of the Geffen being more welcoming to particularity casual looky-loos, including the type of visitor not into the settings of hard-core art museums. Or a very starched-collar Louvre.
I recall a person telling me years ago that Paris's main museum was (to paraphrase) unpleasant because it was too much, too much. At the time, I didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing.
However, the old LACMA was neither fish nor fowl. It wasn't appealing to museum goers into Beaux-Arts-enfilade and wasn't appealing to people uncomfortable with the look of a dead mall.
^ The review is behind a paywall and is from a publication that's generally known as favoring a traditional cultural, political outlook. But scrolling through the article's page-source code, the writer counterintuitively enough seems positive about both the Geffen building and its exhibit format.
It makes me think of seeing in The Guardian a glowing review of the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas---or upcoming Lucas Museum in Expo Park. Or future Trump Presidential Library in Miami.
I wish I could feel more positive about the Geffen, but it is what it is.
Also, unlike the Pereira campus, the Geffen can be tweaked to make it better: Tint more of the walls and fill up more of the blank walls and wide-open floor space.
What a shame wasting valuable space. I can see the Giacomettis being moved to the Geffen in the future. And probably need maybe 25-30 sculptures to fill in the space.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/reviews/lacma-david-geffen-galleries-review-1234781676/
> more expected to be
> added over the
> summer.
Good to know, a hopeful sign. Right now the Geffen gives the impression that LACMA has more space than the museum knows what to do with.
I recall the Broad at the top of the escalator landing beyond Koons' Tulips and to the right always had what I thought was too much blank wall space. There are often galleries, particularly in contemporary art museums, where I can't figure out why my sense of balance and completeness is different from that of various curators or directors.
When I see all the "Not on view" footnotes of objects in LACMA's online collection, I go, "what the hell!?"
> being moved to the Geffen
> in the future.
I recall originally thinking modern and certainly contemporary art should be only in BCAM or temporary exhibits in the Resnick. But after seeing images of the Geffen with too much blank wall and floor space, I'd rather have those areas filled with even stuff from the annual LA Art Show than bare gray concrete walls or barren concrete floors.
The areas on either side of the Rivera, Matisse, de la Tour, Todd Gray, etc, would look more complete to me even with sculptures from Hauser Wirth than in their current format. Govan and his staff have gotten me to now not mind hipster-nouveau art versus gaps or blank spaces. lol
> As a native Angeleno,
> I was always loathed
> visiting these poorly lit,
> claustrophobically
> hung galleries. Now,
> you can really see all
> that LACMA has in its
> holdings. Boy, is it a
> beaut.
The Geffen has made me look more closely at presentations similar to in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Or Detroit Institute of Art. Or even the San Diego Museum of Art.
Richard Brown's preferred choice in the early 1960s of Mies van der Rohe ended up doing work for the museum in Houston. MFAH's mimicking of a Met/Boston/Chicago/Philly enfilade, however, was done years later in 2020 by Rafael Moneo.
LACMA since 1965 has been doing too much dozing. But better late than never.
> When filled with people,
> the Geffen Galleries are
> quite noisy.... it’s not so
> pleasant....when you can
> hear someone gossiping
> from two galleries away.
May be more reason to haul out pieces like these:
https://unframed.lacma.org/2012/10/01/havent-i-seen-you-somewhere-before-recurring-designs-in-the-eighteenth-century
The lack of display space in the 1965-1986 campus always made things like LACMA's Aubusson tapestries seem to be in storage more often than ideal. Such artworks imho help give a museum's galleries a more stately or serious look.
However, the museum's staffers through the decades have sometimes done "rube" things. Such as in 2012, those 2 urns next to the chair and mannequin look like a display one might see in a local junior college gallery.
You're welcome.
We've got a million of them, wanderer. Expanses deserve to be more catholic.
Is it any surprise then that he finds fault with wall texts that "are peppered with ritual references to colonialism, environmental despoilation and the like"? Would he have approved of wall text that is peppered with ritual references to white/American supremacy?
In the WSJ, the opinion articles have a MAGA slant. Beware.
--- J. Garcin
> In the WSJ, the opinion
> articles have a MAGA
> slant. Beware.
Correct. As for this other writer, I believe he used to write for the NY Times. He also sounds like he was a part of the Save-LACMA-mob crowd too and probably also wears a MAGA hat:
https://airmail.news/issues/2026-4-18/cutting-corners
Cutting Corners: Peter Zumthor’s freeway-like design for LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries is daring but disappointing
By Paul Goldberger
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was founded in 1961 to show the world that Los Angeles deserved to be taken seriously. Like New York, Chicago, Boston, and so many other American cities, it, too, could have a large, comprehensive, important art museum that would give tourists someplace to go that wasn’t Disneyland or a Hollywood movie studio. [End quote]
^ I didn't realize that list included cities as second-tier as St Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis and Houston. So, J Garcin, you're correct when you surmise. LA has long had lots of rubes.
I don't know this reviewer, although I love my WSJ, especially its arts section.
Funny, I don't equate arts criticism, per se, as editorial.
Any road, I hold with his concern about "the nonhierarchical layout." Still, it's patently logical that LACMA has conjoined two paintings, for example, made centuries and oceans apart, that both feature tobacco, an engine of the global slave trade: by the Dutch Pieter Claesz, the other by the American William Michael Harnett. Claesz and Harnett are in direct communication.
The moment the connections become tenuous, I've lost interest.
I think the reviewer goes too far when he says: "Imagine a mayor deciding that it would enhance tourists’ experience to remove all of his city’s street names. That is what we have here."
If indeed that is what we have here, that would be a disaster. But in the scant photography I've seen of the galleries to date, I find no such evidence.
For LACMA's plan to work, the museum must draw clear, reasonable affinity between works of disparate culture and eras. By all means, go for African face masks belonging beside early Picasso, and so on. The gallery cards can teach a lot that is not evident to the average visitor.
*
WSJ and the world is lucky to have Lance Esplund on its arts beat. I'd pay for the paper if he wrote only about the spinning wheel.
> (often a worrying sign)
> here and there
Some very mature trees were ripped out around 2020. Before then, the south side of the Ahmanson building had rows of palm trees. Prior to that, more natural looking landscaping was there, so I'm thinking Govan (etc) has perhaps been influenced by this:
https://unframed.lacma.org/2010/06/03/perception-and-palm-trees-robert-irwin%25e2%2580%2599s-new-installation-at-lacma
By itself, I don't mind it. But most of what's been planted around the Geffen are palms, and a small number of less mature, shade-type trees.
As for sculptures, I'm assuming this will be eventually re-installed:
https://unframed.lacma.org/2021/02/08/alexander-liberman%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cphoenix%E2%80%9D-journey-rest
Heizer is so lonely out there. Is the field off limits, per Heizer?
surrounding DVG it is similar to "preserving the history" treating it like an artwork, so to speak.
With 4 buildings torn down it's counter to preserving history, 😂😂
As far as Levitatating Mass, that's earth art, no other sculptures allowed. 🤔
> in mothballs?
The way exhibits are designed (or managed), and when the outcome isn't as good as hoped, I'm never sure what's going on. Lack of objects, lack of money, lack of time, lack of workers (to install or supervise items)?
The Geffen right now to me isn't ready for a look-see because more of the museum's collection has yet to be installed.
LACMA has only so many employees to carry out tasks, so "what's taking so long?!" is easier said than done. But when it comes to things like Egyptian art, there aren't enough items suitable for public display.
Some people also like the "less is more" format, which to me easily ends up looking like "we don't have enough in our collection!"
Meanwhile, the Lucas Museum just posted this, which - beyond whether such art appeals to person A or person B - I believe a lot of its objects will be around the size of this work done for a comic book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svewBgXxPEU
Large canvases are the rule not the exception in contemporary art, less so for modern. But works with a lot of width and length are also common in galleries of older art installed in traditional museums, certainly a Louvre.
Since a lot of visitors to a museum like getting a sense of the big picture at a continuous pace, I wonder if smaller-scale artwork will become tedious? Or the opposite extreme of a contemporary art gallery when browsing through large objects takes less time and is generally easier for short-attention spans.
Although I'm sure the Broad Museum, as one example, having a free-entry rate is the bigger boost to its attendance.
... I am also not sure that the museum-going public in LA is literate enough to benefit from thematic displays. People here were asking, why is Van Gogh in the Atlantic section, why is Ansel Adams in the Atlantic section?
... I am also beginning to wonder if thematic displays make a spotty collection look worse by making it more obvious that things are missing. In my opinion, thematic displays work best when the theme is organized around a masterpiece. But with so few of those, the thematic displays at LACMA look like a collection of stuff, just a collection of stuff.
On that note, let me say that Govan's claim that this collection of stuff is a cabinet of curiosities is good marketing, but wrong. A cabinet of curiosities had an organizing principle. There resemblance and similitude was put in the service of a vertical, hierarchical sense of order, the Great Chain of Being. Without that sense of order, LACMA's collection of stuff is something else entirely.
... What makes things worse I think is the attempt to backfill with contemporary art. In the Egyptian section, the Lauren Halsey stuff is just cheesy and lazy. Why lazy? ... Because working out a loan agreement with the British Museum or the Egyptian Ministry of Culture is a better solution to LACMA's Egyptian problem than having a contemporary artist make a sphinx. In that context, the Halsey sphinx is just silly.
--- J. Garcin
> look worse
I'm now so easygoing about Geffen/Govan/Zumthor, if blank concrete walls and barren floors at least have objects to look at or walk around (even the Halsey piece), that will be a win. Right now the greatest sin of LACMA is it looking like it has more gallery space than it knows what to do with or has artworks to install in it.
Maybe I'm suffering from a version of Stockholm syndrome, but I have felt the generations-old Louvre-Euro-centric, enfilade-type layout, although visually impressive, can become a chore or tedious too.
"Nature herself is more than shapeless irregularity; the woods have glades and groves, animal trails and vistas; like literature, they have rising and falling action. A thoroughly uninflected, completely random space is not natural; after all, even an amoeba has a nucleus."
Substitute the word "normal" here for 'nature." That's really the basis of the objection here. For MAGA, there are always two choices, the normal (white male supremacy) or the chaos of gender/identity politics (the chaos of formlessness). Of course, only MAGA sees formlessness where others see potential, gradients, and tendencies.
... LACMA could do a better job of countering critics like Lewis if they created wall text for the Bacon painting which summarized Deleuze's argument about Bacon and the figural (painting as pure potentiality and intensive differences).
--- J. Garcin
More's the pity. I don't think there's value added to "Levitated" by gobbling up all that expanse of emptiness for itself. For what?
Quite the opposite, really. I think 6 to 8 large-scale sculptures in that space could even enhance the wonder of Heizer's work. But what do I know, a potato eater?
British shmitish, Egypt shmegypt.
Ask the Met!, in exchange for your artists in Carter but lacking in our Met. For example, I'd give my right Tut in exchange for your Porcellis!
> to be Houston, Detroit,
> Minneapolis, or Boston
> for that matter.
However, the Pereira/early-1980's campus really hamstrung LA's public art museum, in a way I didn't fully understand until this blog came around. LACMAonfire in the past several days has helped me mull over the past and present. A no-holds-barred debate about LACMA's weaknesses finally sunk in, largely from a conversation in my own brain (lol), but with some assistance from W Poundstone, Ted G and J Garcin.
it has been like taking the first step in a 12-step recovery program. (Members of AA must first admit they're powerless over alcohol and that one's life has become unmanageable.)
In a 12-step LACMA recovery program, one has to admit the 1965-1986 campus really was too much like that of a 1970's-era dead mall. It was visually and architecturally unmanageable, way below what's found in several American cities - both large and small - not to mention what exists in Europe, etc.
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has really stood out to me, however, because what they've done since 2020 was another LACMA wake-up call. Being shown up by the the "grand dads" of the museum world is bad enough, but to be shown up by the "nephews-nieces-grandkids" of the museum world is a whole other level of "oops"---or outright fail.
Meanwhile, the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo has more stuff than they necessarily need, while LACMA's Egyptian gallery has less stuff than suitable for a good presentation. I wouldn't mind swapping the "ancient Egypt" parts of the two collections. lol.
> Re their reticence to
> apply tint outside the
> rooms proper:
Govan says that after seeing objects displayed against a gray concrete background, one will understand why he favors that look. I'm not convinced.
However, if what I now know about LACMA 1965-1986 had been explained by him to me in full the way I've done to myself, maybe his rationale is legitimate. But if he says that all the blank wall spaces are a good look, that will be too much. That will cause from me a firm "sorry, I don't think so."
That's the one I'm looking forward to the most.
https://arthur.io/art/rene-magritte/les-liaisons-dangereuses
The Walker Art Center has a gouache drawing of the subject, with a big image on their site:
https://www.walkerart.org/collections/artwork/les-liaisons-dangereuses-dangerous-connections/
This is apparently a copy rather than a preparatory work, for the Perenchio painting is dated 1935, and the gouache is 1936.
https://collections.lacma.org/object/218718
We have one in New York, albeit painted a decade later:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/492734
So much of his work is earth-movingly good. See his museum in Brussels.
Oh, well.
I can't wait to visit David Geffen Galleries and see for myself this concrete house if the art inside shines.
I would have little disturbance if LACMA used their facility similar to Vancouver's approach.
The waiting lines are perennial.
There was one post that it looked dark.