{"id":396174,"date":"2026-04-17T01:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T01:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/396174\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T01:11:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T01:11:15","slug":"peter-zumthors-david-geffen-galleries-open-at-lacma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/396174\/","title":{"rendered":"peter zumthor’s david geffen galleries open at LACMA"},"content":{"rendered":"

LACMA opens long-awaited building, designed by Peter Zumthor<\/p>\n

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Peter Zumthor\u2019s<\/a> David Geffen Galleries at LACMA<\/a> open to the public on April 19th, 2026, completing a two-decade transformation of the Los Angeles<\/a> County Museum of Art into its most expansive institutional form yet. The new building, a 275-meter-long, curved glass-and-concrete<\/a> structure that stretches along Hancock Park and crosses Wilshire Boulevard, houses the permanent collection of the museum<\/a> across 10,220 square meters of gallery space elevated nearly 9 meters above street level.<\/p>\n

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The raised exhibition floor rests on seven ground-level pavilions accommodating education, retail, dining, and a theater, while the spaces between them open into publicly accessible plazas, including the East West Bank Commons and the W.M. Keck Plaza. Zumthor\u2019s design prescribes no single path through the galleries; instead, perimeter terrace galleries admit floor-to-ceiling natural light while interior rooms offer shelter and shadow, with custom sputter-plated chrome textile curtains by Tokyo-based designer Reiko Sud modulating illumination across light-sensitive works.<\/p>\n

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exterior view northeast from Wilshire Boulevard with Chris Burden\u2019s Urban Light (2008) in foreground, David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, art \u00a9 Chris Burden\/licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo \u00a9 Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

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oceans as organizing principle shape David Geffen Galleries<\/p>\n

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The inaugural installation at LACMA\u2019s David Geffen Galleries was developed by 45 curators working across disciplines, departing from conventional art-historical chronology in favor of a geographic framework structured around four bodies of water: the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. The Atlantic galleries trace independent artistic traditions around the Atlantic rim and the transformations initiated by European contact with the Americas, drawing on African and Black American textiles, modern Latin American art, 20th-century photography, and American decorative arts. The Pacific galleries of the museum<\/a> address Indigenous voyaging, imperial expansion, and global trade, encompassing Oceanic works, West Mexican and Peruvian ceramics, Spanish American mercantile objects, East Asian blue-and-white porcelain, and California design. The Indian Ocean section foregrounds South and Southeast Asian sculpture, a collection strength, alongside Indonesian batiks, Kashmir shawls, and the Ardabil Carpet, within the context of one of humanity\u2019s oldest maritime exchange networks. The Mediterranean galleries consider shared material and stylistic practices across Islamic and European painting, Syrian decorative arts, Baroque masterpieces, and Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities.<\/p>\n

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exterior view northwest from Wilshire Boulevard with Tony Smith\u2019s Smoke (1967) at left, David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, art \u00a9 Tony Smith Estate\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo \u00a9 Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

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commissioned works and public art<\/p>\n

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Four major new commissions anchor the building\u2019s interior. Todd Gray\u2019s Octavia\u2019s Gaze (2025), a three-dimensional photographic assemblage, greets visitors near the entrance. Do Ho Suh contributes Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace (2026), an actual-size re-creation in translucent material of a section of the primary Joseon royal palace in Seoul. Lauren Halsey\u2019s two works \u2014 a 10-foot reclining sphinx sculpture and a large-scale wall relief \u2014 and Tavares Strachan\u2019s bust Fulani (A Map of the Crown) (2024) are installed in the Mediterranean galleries. At plaza level, the entire 207,000-square-foot ground plane constitutes a single commissioned artwork: Mariana Castillo Deball\u2019s Feathered Changes, developed in close collaboration with Zumthor, connects the new structure to the site\u2019s history as a marshy ecosystem. Pedro Reyes\u2019s 18-foot stone carving Tlali (2026) and Diana Thater\u2019s light installation Five Days in Claude Monet\u2019s Garden (2026) join Jeff Koons\u2019s recently acquired 37-foot topiary Split-Rocker south of Wilshire Boulevard, while Tony Smith\u2019s monumental Smoke (1967) and a reimagined pool setting for Alexander Calder\u2019s Three Quintains (Hello Girls) (1964) complete the exterior program.<\/p>\n

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Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden with Auguste Rodin\u2019s Monumental Head of Pierre de Wissant (1884\u201385) in foreground, David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, photo \u00a9 Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

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David Geffen Galleries at LACMA with Tony Smith\u2019s Smoke (1967) in background, \u00a9 Tony Smith Estate\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo \u00a9 Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

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David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, exterior view of exhibition level with reflection of LACMA\u2019s Pavilion for Japanese Art, photo \u00a9 Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

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exterior view of exhibition level, David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, photo \u00a9 Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

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installation view of the inaugural presentation in the David Geffen Galleries, April 2026 | image \u00a9 Museum Associates\/LACMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LACMA opens long-awaited building, designed by Peter Zumthor \u00a0 Peter Zumthor\u2019s David Geffen Galleries at LACMA open to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[17210,437,434,435,436,3104,438,146,85,46,45581,7429,66681],"class_list":{"0":"post-396174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architecture-in-los-angeles","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-concrete-architecture-and-design","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-il","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-lacma","19":"tag-museums-and-galleries","20":"tag-peter-zumthor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}