Essential Arts: LACMA, LACMA, LACMA. The museum’s redesign is all drama
A rendering of the proposed LACMA redesign by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. (Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner)
As LACMA turns
The big news is that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art received approvals from the County Board of Supervisors to proceed with a shrunken version of its $650-million redesign by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The new building will be 10% smaller than the ones it is replacing.
Times art critic Christopher Knight had suggested that supervisors send the designs back to the drawing board: “The cost per square foot of the plan is about $500 too much. And the plan destroys the vital concept of an encyclopedic art museum.” (I, too, had previously taken issue with the shrinking, shape-shifting design.)
A rendering shows a smaller, cream-colored concept for the LACMA redesign. It has been compared to a coffee table and a border checkpoint. (Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner)
In an op-ed for the paper, LACMA director Michael Govan defended the plan. To critics who say the Zumthor building isn’t big enough to house the permanent collection, he wrote, “Adding space would create significant and expensive environmental impacts, which couldn’t be absorbed within our budget.”
As for aesthetics, in a Q&A with The Times’ Deborah Vankin, Govan said, “Through the process of refinements, we now have a better building. People may not be able to see that in graphic form …. But when you think about the experience of the building … and how it will feel, I’m 100% convinced it’s a better building.”
Curbed writers Alissa Walker and Alexandra Lange are not convinced. Writes Lange: “I do think the old buildings need to go. They are not worth keeping. But this doesn’t feel like the right thing.”
An eagle-eyed William Pound stone located an interview, in French, with former LACMA European paintings curator J. Patrice Marandel, who expresses his doubts on the plan.