The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 1961, splitting from the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. Four years later, it moved to the Wilshire Boulevard complex designed by William Pereira. The museum's wealth and collections grew in the 1980s, and it added several buildings beginning in that decade and continuing in subsequent decades.
LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually. It holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series.
History Early years
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, founded in 1913 in Exposition Park near the University of Southern California.
Edward W. Carter helped orchestrate the fundraising effort for LACMA in response to J. Paul Getty's increasing reluctance to donate any more artworks to Los Angeles County. Getty had donated a few excellent artworks such as the Ardabil Carpet and Rembrandt's Portrait of Martin Looten, but then became aware of their shabby and disorganized presentation in the county's aging multipurpose museum and chose to establish his own art museum next to his house.
The land where the first LACMA buildings were built was owned by Los Angeles County, having received the land as a gift in 1916 from G. Allan Hancock. In 1960, part of the Hancock gift was turned over for the LACMA campus.
Howard F. Ahmanson, Sr., Anna Bing Arnold and Bart Lytton were the first principal patrons of the new county art museum. Ahmanson made the lead donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art.
William Pereira Buildings The museum, built in a style similar to Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Music Center, consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and the Lytton Gallery (renamed the Frances and Armand Hammer Building in 1968). The board selected LA architect William Pereira over the directors' recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings. According to a 1965 Los Angeles Times story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million.Doug Stevens (April 10, 2015), LACMA then, now and in the future Los Angeles Times. Construction began in 1963, and was undertaken by the Del E. Webb Corporation. Construction was completed in early 1965. At the time, the Los Angeles Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles. When the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, but they were filled in and covered over when tar from the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits began seeping in.
1980s Expansion
Money poured into LACMA during the boom years of the 1980s, a reportedly $209 million in private donations during director Earl Powell's tenure.William Wilson (July 3, 1986), New Building Plan For County Museum Of Art Los Angeles Times. To house its growing collections of modern and contemporary art and to provide more space for exhibitions, the museum hired the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates to design its $35.3-million,Christopher Knight (April 29, 1992), The Impact of County Art Museum's Earl Powell Los Angeles Times. Robert O. Anderson Building for 20th-century art, which opened in 1986 (renamed the Art of the Americas Building in 2007). In the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new partially roofed central court, nearly of space bounded by the museum's four buildings.Mary Lou Loper (November 7, 1986), Plenty of News at County Art Museum Los Angeles Times.
The museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, as did the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes.
In 1999, the Hancock Park Improvement Project was complete, and the LACMA-adjacent park (designed by landscape architect Laurie Olin) was inaugurated with a free public celebration. The $10-million renovation replaced dead trees and bare earth with picnic facilities, walkways, viewing sites for the La Brea tar pits and a 150-seat red granite amphitheater designed by artist Jackie Ferrara.Suzanne Muchnic (July 17, 1999), Museums Rediscover Beauty, Right in Their Own Backyard Los Angeles Times.
Also in 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent former May Company department store building, an impressive example of streamline moderne architecture designed by Albert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998.
Renzo Piano Buildings In 2004, LACMA's board of trustees unanimously approved a plan for LACMA's transformation by architect Rem Koolhaas, who had proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new single, tent-topped structure, estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million.Suzanne Muchnic (December 3, 2002), LACMA finds itself in two funding worlds Los Angeles Times. Kohlhaas edged out French architect Jean Nouvel, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities.Suzanne Muchnic (December 6, 2001), L.A. Art Museum Decides to Radically Reshape Itself Los Angeles Times. The list of candidates had previously narrowed to five in May 2001: Koolhaas, Nouvel, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind and Thom Mayne.
However, the project soon stalled after the museum failed to secure funding.Christopher Reynolds (December 26, 2002), The Rise and Stall of LACMA's Planned Reinvention Los Angeles Times. In 2004 LACMA's board of trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by architect Renzo Piano. The planned transformation consisted of three phases.
Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008. The renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings. The BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) constitute the $191 million (originally $150 million) first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign. BCAM is named for Eli and Edy Broad, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign; Eli Broad also served on LACMA's board of directors. BCAM opened on February 16, 2008, adding of exhibition space to the museum. In 2010 the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.
The second phase was intended to turn the May building into new offices and galleries, designed by SPF Architects. As proposed, it would have had flexible gallery space, education space, administrative offices, a new restaurant, a gift shop and a bookstore, as well as study centers for the museum's departments of costume and textiles, photography and prints and drawings, and a roof sculpture garden with two works by James Turrell. However, construction of this phase was halted in November 2010.Rachel Lee Harris (November 25, 2010), Construction Has Halted at Los Angeles Museum New York Times. Phase two and three were never completed.
Zumthor Building Specifics about the third phase, which initially was to involve renovations to older buildings, long remained undisclosed. In November 2009, plans were made public that LACMA's director Michael Govan was working with Swiss architect and Pritzker Prize laureate Peter Zumthor on plans for rebuilding the eastern section of the campus, the Perreira Buildings between the two new Renzo Piano buildings and the tar pits. Architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill collaborated with Zumthor on the building's design.Carolina A. Miranda (September 17, 2020), What will LACMA's new building look like inside? Here are the long-awaited gallery plans Los Angeles Times. With an estimated cost of $650 million,Jori Finkel (June 24, 2014), A Contemporary Design Yields to the Demands of Prehistory New York Times. Zumthor's first proposal called for a horizontal building along Wilshire Boulevard. It would have been wrapped in glass on all sides and its main galleries lifted one floor into the air. The wide roof would have been covered with solar panels.Christopher Hawthorne (May 1, 2013), LACMA draws up ambitious plans for a $650-million new look Los Angeles Times. In a later concession to concerns raised by its neighbor, the Page Museum, LACMA had Zumthor alter the shape of his proposed building to stretch across Wilshire Boulevard and away from the La Brea Tar Pits.Christopher Hawthorne et al. (June 24, 2014), LACMA changes building plan to accommodate La Brea tar pits Los Angeles Times.
In June 2014, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved $5 million for LACMA to continue its proposed plans to tear down the William Perreira structures and its 1980's additions on the east end of its campus for a single museum building.Mike Boehm (June 25, 2014), Supervisor Molina starts new foundation to oversee Grand Park Los Angeles Times. Later that year, they approved in concept a plan that would provide public financing and $125 million toward the $600-million project.Mike Boehm (November 6, 2014), L.A. County supervisors embrace LACMA's financing plan for makeover Los Angeles Times.
On April 8, 2019, the Zumthor-designed building was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The final approved building designed was scaled back from the original to , with gallery space shrinking from to . The new proposal also dropped the black form aesthetics, reducing it to a one-level, aboveground, glass-enclosed, sand-colored concrete building, to save costs. The design still calls for an arm above Wilshire Boulevard.
Other than necessary mechanical systems and bathrooms, the building's entire second story will be devoted to gallery space. Arranged in four broad clusters around the building, each one of the twenty-six core galleries is designed in the form of a square or a rectangle at various scales. Other services, among them the museum's education department, shop and three restaurants, will be at ground level, as will a 300-seat theater in the section of the building on the southern side of Wilshire Boulevard.
The total cost was estimated to be at $650 million after financing by Diana Vesga, with LA county providing $125 million in funds and the rest raised by fundraising. LACMA raised $560 million by 2019 and $700 million by 2022. The total estimate is now at $750 million by 2023.Deborah Vankin (13 October 2022), LACMA announces Zumthor building 50% complete; fundraising stands at $700 million Los Angeles Times.