Ever since Brutalist architecture emerged in the 1950s, the style has been polarizing. Concrete might be gray, but public response rarely enters into gray areas. The buildings\u2019 raw, unfinished concrete forms, typically simple, are loved or hated.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is nearing completion of its own new Brutalist building, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, 82, to house the permanent collection of paintings, sculptures and other works of art. For three days and one evening, beginning July 3, museum members will get a sneak peek at the empty interior spaces of the David Geffen Galleries. The fully finished project, with art installed, doesn\u2019t open until April 2026.<\/p>\n
Concrete is not eco-friendly, either in production or in results like heat magnification, and some celebrated architects with a social justice bent refuse to use it. But its visual power is undeniable \u2014 a strength of the huge Zumthor design. His poured-in-place concrete gobbles 347,500 square feet, including 110,000 square feet in 90 exhibition galleries and corridors lofted 30 feet above ground atop seven massive piers, crossing Wilshire Boulevard.<\/p>\n
Some of my favorite art museum buildings are Brutalist in design, like Marcel Breuer\u2019s fortress-like former Whitney in New York (1966), and Louis Kahn\u2019s refined classicism at the Kimbell in Fort Worth (1972). Brad Cloepfil\u2019s Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, which may be the best new American museum built for art in the last 15 years, uses concrete brilliantly to illuminate Still\u2019s rugged painting motifs. Zumthor\u2019s Geffen doesn\u2019t come close.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written a lot about the long-aborning LACMA project over the last dozen years, focused on the design\u2019s negative impact on the museum program, but that\u2019s now baked in. (The museum pegs the building cost at $720 million, but sources have told me the entire project cost is closer to $835 million.) L.A.\u2019s encyclopedic museum, with a global permanent collection simply installed geographically as straightforward chronology, is dead, and the Geffen Galleries prevent it from ever coming back. Changing theme shows drawn from the collection, curatorially driven, are the new agenda.<\/p>\n
Horrizontal light enters from floor-to-ceiling windows around the perimeter of Peter Zumthor\u2019s LACMA design.
\n(Iwan Baan)
\nHaving theme galleries is like banishing the alphabet that organizes the encyclopedia on your shelf. Chronology and geography are not some imperialistic scheme dominating global art. They just make finding things in a sprawling encyclopedic art collection easy for visitors. Good luck with that now.<\/p>\n
A press event Thursday allowed entry into the gallery spaces, however, so a few things are now obvious. One is that museum galleries are theatrical spaces \u2014 there\u2019s a reason they\u2019re called shows \u2014 and chances are you\u2019ve never seen so much concrete in one place. Sometimes it\u2019s sleek and appealing, sometimes splotchy and cracked. (Surface mottling could soften over time.) But across floors, walls and ceilings of 90 bunker-like rooms and long, meandering corridors, the limitless concrete is monotonous. Grieg\u2019s \u201cIn the Hall of the Mountain King\u201d meets Beckett\u2019s theater of the absurd.<\/p>\n
Another is that views from the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround the building will offer lovely, interesting city vistas \u2014 welcome relief from the monotony. (Curtains will be installed around the perimeter.) A third is that the light, some entering horizontally from the side windows and a couple thin clerestory slots, but much of it from fixed vertical ceiling cans, is going to be a problem.<\/p>\n
Those windows are also one of the biggest design losses in the value-engineering, undertaken to control ballooning costs. (Adjusted for inflation, the original Whitney Museum\u2019s construction cost per square foot was about $633, Kimbell\u2019s was about $469, and LACMA clocks in at $1,400, according to its website. Brutalist, indeed.) The floor plate was originally planned to follow the organic curves of the ceiling plate, with continuous, hugely expensive curved-glass windows linking the two. Now the floor plan is largely rectilinear.<\/p>\n
All surfaces of 90 bunker-like galleries are concrete, with plans for drilling holes and pounding in anchors to hang art.
\n(Christopher Knight \/ Los Angeles Times)
\nAlso daunting: Art will be hung on all that concrete by drilling holes in the walls and pounding in anchors. Moving the art will be cumbersome, requiring concrete patching. The entire process is labor-intensive and expensive.<\/p>\n
Zumthor is the sixth architect to have had a whack at LACMA, following earlier efforts by William L. Pereira, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, Bruce Goff, Rem Koolhaas, and Renzo Piano. Koolhaas never got beyond the proposal stage, although his marvelous idea pioneered the teardown-then-build-a-pavilion-on-stilts plan now coming to very different fruition. Only Goff produced a notable building, with a novel Japanese Pavilion that conceptually turned inside out the spiral Guggenheim Museum by his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright. (Happily, the Japanese Pavilion can now be seen from the street.) The rest were mostly meh, salted with an occasional ugh.<\/p>\n
Zumthor and LACMA Director Michael Govan pronounce the new Geffen building to be \u201ca concrete sculpture,\u201d which is why it\u2019s being shown empty now. The cringey claim is grandiose, and it makes one wonder why being architecture is not enough. If it\u2019s true, it\u2019s the only monumental sculpture I know that has a couple of restaurants, an auditorium and a store. Apparently, an artistic hierarchy exists, with sculpture ranked above architecture.<\/p>\n
The museum just announced the acquisition of Koons\u2019 floral behemoth, \u201cSplit-Rocker,\u201d a rather bland hobby horse topiary that merges a toy dinosaur\u2019s head with the hobby horse\u2019s head. LACMA is next door to the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, and the kiddie dino, a natural history plaything, forces a shotgun wedding with a degraded example of art history\u2019s triumphant motif of a man on a horse. Govan worked on Bilbao before coming to L.A., and the formula there is being repeated here. L.A.\u2019s eye-grabbing building won\u2019t be as great nor its Instagram-ready topiary be nearly as good as the Bilbao ensemble, but when does lightning strike twice?<\/p>\n
As museums, Bilbao and LACMA couldn\u2019t be more different. One has a small, mostly mediocre permanent collection of contemporary art, while the other has a large, often excellent permanent collection of global art from all eras. The so-called Bilbao Effect sent cultural tourism, then already on the rise, skyrocketing. With the David Geffen Galleries, LACMA has put its very expensive eggs in that tourism basket.<\/p>\n
Will the Geffen Galleries be successful? My crystal ball is broken, but I see no reason why it won\u2019t be a popular attraction. And that is clearly the museum\u2019s priority.
\nGuests walks across part of the new building that spans Wilshire Boulevard.
\n(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)
\nIt might take some time to work. The U.S. is the world\u2019s largest travel and tourism sector, but it\u2019s the only one forecast by the World Travel & Tourism Council to see international visitor decline in 2025 \u2014 and probably beyond. Between erratic pandemic recovery and an abusive federal government hostile to foreigners, worries are growing in L.A. about the imminent soccer World Cup and the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Q: What is the name of the new building at LACMA?
\nA: The new building at LACMA is called the David Geffen Galleries.
\nQ: Who designed the David Geffen Galleries?
\nA: The David Geffen Galleries were designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.
\nQ: What is the cost of the David Geffen Galleries project?
\nA: The cost of the David Geffen Galleries project is estimated to be around $835 million.
\nQ: What is the style of the David Geffen Galleries building?
\nA: The David Geffen Galleries building is an example of Brutalist architecture.
\nQ: When will the David Geffen Galleries open to the public?
\nA: The David Geffen Galleries will open to the public in April 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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