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Posted Apr 16, 2026, 3:03 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2002
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Quote:
Photo © Iwan Baan
]Even before Michael Govan arrived at LACMA, in 2006, as its new director, he was pursuing Zumthor’s ideas for a future building. Govan had worked with the Swiss architect on a (never realized) project elsewhere—and was convinced that Zumthor, with the “sublime and site-responsive qualities” of his designs, says Govan, would be an outstanding choice for LACMA.
I had my own doubts (and wrote unsparingly about the proposed project along its journey). Certainly I understood objections to the idea that a public (county-owned and -funded) institution’s director could single-handedly select the architect for such a major commission—without a transparent competition or short-list process. Skeptics questioned Zumthor’s track record—though a Pritzker laureate, he had never completed a project of remotely this scale and had a history of cost overruns. There was also concern about his understanding of L.A., as well as the wastefulness and environmental toll of demolishing the existing buildings—three unremarkable, ill-functioning structures from 1965 by William Pereira and one from 1986 by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer (HHP)—instead of inventively renovating and seismically retrofitting them.
So the stakes were unusually high. Was it worth it? Unexpectedly, my short answer is mostly yes, but at a cost, and not without compromises and trade-offs. Some of the project’s most successful aspects are the experiential qualities from inside, but, in many ways, the interior and exterior are closely related. But the scheme didn’t always straddle the major artery of Wilshire Boulevard. That happened after LACMA’s next-door sister institution, La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, raised concerns about encroachment on its paleontological sites, prompting a repositioning of Zumthor’s proposed building.
Crossing Wilshire, however, meant extending onto a LACMA-owned parcel on the street’s south side—developable real estate and a potentially valuable income source—which some argue was squandered needlessly, just to bridge the road. But the move does increase the museum’s visibility, with a presence rivaled only by artist Chris Burden’s Urban Light (2008)—a permanently installed forest of street lamps and wildly popular selfie backdrop—just down Wilshire, fronting LACMA’s campus.
The city is ever present. Yet Zumthor’s curving floor plate also yields intriguing solipsistic views from one part of the interior into another. This shifting exterior-interior quality is reinforced by the inside-out continuity of the limited material palette of glass, concrete, and brass.
Photo © Iwan Baan
The warm-toned metal re-emerges in door handles, stair rails, the building signage, and other fixtures, while the concrete changes according to its architectural role: raw light gray on vertical surfaces, it’s more charcoal colored, speckled with tiny seashells, for the polished gallery floors. Despite such attention to nuance, however, spidering floor cracks and splotchy areas in the roof’s overhang are already visible. (Govan says it’s all by design, that he and Zumthor have embraced the ways nature’s forces register on the materials—and consciously chose inevitable fine floor cracks over expansion joints.)
With a single doorway (except where fire code required two), each volume is encased, mausoleum-like, in massively thick walls, minimally detailed, without moldings or door jambs. But the austerity is tempered by interior wall surfaces of deep red, indigo, or eggplant-black, achieved with a saturated yet semi-translucent glaze over the cured concrete. This rich palette recalls the backdrops popularized in classic 19th-century painting galleries (and still present in many traditional museums).
Photo © Iwan Baan
While many of these chambers admit no daylight, some have a single horizontal slit (or two) near the top, filtering in rays—but the effect falls short of the glowing, mystical qualities at Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum, in Germany. And the more modest, single-door galleries, in particular, can be echoey and feel confining. (I was relieved to escape back into the open expanse.)
Modulating daylight further are adjustable translucent, woven-metal window drapes of varying densities, custom-designed by Japanese textile artist Reiko Sudo. As for the challenges of hanging artwork on concrete (which has been done at museums elsewhere, including the Kimbell), LACMA will precision-drill holes as needed and fill or patch them when the works are removed—here, too, unapologetically leaving the marks and scars of time.
Many of the displays have an almost tangible immediacy, as in the ancient pottery that sits, with seeming casualness, on uncovered wood-topped tables, as if in the maker’s studio. Zumthor designed everything, from display tables to cleanly detailed vitrines (necessary for certain objects) and long leather-and-metal benches, for relaxing with art or views.
Photo © Iwan Baan
With 110,000 square feet of gallery space, however, Zumthor’s scheme was long criticized for reducing, rather than expanding, the 120,000 square feet demolished to make way for it. Certainly an argument can be made for spatial quality over quantity—and extraordinary objects that often went unnoticed now appear, literally, in new light. But it’s surprising that the flat rooftop doesn’t double as a garden or outdoor display area, or even a place for solar panels (which will reportedly come later). Also, the Geffen contains no curatorial offices and very limited areas for art conservation and storage, omissions that could incur additional expense, inconvenience, and logistical issues. It’s a little hard to swallow the lack of attention to such key functions in a building with such a breathtaking price tag ($125 million from county coffers, with the remaining $595 million from private philanthropy).
Arguably, LACMA could have revamped and seismically retrofitted the Pereira-HHP buildings for a lot less, and accommodated more. “But when I seriously investigated renovating the existing structures,” says Govan, “I could not generate any enthusiasm or interest—believe me, I tried. Raising the funds would have been impossible.”
Perhaps, all along, what Govan and the major donors really wanted was a daring and uniquely memorable landmark within the city that would be synonymous with LACMA. And they’ve achieved that—along with a risky approach to presenting art that is likely to succeed.
“Much as I admire the Met, that’s not who we are—or are trying to be,” says Govan. “This is definitely something else.”
Speaking for myself, I didn’t expect to be enthralled, but I found the art-viewing experience so captivating and pleasurable that I eventually had to be torn away—and can’t wait to go back.
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Last edited by citywatch; Apr 18, 2026 at 12:25 AM.
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