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THE NEW LACMA IS DIVISIVE. IT’S ALSO AMBITIOUS, DISORIENTING — AND RADICALLY ALIVE
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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.
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.
A drone view of LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries.
The roof of new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries will eventually be covered in black solar panels, part of the museum’s sustainability plan to achieve LEED Gold certification.
The result is as disorienting and austere as it is poetic and exhilarating — a living, morphing building that challenges nearly every convention of what a museum should be. This is no machine or temple for art. It has the scale of a landform and the shape of a living being. And like all living beings, it is far from perfect.
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The path to get here has been as serpentine as the structure itself. In 2013, shortly after the completion of a substantial LACMA redesign by architect Renzo Piano, adding the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum and Resnick Pavilion and finally restoring some degree of order and life to the campus, museum director Michael Govan — eschewing a public design process — revealed a colossal new home for its permanent collection designed by Peter Zumthor.
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Their amorphous “flower,” as they called it, inspired, in part, by the site’s oozing tar pits, would eventually lead to the demolition of everything east of its current central plaza. That includes William Pereira’s Rococo-tinged, Classical Modern pavilions (1965) and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates’ Babylonian-scaled, belligerent Postmodern addition (1986). Zumthor and Govan had been quietly shaping the project since the latter took the reins in 2006. That was 20 years ago.
Govan, a protégé of the transformational and controversial late Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, has long collaborated with artists and designers to push the effete, glacially paced cultural establishment toward openness, spectacle and fresh territory. He’s played a part in the wildly influential adaptive reuse of Mass MoCA and Dia Beacon, the global extravaganza of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao and the more recent LACMA people magnet, “Urban Light,” by Chris Burden.
Govan’s partnership with Zumthor and, later, with structural engineer and collaborating architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was about further upsetting unspoken museum-world rules — like sealed, square galleries, white walls and encyclopedic organization. It would also lean into what Zumthor likes to call “atmosphere” — a visceral feeling that emerges through the rigorous shaping of material, light, mass and space. “It’s always about emotion,” emphasized Zumthor, speaking via Zoom from his office in Haldenstein, Switzerland, the snowy Swiss Alps behind him.
Zumthor’s winding building, breathing through clusters of circular vents, like blowholes, is indeed a different kind of animal — neither precious, pretty nor polite. Eschewing the omnipresent pull of Europe, it evokes, if anything, the raw, sensual modernism of Oscar Niemeyer, the strong, untamed precolonial monoliths of South and Central America, and the organic radicalism of Bruce Goff, whose Japanese Pavilion next door looks like an older cousin.
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Inside, its galleries, occupying a single, levitated floor, abandon hierarchy, chronology and even basic orientation. There’s no prescribed path, no clear beginning or end, no east or west wing. Instead, you move, self-directed, through a continuous field of art and space, where ancient and contemporary works sit side by side and sightlines slip in and out of focus.
“The building never looks down on you. It lets you find your own way,” Zumthor told me.
Walking through it means constantly recalibrating. Galleries and the art-filled spaces between them shift like openings in a cliff face, or the back alleys and squares of a village. Straight lines branch into tributaries. Some are expansive, morphing, others intimate — almost chapel-like.
Thanks to the museum’s continuous windows — divided only by thin, earth-toned bronze mullions — the view opens to the tar pits, the Hollywood Hills and — most thrillingly — traffic zooming along Wilshire Boulevard. The art “becomes part of our contemporary world,” as Zumthor put it. The bountiful, horizontal natural light holds many of the pieces in a soft glow, continually shifting depending on your position or the time of day.
The building bends you around corners, compresses you and rarely lets you settle. At times I lost my bearings. I doubled back. I wondered where I was, what I had missed. But I also found myself curiously wandering, looking more closely, making connections I might not have otherwise.
That seems to be the trade-off. I think it’s worth it.
The galleries, their flat upper and lower slabs supported by complex webs of concrete ribs and post-tensioned steel cables, are pure structure—no appliqué, no columns. You begin to grasp the scope of LACMA’s collection within through a slow awareness of the whole. The collection, which will be updated regularly — the premier installation is loosely organized around oceanic regions — now feels less like a series of isolated departments and more like a continuous conversation.
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When I visited last June, before the art was installed, I left with several concerns. I worried that the bracingly irregular, board-formed concrete, which resulted in streaked lines on walls, bubbly, scarred triangles on ceilings, fissures on dark floors — none of it as honed as Zumthor’s past work— would read as sloppy, even unfinished. But with the galleries now in place, that same coarseness has become a powerful foil to LACMA’s pristine, priceless treasures.
In this new context, color deepens, texture registers and impact heightens. The frenetic concrete engages with each piece, rather than being a static, inert backdrop. Zumthor noted that the surface is the work of hundreds of craftsmen, manually spreading a muddy mixture inside and out — leaving mistakes when they happen. “What we need today is not refinement. We need wholehearted directness coming out of the hand,” said Zumthor.
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Govan has said he hopes the concrete will age and crack, recording time rather than resisting it. (What a concept in this city obsessed with the opposite!) The interior spaces can be heavy, raw, even a little unsettling. But that emotional charge is a welcome reprieve from the controlled calm and pristine sheet-rock neutrality of so many contemporary museums and galleries.
The building ties LACMA to Los Angeles in unexpected ways. Its low, sweeping form recalls the city’s otherworldly infrastructure and its relentless ribbons of roads. And the exposed perimeter makes it possible to navigate by the city itself: a glimpse of mountains, a flash of Wilshire, helping you regain your bearings. There are even spots to get great views of the building from the building.
Another pleasant surprise is textile artist Reiko Sudō’s pleated, metal-laced curtains lining some of the galleries — part of the Geffen’s complex push and pull with natural illumination. They introduce a poetic softness, catching and refining light, glowing as the sun shifts and adding texture, depth and a sense of movement. They create a sort of impressionist veil, abstracting the city and emphasizing the building’s ongoing dialogue with its setting
The enclosed galleries that populate the building’s center, even those without cracks of light piercing their upper edges, don’t resemble oppressive cells, as I had also feared. Softened with bluish, reddish or blackish pigment, these spaces, which Zumthor calls “houses,” feel like contemplative retreats — a frozen respite from the cacophony outside.
I don’t miss the touchable, handcrafted details featured in many of Zumthor’s buildings — the omnipresent concrete is the detail. And I’m not as bothered as I feared that some of the curved frontages are inset with flat glass — but I still find that detail clunky and incongruent. And, despite the vociferous protests of many, I’m fine that the gallery space measures 10,000 square feet less than the buildings razed to accommodate it. If anything, the reduced footprint makes the collection feel more connected and less overwhelming.
An evolving exterior
The building, its former campus once a walled-off fort, finally acknowledges its neighbors. Hoisting itself almost 30 feet above the landscape on seven partially glazed, programmed pavilions, including a restaurant, cafe, store and education center, it connects directly to Hancock Park and the tar pits, while carving out its own uniquely shaped public spaces. The zones directly underneath the behemoth don’t feel like dark warrens, as I feared. But it is odd to see a few spots requiring lighting during the daytime. The most effective is the Wilshire underpass, with constellation lighting intentionally conflating day and night.
Just as important, the building bends around its surroundings — curving past the tar pits as if in deference. In doing so, it frames a series of striking views from the ground, especially a curving vista of its Goff-designed relative across the site.
Still, the exterior is also where the project feels less resolved.
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The ground plane often reads as hard and unforgiving. Despite the building itself acting as an impressive solar shield thanks to its almost comically large, cantilevered concrete crown, there is still not enough shade, not enough trees — a familiar Los Angeles misstep. (No matter what Govan says, I still don’t think palm trees do the trick.)
The structure’s severity turns against itself in places like the large plazas to the north, which for now feel like back-of-house spaces. Without the softening of art — or enough greenery and activity — the concrete behemoth, which at its best feels soulful, quirky and mesmerizing, can feel hard, bleak and ponderous. As the amorphous building weaves through the neighborhood, this line between elegance and unfriendliness shifts depending on where you are. Gazing from “Urban Light,” it sings, rhythmic and resolved. From Wilshire just east of the structure, it feels institutional, slammed down on the city.
Govan has long used public art to create buzz and draw people in. The new campus dramatically expands that ambition, often successfully — but not always. Pedro Reyes has created a cheeky, anthropomorphic reminder of the building’s primeval heart. Tony Smith’s “Smoke” meets the building’s scale and provides a poignant marker of where Pereira’s grand atrium once loomed. Alexander Calder provides color and movement, its curved black reflecting pool a playful nod to the adjacent tar pits.
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But some installations feel harsh, dwarfed or forgotten. Mariana Castillo Deball’s “Feathered Changes,” which spreads across the ground beneath much of the building through the astounding hand manipulation of toned cement, presents a fascinating exploration of Mesoamerican myths and mystery. But it seems to privilege concept over comfort. Its hard, exposed surface offers little relief from sun or heat.
Jeff Koons’ wide-eyed topiary creature “Split-Rocker” feels, for now, marooned on the other side of Wilshire. The entire south extension of the site, which will soon host a theater, bar and plaza, is still unfinished, but currently acts like the back door that Govan and Zumthor explicitly wanted to avoid when they first presented their “flower.” That may change, as the landscaping fills out and the area gains art. In fact, all of the Geffen’s public spaces are still works in progress — unlike the fixed concrete gallery walls inside — so there is still room for improvement.
There are other concerns. The galleries are aiming for LEED Gold certification, and plans are afoot to install a field of black solar panels on the roof. But the heavy reliance on concrete carries an undeniable environmental cost. And with so many hard surfaces inside, one wonders whether sound will bounce and build, turning the galleries from quietly immersive to unnervingly loud.
Other questions keep crossing my mind, which only time will answer: Will Geffen’s imposing size and height put off potential visitors? Will LACMA restore the food and drink offerings directly on Piano’s central covered plaza, which helped make it the scrappy heart of the museum, and in some respects, the neighborhood? And will the museum’s demolition of its entire historic core embolden officials or developers elsewhere to turn to the bulldozer first?
Boldness still matters
Despite these questions, Zumthor and Govan’s David Geffen Galleries are a stunning achievement. In an era of safe, polished museums, LACMA has made a building that is alive — imperfect, challenging, changing and open to interpretation — and therefore, thoroughly modern.
Some of its aims fall short. The roughness occasionally slips into crudeness, the scale into overbearing, the landscape into starkness. Govan and Zumthor’s scorched-earth, top-down design process has alienated many passionate art and architecture fans and members of the public. But the central idea — a museum that rejects hierarchy, embraces ambiguity and engages Los Angeles — holds.
And that matters. In a city that has recently traded bold experimentation for caution, the David Geffen Galleries — not to mention the new subway stop across the street — herald an evolving, visionary metropolis, and stand as a reminder that risk and ambition are still possible, and more important than ever.
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_Sam Lubell_LATimes

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LACMA SPENT $724 MILLION ON THE GEFFEN GALLERIES — HERE’S HOW IT WAS USED by Jessica Gelt.
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It’s a thrilling example of progressive modernist design. Or an amorphous concrete monstrosity.
Love it or hate it, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleries are officially opening. And with the 347,500-square-foot new wing hurtling toward its April 16 gala, the intense public debate that has raged over the structure for more than two decades is poised to enter a new phase: How does the Peter Zumthor-designed building function as a museum and what will the public’s experience be of this controversial new civic space?
In other words, was the Geffen Galleries’ $723.8-million price tag worth it?
Detractors, including former Times art critic Christopher Knight, have said no. In one of his final columns about the building during a sneak peek last summer, Knight called Zumthor’s creation “monotonous,” and lamented LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan’s plan to exhibit art according to curatorial themes rather than installing the encyclopedic collection “geographically as straightforward chronology.” Additional criticisms include the choice of architect and design (and the lack of public discourse about both), and the fact that the building lost 11,000 square feet of gallery space during the construction process, resulting in less area than the four buildings it was replacing.
Others take the opposite view.
Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, whose 2nd District houses LACMA, called Govan an “absolute visionary,” and said since joining the Board of Supervisors in 2020, she has “always felt really good about the building. Given what it signified for us here in L.A. County and across the country, it was a very different model.”
“Any future, forward-thinking architect or designer has taken heat,” Mitchell said. “If you don’t take heat, you’re probably not being futuristic enough.”
Since LACMA first floated the idea in 2001 of demolishing architect William Pereira’s original 1965 campus, which consisted of three buildings along with a fourth added in 1986, critics have argued that public money would be better spent renovating the buildings. In a lengthy interview, Govan held forth on the many reasons he believed this thinking was deeply flawed.
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Joined by the museum’s budget officer and current head of finance, Arun Mathai, Govan laid out how LACMA assessed the total cost of the building, which does not include landscaping or permanent collection installation, and detailed why he thinks the project — through its use of local workers and its ability to attract high-profile donors and art collections — remains a net positive for L.A. County and the public.
“The ideal goal is to hire workers and get art for free,” Govan said, noting that the project employed more than 8,600 workers on site and off. This includes craft workers, as well as management staff with Clark Construction, engineering firms, design teams, fabricators and suppliers. The local hire rate was 47%, and the total hours worked in all trades was 2.3 million, with wages ranging from $43 to $131 with benefits and $28 to $86 without benefits. In 2021, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. estimated that the David Geffen Galleries building project would generate more than $1.2 billion in economic activity and result in $698.3 million in value added for the county.
Govan also credits Geffen Galleries with bringing in the kind of art that only a marquee building constructed to last could attract. This includes late trustee Elaine Wynn’s gift of a $142-million triptych by Francis Bacon; portions of the vaunted Pearlman Collection, including the museum’s first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet; and Bel-Air billionaire A. Jerrold Perenchio’s 2014 gift of his Impressionist and Modern art collection, totaling 47 works and valued at $500 million.
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“L.A. was losing art because of its poor facilities,” Govan said, noting that Perenchio explicitly told him he would not leave his collection to the old buildings. “I sat with him at a dinner and he said to me, ‘Are you really serious that you’re going to rebuild them?’ And I said, ‘I am really serious.’ And he said, ‘Let’s talk.’ So that collection, his gift, is his public declaration [of support].”
Perenchio’s contribution came shortly after the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to approve initial funding of the new building, which at that time was planned for 2023 with an estimated cost of $600 million. Public criticism reached new heights after a Board of Supervisors meeting in April 2019 during which city officials voted on whether to release taxpayer dollars to LACMA.
Celebrities including Brad Pitt and Diane Keaton stumped for the Zumthor design at the meeting, eclipsing the voices of many citizens who questioned the project — and the board voted unanimously to release the funds. The following year, a nonprofit called Save LACMA, which was founded by preservationists, proposed a ballot measure intended to limit the amount of money the museum could receive from the county and also require an elected official to sit on the museum’s board.
Another grassroots group called the Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA launched an international architectural competition “aimed at rethinking the museum’s plan,” with one of the group’s founders, architecture critic Greg Goldin, calling the demolition of the old campus an “act of civic vandalism” in a column for The Times.
Construction began in 2020, at which point the total cost of the building was estimated at $650 million, with a fundraising goal of $750 million. Govan attributed the need for an additional $74 million, which ultimately raised the total price tag to what it is today, to pandemic-related inflation coinciding with the 11-month delay that arose after builders ran into an unexpectedly large tranche of tar and animal bones, which needed to be meticulously excavated, documented and preserved.
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Now that the building is finished, the total price tag, according to LACMA’s records, stands as follows: $585 million in “hard costs,” which include the building that can be seen — called “above grade” ($485.5 million) — and everything below the building that remains unseen — called “below grade” ($63 million). Govan acknowledged that below-grade costs were quite large because they went toward 56 seismic base isolators, which can move 5 feet in any direction in the event of an earthquake. The remaining $36.6 million was used on sitework such as clearing, grading, excavation and utility installation.
Soft costs for the Geffen Galleries came in at $138.7 million, including architecture and engineering; planning and approvals; and administration and management.
“I was proud to be spending that much money,” said Govan, who remarked throughout the interview that he remains baffled by critics who argue that the price tag is too high when the county contribution has remained the same throughout, and the remainder of the money was raised from thousands of individual donors internationally as the result of “L.A.’s star power” — reflecting a sustained devotion and respect for art and culture in the city.
“If you add all the money we’re spending, we can easily surpass $800 million, and we’re hoping to spend more,” Govan said, noting that the total building cost doesn’t include leasing office space; moving, storing and acquiring art; and sourcing and designing furniture. He also joked that he intended to continue fundraising “forever.” (The campaign has already surpassed its $750-million goal to reach more than $875 million.)
“There are, like, 30 galleries left to name,” Govan said smiling.
Calling himself a “proselytizer for building museums,” Govan noted that LACMA, which has a total operating budget of almost $97 million this year, will soon turn its attention to building a satellite in South L.A.
“We should just keep going. Let’s keep building for art in L.A.,” Govan said. “The goal is to spend more on cultural infrastructure, especially when it includes art.”
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In a budget document reviewed by The Times, an additional $50 million, not included in the total building cost, was spent on permanent collection and artist installations, acquisitions and commissions, including Jeff Koons’ monumental topiary sculpture “Split-Rocker,” Pedro Reyes’ “Tlali” and Mariana Castillo Deball’s “Feathered Changes.”
L.A. County contributed $125 million, and also extended $300 million in credit to help the museum cover building expenses while it was in the midst of its fundraising campaign. LACMA is in the process of paying that debt off, and when it eventually does, the county will own the building.
The county, Govan said, was not remotely interested in renovating the old buildings because it would have cost more than $250 million. A board letter reviewed by The Times from Oct. 13, 2020, notes that according to a building evaluation study prepared by the construction management firm Owen Group in September 2014, “the demolished buildings had experienced extensive water intrusion damage and were compromised by deteriorating and failing building and mechanical systems that exceeded their expected useful life and would have required a County expenditure of approximately $246 million to fund a minimal level of repairs. The repairs would have been limited to visually apparent defects, and not include any upgraded systems that would have extended the useful life of the buildings.”
By comparison, $125 million was “a bargain for the county,” said Govan, “Because they had the liability of ownership of those buildings and the deferred maintenance was extraordinary.”
Govan said the old buildings had earned the staff moniker “LEAKMA” because administrative offices had to use buckets to catch water when it rained, and some art had to be taken off the walls to avoid water damage after storms.
All told, construction of the Geffen Galleries cost about $2,082 per square foot, which Govan said was average for museums. The Whitney Museum of American Art’s Renzo Piano-designed building cost $422 million when it opened in 2015 and spans 200,000 square feet, making its cost about $2,110 per square foot. Adjusted for inflation, that would make the Whitney’s cost about $582 million in 2026, or roughly $2,910 per square foot.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 2016 Snøhetta expansion cost $305 million and added 235,000 square feet — about $1,765 per square foot. Adjusted for inflation, that would be roughly $1,755 per square foot today. But this might understate the true price because post-pandemic construction costs have risen faster than general CPI inflation.
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LACMA, Govan acknowledged, has taken on $643 million in debt since 2008 — $343 million that year and the aforementioned $300 million from the county in 2020. That debt has been paid down to $617 million, which the museum will pay off by 2050, although Govan said, “We can pay off the current debt without raising another nickel.”
Now that construction is complete, the risk of cost overruns is gone. In late March, a Moody’s credit rating report assigned LACMA an A3 rating (the seventh highest rating on a 21-notch scale) based on its “strong relationship” with L.A. County and its “very strong philanthropy.” Offsetting credit factors included the museum’s “very high debt relative to both cash and investments and to operations.”
Govan said he feels more confident than ever as the museum readies for its close-up, with member previews beginning April 19 and general admission on May 4.
“You build the building to get the art,” he said. “That’s the whole goal.” _LATimes

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DAVID GEFFEN SETTLES DIVORCE WITH DAVID ARMSTRONG AFTER BITTER LEGAL FIGHT
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Top 200 Collector David Geffen’s short-lived marriage has come to an unceremonious end, with the billionaire entertainment mogul reaching a private settlement with his estranged husband, David Armstrong, capping months of unusually public legal sparring.
According to court filings reported on by TMZ this week, Geffen, 83, and Armstrong, 33, have agreed to resolve their divorce, though the financial terms remain undisclosed. The split follows less than two years of marriage and, crucially, no prenuptial agreement. It’s that detail that helped turn the proceedings into a high-stakes dispute over money, lifestyle, and control that has generated much tabloid coverage.
The news also comes ahead of the opening of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new building next week, which is named the David Geffen Galleries.
What began as a relatively straightforward separation quickly escalated. Armstrong, a model who has also gone by name Donovan Michaels, argued in court filings that Geffen was attempting to limit spousal support while maintaining a standard of living that, he claimed, once exceeded $3 million a month. Geffen, for his part, countered that he had already provided substantial support, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments and a New York apartment.
The dispute eventually widened beyond just money. Armstrong accused Geffen of withholding full disclosure of his wealth, comparing their legal battle to “David and Goliath,” citing the vast imbalance in resources between the two. He also filed—and later withdrew—a civil lawsuit accusing Geffen of exploitation and claiming that he was treated as a kind of “trophy,” manipulated psychologically, and even pushed into drug dependency as a form of control. Geffen’s legal team dismissed those claims outright.
That lawsuit’s withdrawal marked a turning point, and brought the battle back to the core issues of spousal support and division of assets. Still, the absence of a prenup and the disparity in wealth ensured that even a two-year marriage could carry hefty financial implications.
In the end, both sides appear to have opted for closure instead escalating things further. The settlement brings to a quiet end a case that, for a while, gave a behind the scenes look into the personal and financial mechanics of one of Hollywood’s most private billionaire art collectors. _Daniel Cassady _ARTnews