David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, photo © Iwan Baan
If you live in LA, odds are good that you’ve seen news about the new gallery space opening up at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The building, which is nestled next to the La Brea Tar Pits, is an amoeba-like, one-story edifice that flows over Wilshire Boulevard.
What most excited me about the David Geffen Galleries, as the building is officially called, is how it fits into the city; it looks outward, gazing on and over Wilshire as well as the tar pits and the LA sky.
The city is also opening a metro stop right next to LACMA in May, which will presumably bring more people to the area. These structural changes make me wonder what this area will look like in 10 years. In twenty? One hundred?
The opening of the Geffen Galleries is a historic moment. It will leave its mark on the city beyond my lifetime, and that’s cool — and weird — to think about.
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I toured the Galleries before it became open to the public and heard LACMA CEO Michael Govan and Swiss architect Peter Zumthor talk about the 20-year, $700+ million effort to get it made.
In his opening remarks, Govan explained that the space was driven by the idea that “it would be a reflection of the diversity of cultures of Los Angeles, that [the Geffen Galleries] could be a mirror of that.”
He added, “Nineteenth-century museums were a lot about categorization and knowledge. But we live in modern Los Angeles, where we're all interconnected, where migration and interconnectedness are so essential to our daily life, and so that spirit is here in the Galleries.”
In that vein, there’s no one path to walk through the museum, much like, Govan explained, “there’s no one story of our history.” You’re meant to wander and take in the art as well as the city surrounding it (including the construction still going on around it, which seemed like an art form of its own).
The displays span centuries, including Assyrian reliefs from the Ninth Century BCE and works created this year for the building, such as Do Ho Suh’s ghostly Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace.
I put together a video of my time touring the new Galleries, including some of the art displayed in its new environs and the bustling city outside it. You can watch the clip below, and it’s also on Instagram and TikTok if you prefer that format.
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