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Posted Mar 20, 2016, 5:01 PM
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Off the scale: Hauser & Wirth’s new West Coast outpost is an art behemoth
On an unusually cold day in February, Paul Schimmel is providing a tour of the Los Angeles outpost of the gallery where, for the last two years, he has been partner and VP: Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. Looking trim and tan after the last holiday he is likely to take for some time, Schimmel bustles around the outside of the 1896 building, part of a complex that occupies an entire block of downtown LA. With the erudition that distinguished his previous career as a museum curator, he summarises the history of the former flour mill and what architects Creative Space, in consultation with Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects, have done to preserve as much of it as possible.
The newly painted grey and white facade still bears the name of Globe Mills, which was the largest private mill in the Western United States until the 1940s when it was sold to Pillsbury. The baking goods conglomerate altered the design to accommodate delivery by truck, but it has been largely abandoned for 45 years.
Four block-long buildings, one five storeys in height, are wrapped around a central courtyard. The first time Schimmel saw a drawing of the facility, he knew it would be perfect. It only remained to hammer out a long-term lease with the owners, who did not want to sell but welcomed a business that would integrate it into a neighbourhood increasingly populated by artists, creative businesses and other galleries and restore its architectural integrity. Schimmel turns the corner to walk another block past the building’s rough brick walls covered in graffiti, explaining that instead of removing any street art, the gallery commissioned artist Kim West to complete the painterly mural of wildebeests that she had already started there.
In this way, Schimmel makes it clear that he is still working for an artist-centric organisation, not just another shop selling art. Once inside – where it is equally cold, since construction is far from completed – it is even more evident that museums rather than galleries are the model for HW&S. A specific museum, in fact: the Geffen Contemporary, the 55,000 sq ft warehouse repurposed by architect Frank Gehry in 1984 for LA’s first Museum of Contemporary Art, where Schimmel held sway as chief curator from 1990 to 2012. After a high-profile forced resignation from the troubled MoCA, Schimmel has come to Hauser & Wirth with his ideals intact.
‘This has been one of the great privileges, to think about exhibitions, about artists, about how the building is going to be used by a variety of creative people, doing projects not realised at Newport Harbor Museum of Art [where he was curator from 1981 to 1990] or MoCA,’ says Schimmel. ‘I’ve never been able to take on a full facility and think about the way art and architecture can work alongside one another.’
Hauser Wirth & Schimmel will boast roughly the same amount of gallery space as the Geffen; huge and intimidating to most curators but a challenge Schimmel is used to. Significantly, while much of the building is still under construction, the galleries are complete. ‘A curator finishes the galleries first,’ he jokes. ‘I was looking for a variety of spaces: medium, large and unstructured. I think most art wants different kinds of places to be seen to greatest advantage.’
The architects uncovered some pre-existing skylights and refitted them with UV protective glass, as well as adding insulation and new roofing. On site will also be an Artbook@Hauser Wirth & Schimmel store, the first gallery-based branch of the specialist bookseller, and an education lab, run by Aandrea Staang, formerly education programme manager at MoCA. A vast courtyard, which will house sculptures and outdoor seating, features a site-specific Mary Heilmann mural, and there are plans for a flower and herb garden to be used by the 140-seat restaurant Manuela (named after Manuela Wirth).
All this emphasis on pleasing the public might be heresy to most private gallerists but Iwan and Manuela Wirth have done it before at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, which has attracted some 200,000 visitors since opening in 2014. In truth, since launching their original gallery in Zurich in 1992 and adding spaces in London and New York, Hauser & Wirth’s galleries have been more public facing than most. Their downtown New York gallery, one of two in the city, houses the Roth Bar, a popular local hangout designed by Björn and Oddur Roth, the son and grandson of Swiss artist Dieter Roth. But in Somerset and now in LA, they have take that accessibility to a new level. ‘They wanted a different kind of model,’ says Schimmel. ‘It’s more like a kunsthalle or foundation.’
Iwan Wirth agrees, emphasising that the success of Somerset gave them the confidence to try something different in LA.
Wirth notes that the unexpected availability of Schimmel and the building proved for him to be a ‘perfect storm’ of opportunity. ‘He’s a curator and a writer, which is exactly why I asked him to join. Plus, this is certainly the most beautiful space we’ve ever made. It is not just a gigantic warehouse, it has intimacy and history, but it is also flexible. I’ve been building art spaces for 25 years and we ticked all the boxes with this one. I’m quite proud.’
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Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times
Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times
Everyone — almost everyone — agrees. Artwise, Los Angeles is having a moment. Again. Or still. Numbers say so. Not long ago, galleries here numbered in the few dozens; now there are around 200 — huge, teensy, rich, shoestring — clumped across the city. Several of the largest are imports from the East Coast and abroad. And last week a contingent of out-of-town art power flew in for the debut of one of them, the largest so far, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, in the downtown arts district.
The new space is declaratively, competitively immense. Housed in a revamped industrial complex — a flour mill built in incremental sections in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — it’s a commercial gallery on an institutional scale. At 113,000 square feet, with 24,000 devoted to gallery space, it’s bigger than either the Met Breuer or the New Museum in New York. And despite having Zurich roots, it comes with strong local credentials. It represents several major Southern California artists, and Paul Schimmel, the former chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art here, is a Hauser & Wirth partner and director of the new branch.
And what’s a “moment,” anyway? Supposedly, a point of positive change, expansion, growth. Is that what’s happening with art in Los Angeles? In terms of volume, sure. More galleries, more artists, more money, some sexy exhibitions. (A two-pronged Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective opens at the Getty Art Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this weekend.) But isn’t all of this really business as usual, just bigger, not fundamentally better? For some years now, we’ve seen the same kind of growth in New York, where money drains art of blood, and slow death by gentrification is far advanced.
The news media dotes on the idea of Los Angeles and New York as cultural rivals. But Los Angeles can do much better, look much higher, by taking New York as a cautionary example and paying close activist attention to itself. In the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, adjacent to the downtown arts district, working-class Latinos, along with artists, are being pushed out as galleries move in. A few blocks from Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s new home is one of the largest encampments of homeless people I’ve ever seen in an American city. If even a fraction of the Los Angeles art world would seize the moment to try to come to grips with the realities of the impact, both dire and redeeming, of culture on urban life, this city would be much more than just the new art capital the media buzzes about. It would start to re-envision and redraw the American cultural map in a way that New York hasn’t yet.
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