Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries reframe 6,000 years of history – The Art Newspaper

The eastward-facing windows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries look out over the La Brea Tar Pits. This active palaeontological site has preserved prehistoric fossils across the last 50,000 years. In a city long linked to sleek cars, Hollywood special effects and science fiction—at least in the country’s popular imagination—the tar pits remind museum visitors of the land and cultures that predate the current sprawling metropolis.

The new Peter Zumthor-designed galleries embrace this past while looking towards the future. They extend across Wilshire Boulevard, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Los Angeles, as they engage directly with the city’s infrastructure and offer a metaphor for overarching connection. The new spaces honour both modern architecture and the rich histories contained in the museum’s permanent collection, which will return to public view after seven years. Through creative new exhibition strategies, public programming and a building with an enormous footprint, the David Geffen Galleries aim to transform LACMA into a global museum that traverses continents and eras.

It has been an odyssey to get to the opening day. Michael Govan, LACMA Chief Executive and Wallis Annenberg Director, came on board in 2006, and was attracted to the specific brief of overhauling the institution. “It was a once-in-a-century opportunity,” he says. Govan had previously steered the 2003 opening of the Dia Beacon complex in the Hudson Valley, Upstate New York.

The largest and final element of the 20-plus year capital project is the $720m David Geffen Galleries building, which will be owned by Los Angeles County. The namesake record and film executive, David Geffen, announced his $150m pledge in 2017, and major contributions from collector-philanthropists including Elaine Wynn and Steve Tisch followed.

While plenty of funding came locally, says Govan, “The goal was to find supporters from around the world and position the metropolis as a global nexus for art.” Genesis, the luxury arm of South Korean car company Hyundai, established a multi-year partnership with the museum, and Qatar Museums has also provided support.

Govan has seen this level of financial underwriting, unprecedented within the Los Angeles art world, reverberate across the city. Success for such an enormous project, he says, allows “small institutions to benefit as well”. He notes that the Hammer Museum, five and a half miles west on Wilshire Boulevard, was also successful in the $180m capital campaign it launched in 2018. According to Govan, the novelty of the David Geffen Galleries project in a relatively young city also offered freedom.

That is borne out in the new building, an enormous, undulating concrete expanse that adds 110,000 sq. ft of gallery space to the museum, as well as 3.5 acres of public park space. It curves dramatically to arc over Wilshire Boulevard and bend towards and away from other parts of the campus. The galleries are concrete, with a large overhang that juts past the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Works will hang directly onto the concrete walls. “Concrete is a millennia old,” Govan says. “Old art doesn’t look good on [plasterboard].”

The expansion has added half a city block to the museum’s campus, and will support new outdoor installations, restaurants and green spaces aimed at enticing visitors to extend their stays. Jeff Koons’s 37ft-tall living sculpture,Split-Rocker (2000), will anchor a series of large-scale works around the park. The museum is also planning a “sound garden” featuring readings by eight poets from Southern California. The Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball worked directly with Zumthor on Feathered Changes, the poured concrete plaza that surrounds the building. It is brushed to evoke a Zen garden and imprinted with fragmented, feathered serpent drawings based on ancient Mexican murals.

This leads into the 90 or so new exhibition galleries, spread across the building’s upper level. Govan and his team have reconceived their strategies for the collection, which includes more than 150,000 objects from around 6,000 years of human history. The museum will rotate these objects in order to forge new connections across place and time. “Curators are showing people things they haven’t seen before,” Govan says. “Everything will be so visible on one floor. Things we’ve had forever jump out at you. It’s refreshing.”

Notions of cross-cultural influence across the bodies of water that unite different locales will serve as an organising principle. “Our muses were the oceans,” says Diana Magaloni, senior deputy director of conservation, curatorial and exhibitions. “This is all about conversations and connections.”

Magaloni previously served as the director of Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología and she distinguishes between this background and her work at LACMA. Anthropology, she notes, asks how different societies cultivate their own values and relate to the world. Art, she believes, “expands those sociological, political, anthropological questions to something more universal that has to do with feelings, emotions and humanity at large”. The reinstallation argues that “the works aren’t pieces of history, but stand by themselves and create a continuous ripple in time”.

In Govan’s words, the pathways through the objects traverse “Guadalajara to Seoul” and unite, for example, “Japanese prints and drawings and lacquered LA surfboards that owe a great debt to Asian craftsmanship”. An accompanying book, which is titled Wander: Exploring LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries and is out in April, will detail these routes, which break down the collection into sections that will evolve over time. “It’s like wandering through a park with no linear path,” Govan says. “You go left, you go right, you end up in the same place.”

The museum asked Zumthor to create a unique environment to present these works.The Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect, who began his career in furniture-making, designed the vitrines. Yet they have been fabricated using local materials and craftsmanship, featuring varnished, walnut-tinted wood.

Downstairs from the permanent collection, on the public plaza level, the W.M.Keck Education Center will offer programming and events.

“It’s front and centre,” says Naima Keith, LACMA’s senior vice president of education, public programmes and regional partnerships. “It’s visible from Wilshire. It makes a very clear statement of where we’re positioning arts education and family engagement in the new building.” She used to call the children’s gallery a “hidden gem”. Now, more families and kids will be able to “really see themselves in the gallery space”.

Keith is a native Angeleno whose great-uncle worked as a security guard at LACMA. She feels deep ties to the city and the museum, which has encouraged her to make the institution “as welcoming and open to everyone as possible”. She thinks about programming as an “olive branch” to audiences who may not know the names Todd Gray (a local artist with a major new installation for the galleries) or LA stalwart Mark Bradford, but are curious about what LACMA has to offer.

Govan could not have predicted, back in 2006, all that would befall the city by April 2026. While he acknowledges that the building is opening this spring simply because it is finally ready, he also believes that the timing is good. The LA Metro’s major D Line subway extension along Wilshire will be available to use within weeks of the Geffen opening and Govan notes that “public transit can get you downtown, to LACMA, to the airport. That’s a big shift for LA.” This will support the local and international attention and foot traffic that will descend on the city for this summer’s Fifa World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.

Govan hopes that, after all Los Angeles has weathered in the past few years, the museum will serve its local community. “After the fires, LA will have this gathering place,” he says. “We’re rebuilding and bringing people of many origins and ancestries together. We’re helping to continue to heal LA and make a statement about bringing people together in an integrated way.”

David Geffen Galleries, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, member previews 19 April-3 May, open to the public beginning 4 May

What to see at LACMA

As well as the new collection displays in the David Geffen Galleries, LACMA has a busy programme of temporary exhibitions and displays visitors can see at the same time.

GroundedUntil 21 June

Grounded invites visitors to see land not just as terrain, but as a foundation for exploring ecology, sovereignty, memory and home. Featuring 35 artists, including Lisa Reihana, Ana Mendieta, Rose B. Simpson and Abraham Cruzvillegas.

Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMAUntil 19 July

Nearly 50 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, including works by Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Modigliani, Sisley, Soutine, Toulouse-Lautrec and others.

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across AsiaUntil 12 July

An international survey of Buddhist art, from its origins in India to its spread across Asia. The exhibition includes 180 pieces of art, drawn from LACMA’s holdings plus significant loans from private collections.

Fútbol Is Life: Animated Sportraits by Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr.Until 26 July

Celebrating the arrival of the World Cup in Los Angeles, Fútbol Is Life presents works by the award‑winning animator and visual effects artist Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr. Crafted from gum wrappers, glue, paint and other materials, his miniature ‘sportraits’ capture famous moments in women’s and men’s football matches.

Sueño Perro: a Film Installation by Alejandro G. IñárrituUntil 26 July

A multi-sensory exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s debut film Amores Perros. An assemblage of 35mm projectors shows some of the million feet of film that was cut from the film.

Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across CulturesUntil 13 September

This exhibition explores the world’s oldest and most versatile method of making multiple images. More than 150 works from Asia, Europe and the Americas show how block prints have been used, from German Expressionism to contemporary art.

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr: In Between StopsUntil 1 December

Twelve benches (see picture above) designed by the Los Angeles–based artist have been installed along LACMA’s Kendall Concourse. Gonzalez draws on the tradition of Mexican hand-painted signage to continue a craft that has been increasingly displaced by digital graphics and urban clean-up efforts.

Collecting Impressionism at LACMAUntil 3 January 2027

Why is French Impressionism so central in our conception of the period? This exhibition offers a surprising narrative about the people and artists who shaped LACMA, interrogating how trends in ‘taste’ inform the museum’s collection.