{"id":348466,"date":"2026-03-16T03:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/348466\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T03:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:54:12","slug":"inside-lacmas-new-david-geffen-galleries-opening-may-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/348466\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside LACMA’s New David Geffen Galleries, Opening May 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTwenty years after Michael Govan took the helm of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art<\/a> (LACMA<\/a>) and took charge of its campus overhaul, 17 years after Swiss architect Peter Zumthor<\/a> began designing a massive new building for it, and nearly three years after that structure was originally scheduled for completion, the dramatic edifice will finally open its doors this spring.<\/p>\n

\n\tNamed the David Geffen Galleries<\/a> in recognition of the billionaire\u2019s $150 million donation toward the $720 million effort, the concrete building replaces four others that were deemed structurally unsound. At 900 feet long, it holds 110,000 square feet of gallery space on one level, allowing the museum to display roughly 2,500 to 3,000 objects from its collection of 150,000-plus works.<\/p>\n

\n\tPritzker Prize\u2013winning Zumthor lifted the building almost 30 feet off the ground, creating an enormous shaded plaza beneath to host concerts and house cafes, a shop, an education center, and public sculptures.<\/p>\n

\n\tInside, the walls are gray concrete, an unconventional choice for an art museum, where drywall\u2014easily patched and repainted\u2014is most often the norm. Unprompted, Govan, LACMA\u2019s C.E.O. and director, assures Robb Report it\u2019s quite simple to drill and fill holes in concrete. And to those who question the wisdom of featuring an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in the California sun, he notes that natural light was high on his wish list, and that drawings and other delicate objects will be displayed in more dimly lit rooms. \u201cHalf [of the works in] our collections are completely light insensitive,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re made of marble and ceramic and metal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Visitors<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVisitors take in Todd Gray\u2019s Octavia\u2019s Gaze (2025).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJonathan Urban<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the most startling thing about LACMA\u2019s newest addition\u2014which joins two 21st-century Renzo Piano buildings and a renovated Bruce Goff pavilion\u2014may be the unorthodox presentation of the art itself. \u201cThe museum has a whole fresh look at art history,\u201d Govan says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe horizontal layout was intended to erase any perceived hierarchy, a vestige of 19th-century thinking. No gallery is reserved for a particular region or era, and there\u2019s no designated path. \u201cI know some people won\u2019t love that,\u201d Govan says with a little chuckle. The goal is for people to wander. \u201cI wanted you to walk through it like Central Park, because I love [Frederick Law] Olmsted\u2014this idea that he takes you on multiple journeys through the same place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that doesn\u2019t mean the art will be hung helter-skelter. The inaugural installation<\/a>\u2014a collaboration of 45 curators\u2014takes the world\u2019s major bodies of water as its organizing principle, linking, for instance, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. \u201cThe world was traversed by oceans and trade and forced migration and migration,\u201d Govan says, adding that the presentation is \u201clike a wonderland of curious connections.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter devoting much of his LACMA tenure to construction projects, Govan sounds ready to take off his hard hat. \u201cBuildings are buildings,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve built a lot of buildings, but the bigger transformation is the way things are seen and experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTop: Tony Smith\u2019s Smoke (1967) stands guard outside LACMA\u2019s new David Geffen Galleries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty years after Michael Govan took the helm of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[2273,307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,709,4540],"class_list":["post-348466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine","tag-museums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}