LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries — insanely expensive but utterly astonishing Breaking every rule of museum design, architect Peter Zumthor has created a $724mn blockbuster for Los Angeles

www.ft.com/content/3ac8... LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries — insanely expensive but utterly astonishing

The widened Serlian window

Grid fascination /

Grid fascination /

Grid fascination /

Some new photos we commissioned

Cimitero Vantiniano
Brescia

Monumental Cemetery, since 1813

Zumthor earns his L.A. stripes And other impressions of the new LACMA, now that the art is installed. Plus: the architect’s sloppy attempt at revisionist history

"The Geffen Galleries are the product of two minds that succeeded in making sense of LA's polyglot urban form and eternally slippery civic identity"

I've read a lot about the new LACMA and this by @hawthorne.bsky.social is by far the best thing written about it:
www.punchlistmag.com/p/zumthor-ea...

Perhaps something similar happened in L.A. Once he saw the tinted concrete, and how color, curtains, and the artworks themselves transformed the overall perception, his mood may have shifted as well.
That said, this would hardly justify a revisionist stance...

Under the strong sun, the tones appeared overly vivid. Then, of course, the building was covered by a concrete slab, and everything changed. Including Zumthor’s mood.

As for Zumthors' revisionism, an episode he recounts in Thinking Architecture comes to mind. He describes visiting the construction site of the Therme Vals and feeling a deep sense of disappointment: the stone towers were being laid, yet their color differed markedly from what he had envisioned.

You are welcome!

Perhaps something similar happened in L.A. Once he saw the tinted concrete, and how color, curtains, and the artworks themselves transformed the overall perception, his mood may have shifted as well.
That said, this would hardly justify a revisionist stance...

Under the strong sun, the tones appeared overly vivid. Then, of course, the building was covered by a concrete slab, and everything changed. Including Zumthor’s mood.

As for Zumthors' revisionism, an episode he recounts in Thinking Architecture comes to mind. He describes visiting the construction site of the Therme Vals and feeling a deep sense of disappointment: the stone towers were being laid, yet their color differed markedly from what he had envisioned.

LACMA becomes an inherently Angeleno piece of infrastructure.

Your article, meanwhile, while rightly pointing out the building’s not insignificant flaws, especially succeeds in showing how deeply it responds to L.A.—how effectively it frames art as part of civic infrastructure, not so different from the freeways or the bed of the Los Angeles River.

I think that while Wainwright is right to insist on the building’s carbon footprint, his article ultimately misses the point of what the project means for L.A.
Kimmelman offers a far more compelling reading—perhaps most notably when he captures the atmospheric power of the building.