All posts tagged: LACMAs

It’s LACMA’s World, and Hollywood Wants to Play in It

It’s LACMA’s World, and Hollywood Wants to Play in It

Published by Sam Flores

In reaching for a comparison, I thought back to the hoopla tied to the completion of Crystal Bridges, the nonprofit art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, founded by Alice Walton, or the debut of Glenstone, the astounding museum started by collectors Mitchell Rales and Emily Wei Rales in Potomac, Maryland. Neither was close to this. A better comparison would be the opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new building, designed by Renzo Piano, in the Meatpacking District—I was there for that bash; Rufus Wainwright sang Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” in front of the Hudson River, and the crowd went nuts. But LACMA’s new building, with its massive institutional footprint and giant budget to match—the museum placed the final cost at $720 million—puts it in another stratosphere. “Really, this might be the most important museum in the country built in, oh, I don’t know, decades?” Bob Iger, the former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, told me. He was there with his wife, Willow Bay, who has been a board member for …

Erewhon to Set Up Shop in LACMA’s New Building

Erewhon to Set Up Shop in LACMA’s New Building

Published by José Betancourt

Erewhon, the iconic LA grocery store known for its $20-plus smoothies, will soon open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of a new partnership. LACMA is currently preparing to open its new, Peter Zumthor–design building, officially called the David Geffen Galleries, this spring, with members getting access beginning April 19 and the public opening coming on May 4. Erewhon will similarly have its opening timed to the new building, with members getting early access ahead of the café’s public debut. Related Articles It’s unclear if the Erewhon pop-up is only temporary—a press release says it will “be available through the summer”—or if the grocery store is testing the waters to see if it will be profitable before committing to a long-term residency at the museum. The Erewhon outpost will be located in the building’s northeast pavilion, called the W.M. Keck Plaza, and facing the recently reinstalled Three Quintains (Hello Girls) sculpture by Alexander Calder. “We are excited to launch Erewhon at LACMA for the opening season of the David Geffen Galleries,” …

Erewhon to open at LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries

Erewhon to open at LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries

Published by Sam Flores

Want to sip on Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie after staring at Vincent van Gogh’s “Tarascon Stagecoach”? Los Angeles County Museum of Art has got you covered. The museum announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Erewhon, the high-end L.A. health food chain and retailer, on a cafe located on the ground level of its new David Geffen galleries. The cafe, which has outdoor seating beside Alexander Calder’s fountain sculpture, “Three Quintains (Hello Girls),” will open Sunday for LACMA members visiting the David Geffen Galleries. The general public can get in on the coveted buffalo cauliflower when the new building opens to the public on May 4 — with the partnership continuing through the summer. No definite closure has been announced, so it’s possible the collaboration continues. Erewhon will be stationed in the cafe at the David Geffen Galleries, behind Alexander Calder’s “Three Quintains (Hello Girls)” sculpture. (Etienne Laurent/For The Times) “We’re so proud to partner with LACMA, a meaningful milestone as our first museum collaboration,” said Tony Antoci, CEO and owner of Erewhon, …

17 unmissable artworks in LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries

17 unmissable artworks in LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries

Published by Sam Flores

Context matters. The familiar looks and feels different when its setting has changed, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleries are all about change. Roughly 2,000 works from LACMA’s encyclopedic collection of more than 150,000 objects are installed in the new building, and each is seen in a new context, among a new constellation of related works, in exhibition spaces physically and conceptually unlike those of the past. Concrete, the structure’s dominant material, may be a synonym for fixed and definite, but the experience within is inescapably fluid. The single-level expanse of exhibition space has two entry points and countless options for covering its formidable length. The architecture insists that you meander and loop. LACMA is hardly the only institution to set about refreshing the narrative, but its manner of presentation is distinct, maybe even radical. Gone is the traditional museum format of organizing art in sequential, neatly contained rooms according to nationality, time period and medium. Works in the collection are grouped according to four major bodies of water—the Atlantic, …

LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries bends all the rules

LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries bends all the rules

Published by Sam Flores

Does it feel like Los Angeles has lost its nerve? At its most effective, the city has taken outsized risks — sweeping, controversial bets that have reshaped not just its own landscape but the world’s. It built Hollywood into a global dream factory and carved a vast, paradigm-shifting freeway network. It built strange, game-changing wonders, from early Modernist archetypes to Disneyland and Disney Hall. Share via Close extra sharing options In the last few decades, that swagger seems to have collapsed under the weight of a tepid banality. But an unlikely hope is surfacing near the bubbling tar of prehistoric L.A. No L.A. institution has taken as risky a leap in this century as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With the opening of the $724-million David Geffen Galleries, LACMA has effectively erased and reinvented itself, trading a fragmented campus core for a sinuous, hovering concrete megastructure, three football fields long, that lunges headlong across Wilshire Boulevard. The result is as disorienting and austere as it is poetic and exhilarating — a living, morphing …

Alexander Calder fountain is back at LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries

Alexander Calder fountain is back at LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries

Published by Sam Flores

What’s old is new again as sculptor Alexander Calder’s monumental “Three Quintains (Hello Girls)” is installed to anchor the northeast corner of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries. The four water jets that propel the colorful, whimsical sculpture were turned back on in March more than 60 years after the piece was first commissioned for the museum’s original William Pereira–designed campus, which opened in 1965. “The concept of museums commissioning artists is now commonplace. It wasn’t commonplace then,” said LACMA’s senior curator and modern art department head, Stephanie Barron, as she watched the fountain’s bright yellow, red and blue mobile-like paddles dance and twist in the wind and water, alongside Sandy Rower, Calder’s grandson and head of his foundation. Sandy Rower, sculptor Alexander Calder’s grandson and the head of the Calder Foundation, stands beside his grandfather’s 1964 fountain, “Three Quintains (Hello Girls),” which was just installed at Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times) Not only was the sculpture, fondly referred to …

Michael Govan Discusses LACMA’s 0 M. New Building in Vanity Fair

Michael Govan Discusses LACMA’s $720 M. New Building in Vanity Fair

Published by Jenni Sidey

Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan is speaking publicly for the first time about the museum’s long-awaited David Geffen Galleries. The interview, which went live today, appears in the relaunch of True Colors, Vanity Fair’s art-world newsletter written by Nate Freeman. The newsletter will now land in inboxes weekly on Fridays with interviews, art-market intelligence, and dispatches from across the art world. The debut edition features Govan discussing the museum’s controversial new building designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, a $720 million structure set to open to the public next month after years of construction, debate, and rising costs. Related Articles In the interview, Govan framed the project as an attempt to rethink the role of the museum in the 21st century: The project has been one of the most closely watched museum construction efforts in the US in recent years. Critics have questioned both the demolition of several earlier LACMA buildings and the design of the new structure, which spans Wilshire Boulevard and introduces a single-floor layout of 347,500 square feet …