When LACMA introduced its growth in 2019, few absolutely grasped what it entailed—or why it was vital. The museum already stretched throughout a sprawling campus, however a lot of its infrastructure had been in use for over fifty years. As LACMA’s ambitions and worldwide stature expanded, these once-iconic buildings started to indicate their age, turning into much less of a monument to modernism and extra of a logistical burden.
By the point Michael Govan was appointed director, it had already been decided—again within the early 2000s—that the museum’s getting older buildings would possible should be changed. Years of deferred upkeep, shifting seismic codes and rising structural considerations had made the choice all however inevitable. In Los Angeles, earthquake laws can impose a form of architectural expiration date. However the true query, Govan remembers in a dialog with Observer, was what precisely could be constructed—and what it will seem like. “This was a novel alternative to rebuild a museum on a metropolitan scale in the USA, the place a lot of the main civic establishments we reference—just like the Met, which is 150 years outdated—had been created inside a a lot older framework.”
With that in thoughts, Govan started to think about what a museum constructed for the Twenty first Century and past ought to seem like—notably in a metropolis like Los Angeles, the place the multicultural cloth of the neighborhood was already mirrored in a group of over 150,000 works. After years of failed makes an attempt to lift the required funds, it was beneath Govan’s management that the monetary puzzle lastly got here collectively. “We received an awesome neighborhood collectively, and in partnership with L.A. County, we raised $850 million,” he says. Of that, $725 million was allotted to the constructing itself. Govan’s imaginative and prescient for what a museum might change into in a worldwide society propelled the undertaking ahead. “I noticed this as an attractive alternative to attach the native and the worldwide.”
All through the method, the guiding goal was to make LACMA an area the place historic collections might replicate and serve the richness of latest life. For Govan, this meant greater than merely constructing a brand new museum; it truly meant constructing a number of. The thought wasn’t simply growth, however distribution, extending LACMA’s bodily and cultural presence throughout the town. And, he makes plain, the plan is much from full. There are already ambitions to develop additional, together with into South Los Angeles.
The undertaking was entrusted to Pritzker Prize–profitable architect Peter Zumthor who, in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designed a sweeping, serpentine construction of concrete and glass to exchange 4 getting older museum buildings and unify the campus with a dramatic elevated type that stretches throughout Wilshire Boulevard. Named in honor of David Geffen’s extraordinary $150 million reward, the brand new constructing additionally obtained $125 million in assist from the County of Los Angeles. Guests entry the exhibition-level galleries by way of floating staircases and elevators on each the north and south sides of the boulevard. The north wing bears the title of Elaine Wynn, trustee and board co-chair, whose $50 million management reward launched the Constructing LACMA marketing campaign. The south wing, for now, stays unnamed, its plaque left clean, awaiting the subsequent main donor.
When it comes to how the construction meets its museographic intentions, the brand new Geffen Galleries embrace and encourage a way of fluidity, fostering dialogue between folks, cultures and temporalities. Zumthor has envisioned an architectural area that attracts on the legacy of museography pioneers comparable to Lina Bo Bardi, the horizontal readability championed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Oscar Niemeyer’s embrace of pure curves that echo and harmonize with their environment. The result’s an natural atmosphere that mirrors the museum’s ambition to have interaction with a plurality of narratives by way of each area and construction.
Fluidity and connection are additionally central to the rehang and broader program, which goal to maneuver past conventional museographic frameworks primarily based on nationality, chronology and medium. As an alternative, the museum is now organized thematically, in a construction supposed to evolve over time with curatorial enter.
“The curatorial group determined to arrange the world round themes, or ‘muses,’ as we name them, such because the muse of oceans and water, which incorporates the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific,” Govan explains. The result’s a radical shift in each presentation and idea: somewhat than being organized by nation, works and artifacts are grouped throughout continents and areas—Europe, the East, the Americas (North and South) and Africa—emphasizing centuries of change, interrelation and shared histories.
This method, Govan notes, is particularly resonant within the context of the USA and the Atlantic, which for hundreds of years—notably earlier than the jet age—served as a central artery for world motion. “This theme emphasizes fluidity, migration, commerce and interconnectedness, versus the inflexible classifications of the nineteenth Century,” he provides. The result’s a extra dynamic, responsive and relational approach of organizing the museum’s holdings.
The structure was designed to replicate and reinforce this curatorial framework—favoring fluid sections over enclosed rooms, with clusters that may be reconfigured with out disrupting the customer’s motion by way of the area. All the things unfolds on a single degree, which accounts for the constructing’s expansive footprint: 110,000 sq. toes, all on one ground, with two foremost entrances. As Govan explains, the design is deliberately natural, with home windows all through that preserve a relentless visible change with the town past. “There’s no hierarchy—no clear entrance or again. The narrative is open, and there’s no prescribed journey throughout the area,” he emphasizes.
On the similar time, the constructing creates significant alternatives for public artwork and engagement past the museum partitions. The brand new Geffen Galleries introduce 3.5 acres of park-like public area on either side of Wilshire Boulevard, conceived to be activated with artwork, occasions and performances.
Public artwork has lengthy been central to LACMA’s id, with its present plazas already dwelling to iconic works comparable to City Mild by chris burden and Barbara Kruger’s monumental mural. Now, all the 75,000-square-foot floor airplane of the W.M. Keck Plaza on the north aspect of Wilshire can be reworked by a serious new fee from Mariana Castillo Deball titled Feathered Adjustments, which may also lengthen to the south aspect. Further site-specific works by artists together with Liz Glynn, Thomas Houseago, Shio Kusaka, Pedro Reyes and Diana Thater will additional animate the general public areas, reinforcing LACMA’s position as an open, civic-oriented cultural hub.
However one of many soon-to-be Instagram-famous, absolute blue-chip highlights can be Jeff Koons’s Cut up-Rocker (2000), a monumental 37-foot-tall sculpture adorned with dwelling crops and flowers. The acquisition, set up and long-term upkeep of this daring but ecologically attuned work is made doable by a beneficiant reward from LACMA life trustee Lynda Resnick and her husband, Stewart, by way of their basis. Drawing on the custom of 18th-century European topiaries, the sculpture fuses one half of a cartoon-like pony’s head with one half of a equally stylized dinosaur’s head—its floor “painted” in dwelling vegetation. An inside irrigation system helps the crops, permitting the sculpture to evolve over time in direct response to its atmosphere and the botanical life it sustains.
“By giving equal emphasis to each the indoor and out of doors expertise by way of accessible public artwork, we’ve created areas that have interaction the neighborhood,” Govan notes. “On Friday nights, for a lot of the yr, we host jazz live shows and usually draw three to 4 thousand folks.” Having spent a lot of his life in New York, Govan was desperate to convey a few of that city park power to Los Angeles. The result’s a beneficiant growth of free, public park area that integrates artwork, meals and alternatives for gathering—an particularly significant gesture in a metropolis as dispersed as L.A., the place many neighborhoods nonetheless lack a central plaza or communal assembly level. “We had a imaginative and prescient of making one thing actually distinctive—rooted in our locality however with a worldwide perspective. And we’re extremely enthusiastic about what we’ve been capable of obtain,” he says with enthusiasm.
On making area for neighborhood
Since June 2025, choose teams—together with LACMA donors and members—have had the possibility to preview the dramatic inside areas of their uncooked state, earlier than any artworks are put in. Decided to remain on schedule regardless of the setbacks attributable to the devastating February fires, Govan was equally dedicated to carving out a short window for guests to expertise the constructing forward of its official opening for a number of causes. Chief amongst them was the need to foster a way of possession and spark early, genuine enthusiasm that might translate into lasting engagement and assist. “The thought was to ask the neighborhood in early, to assist them really feel that the constructing belongs to them,” he explains. “I didn’t wish to wait till April, particularly when the constructing already seems to be completed from the surface. I wished to indicate it’s actual—it’s occurring.” After all, the museum now faces the monumental job of putting in 3,000 artworks.
For the opening preview in June, Govan invited acclaimed saxophonist and jazz composer Kamasi Washington to carry out Concord of Distinction, a six-movement jazz suite that explores the great thing about distinction and unity by way of the musical idea of counterpoint—diverging melodies that finally resolve right into a harmonious entire. The efficiency featured an ensemble of greater than 100 musicians from numerous cultural and racial backgrounds, a lot of them Los Angeles-based artists who’ve lengthy collaborated with Washington. “I assumed it will be fantastic to provide the constructing a blessing,” Govan says, referring to what he known as a “sonic preview.” For him, Concord of Distinction supplied a strong metaphor for LACMA’s new philosophical and organizational method. “It was additionally a method to get it on folks’s radar—to indicate that one thing stunning, new and recent is coming, with a gap in April,” he provides. The live performance capped per week and a half of programming that included video previews from curators, neighborhood workshops and different public occasions. In whole, greater than 18,000 folks handed by way of the constructing through the early preview interval.
The second felt particularly significant within the wake of the February fires and all the things Los Angeles had endured. “This second of aid and neighborhood power was important after such a tough time for the town,” Govan acknowledges. That spirit of renewal was additionally one of many driving motivations behind organizing the preview occasions. “We labored actually laborious to make this occur, particularly contemplating how difficult building tasks had been after the fires. However we needed to keep on observe for the April opening—this undertaking means an awesome deal to all the L.A. neighborhood.”
But when requested whether or not LACMA would possibly function a mannequin for what a Twenty first-century museum—even perhaps the museum of the longer term—might or must be, Govan is fast to reject the thought of there being a single blueprint. “The variety of museums is crucial, and we shouldn’t consider them as serving one particular objective,” he says. “They should adapt to their context and objective.” Govan speaks from expertise. Earlier than arriving at LACMA, he oversaw the event of a wholly new establishment as director of the Dia Artwork Basis, the place he led preparations for the 2004 opening of Dia:Beacon in upstate New York.
Underscoring the significance of site-specific considering, Govan contrasts his work at LACMA with Dia:Beacon, the place he helped form a 300,000-square-foot museum devoted to only twenty-four artists, targeted on immersive, sustained encounters with particular person practices from a selected technology. At LACMA, he’s targeted on what he calls the “concord of distinction.”
“We wish to showcase and assist folks really feel the splendor and energy of the interrelationships between many cultures, particularly in a spot like Los Angeles,” he says, noting how this concept resonates globally in an more and more interconnected world. It’s about participating with the richness of human cultures, artwork and narratives—not solely by way of studying, meditation or change, but additionally by way of the emotional power of creativity itself.
“It’s not about categorizing or compartmentalizing,” Govan concludes, “however about recognizing the ability of interconnectivity—what occurs when issues come collectively.”
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