The Latest On The Los Angeles County Museum Of Art

Hello Everyone:

It is lovely Tuesday afternoon and time for Blogger.  Yours Truly is still under the  weather but well enough to update you on the Los Angeles County Museum redesign.

Rendering of LACMA redesign
archdaily.com

The saga of redesigning the Los Angeles County Museum of Art continues.  Since 2014, the proposes Peter Zumthor-designed new and improved LACMA has gone through several iterations: From the much derided "Black Blob" to something that now resembles an actual building.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that it offers 10,000 less square footage than the current museum.  Just what a museum that fancies itself the largest encyclopedic museum west of the Mississippi.  Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight was aghast,

I couldn't name another art museum anywhere that has ever raised hundreds of millions to spend on reducing its collection space (archinect.com; date accessed Apr. 2, 2019).

Peter Zumthor
alessi.com

 Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has been steadily working on iterations of LACMA quite some time.  Each revision has been met with stern criticism and occasional mockery in the social media.  Mr. Zumthor has, for better or worse, answered his critics with each revision.  It is unlikely that the latest version will be shown any love either.  Shane Reiner-Roth observes, "It seems unlikely that the current design would get approved with significantly less square footage than what it plans to replace, just as it is unlikely we will see the end of the design process any time soon" (Ibid)  The protracted process seems to be a good fit for the architect described by Mr. Knight as ...a slow, deliberate designer whose aim to craft evocative, atmospheric space (Ibid).  Each iteration also comes with a staggering additional cost.  Mr. Knight reports.

The $600-million price tag presented to county officials in 2014 for their initial project greenlight soon bumped up to $650 million...With a reduced building plan now, LACMA is offering less for more money.  Is an Incredible Shrinking Museum really worthy of taxpayer support? (Ibid)

Current iteration of LACMA
latimes.com

Last Friday, the county of Los Angeles made public the environment impact report (ceo.lacounty.gov; date accessed Apr. 2, 2019), complete with three new renderings which presented a structure that shrunk in scale and form.  In place of a cool science fiction looking building, the rendering presented a pleasant cream-colored structure that, on the north side facing Wilshire Boulevard, resembles an airport terminal.  The building still ; straddles Wilshire, which drew snarky comments across the Twitter verse.  Carolina Miranda adds, "Of course, it's hard to know what to make of the renderings.  They were released without explanation and feature only fragments of the building--which makes analyzing the design about as easy as examining an elephant with a microscope (LACMA director Michael Govan was not available for comment) (latimes.com; Mar. 29, 2019; date accessed Apr. 2, 2019).

Remember the Black Blob?
dezeen.com

Ecological concerns (Ibid; Sept. 23, 2013) surrounding the tar pits forced Mr. Zumthor to abandon the original "Black Blob"and retreat from the concept of cantilevering a wing of over the main tar pool.  In place of the original arty, black, organically shaped building, Mr. Zumthor came back with something that dog straddled Wilshire Boulevard.  The ridicule remained unabated.  Now, it has further evolved into what Ms. Miranda describes as "...an antler belonging to Bullwinkle J. Moose the cartoon ungulate from the 'The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'" (Ibid; Mar. 29, 2019). Ms. Miranda's moose antler analogy comes from the pronged-shaped structure that begins on the main campus and stretches southward, across the Boulevard, landing on a parking lot on Spaulding Avenue.  She observes, "If once the building had taken its elegant form from the primordial ooze that bubbles up from the tar pits, it has since seemed to bend over backwards to occupy LACMA's available real estate' (Ibid).  Then there is the question of its reduced size.

The EIR is a necessary step (Ibid; Mar. 28, 2019) for the proposal to receive county funding and building permits , presents a building shrank considerably since the last iteration--over 10 percent, or about 40,000 square feet (Ibid; Mar. 29, 2019).  The report states that original proposed square footage was 387,500 square feet; it is now 347,500.  Projected gallery space slimmed down as well--from 121, 000 square feet to 110,000 feet (Ibid).

The museum's planned theater has also lost weight, accommodate only 300 seats, half of the number of seats currently available in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theater, used for film screenings and high-profile lectures.  What the space will be used for remains unknown; no plans of the building's interior have been released.

Carolina Miranda writes, "But the shrinking nature of LACMA's Zumthor buildings raises questions about what exactly the new space will be able to accommodate" (Ibid).  When the original design was presented in 2013 (Ibid; June 2, 2013), it was reported that the new building would more exhibition space than original buildings--170,000 to 200,000 square feet of exhibition space--an additional 45,000 square feet.  Sounds great, right?  More space to present works from the permanent collection and traveling exhibitions.

However, by the time Peter Zumthor refined his design, the gallery space lost 121,000 square feet or approximately 1,000 square feet more than the footage contained with the four buildings targeted for demolition.  Now, that number has shrunk further to 110,000 square feet begging the question "Why demolish the original buildings in the first place?"  Ms. Miranda raises question about "how exactly the new space will accommodate the museum's expansive permanent collection" (Ibid)  and Christopher Knight wondered about how the collection will be thematically arranged (Ibid; Mar. 12, 2019).

Whether the dwindling size is due to neighborhood environmental concerns or fundraising issues (the museum already missed a year end fundraising goal [Ibid; Dec. 18, 2018]) is vague.  What is apparent is the design machinations are the result of Museum director Michael Govan's desire to create a museum that occupies one floor.  In a talk he hosted in 2013 with Mr. Zumthor, Mr. Govan told the audience,

I'm a big believer in horizontal museum,...All the great museums for me are horizontal (soundcloud.com; June 4, 2013; date accessed Apr. 2, 2019).

Carolina Miranda explains that "The rationale is that single-story museums are more accessible and eliminate hierarchy" (latimes.com; Mar. 29, 2019; date accessed Apr. 2, 2019).  That is all well and fine but Los Angeles is becoming increasingly dense--building up, not out--like the way it was in the fifties.

Further, what is missing from the big picture (slight pun), is a concept of how the interior space will be articulated.  For a museum, this is the most important feature because this is where the work will be housed.  With construction on track to begin next year and the Museum already packing up work for storage, it is quite worrisome that the interior space has not been fleshed out yet.

Surely one of Los Angeles' most important museums deserves a building that will gracefully carry out its functions and serve the city and county of Los Angeles with real distinction.  With current cost at $650 million with an upward projection of $125 million, the patron and taxpayers deserve a better idea of what they are getting for their money.