Ever since the Los Angeles County Museum of Art engaged the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor 16 years ago, its $720 million new building has had a long journey from controversy to construction to curatorial challenge.
On Thursday evening, the curvilinear behemoth finally became a place where people could come inside.
Although the art will not be installed until next year, the museum opened its doors for its first public glimpse of the new David Geffen Galleries, featuring a commissioned performance by the saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington — with 120 musicians disbursed throughout the building.
Visitors walking past the soaring windows, as the sounds of instruments and voices filled the undulating concrete passageway, were visibly excited — and even moved — by what many described as a welcome injection of positive energy to a city battered by protests and recovering from fires.
“It’s really a special thing for us to be here to experience it almost raw,” said Frank Svengsouk, an art director and senior manager for the Disney Entertainment Division, who had come from Carlsbad, about two hours south, after having been displaced by the fires in Altadena. “It makes us think about how much we love the city and how much the city means to us, how much the city brings back to us.
“Think about Paris with I.M. Pei — it’s changing the landscape of this place,” he added, referring to the impact of the skylit Louvre Pyramid as he gazed at the vista with his wife. “Over time, it’s going to be something important for us in L.A.”
People who had bought some 2,000 tickets for Thursday evening — which was sold out — said they came out of curiosity, out of loyalty and out of a desire to experience firsthand a project they had heard about and witnessed from afar.
“We’ve driven up and down Wilshire for the last couple of years watching this thing take shape,” said Rick Wolfen, who works in commercial real estate and had come with his wife, Karen, an attorney. “So it’s cool to be on the inside looking out. I’m trying to think about the exhibitions that could fill these walls.”
Architecture critics will inevitably weigh in, as will art critics, once some 3,000 works from the museum’s encyclopedic collection — totaling more than 150,000 objects — are installed. Does the rough concrete make it seem cold? Is the design a meandering path that fosters artistic discovery, or a maze that makes it hard to find the bathroom? Can paintings work without white walls as backdrops, and will the strong architecture upstage quieter works of art? Do the outdoor plazas feel like shaded respites or the gloomy underside of a highway overpass?
The project has been dogged by controversy, with some viewing it as overly costly, others frustrated by its construction delays — partly due to the pandemic — and the Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight asserting that the museum has reduced its overall gallery area. LACMA’s director, Michael Govan, has answered that the space for art is, in fact, comparable to the 110,000 square feet of the four aging buildings that were replaced for the new addition.
But at Thursday’s kickoff of public previews, which continue through July 7, the fog of debate fell away, and people seemed swept up in a spirit of celebration.
“It’s an amazing achievement,” said the art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, a former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “I love the indoor-outdoor feel. The traditional museum is all closed off from the outside. It’s much fresher to bring light in, to see the city. I think the art is going to be stronger for it.”
The museum has yet to specify which art will be placed where, but as Govan walked a reporter through the space before the public opening, he referred to some of the pieces he looked forward to seeing there, including works by the visual artists Lauren Halsey and Cathy Opie of Los Angeles, and Pedro Reyes, of Mexico City.
Govan said the museum had decided to open the building first to give the architecture its own moment in the sun, to give members a taste of what they’ve been waiting for and to “bless” its completion.
“The building has been an issue. I wanted to take that out of play, so when it opens everyone can focus on the art,” Govan said. “Get it out of your system — you love it, you hate it.”
Some of those in Thursday’s crowd said they were reserving judgment until the art was installed and that the rough-hewed concrete interior was likely to be something of a provocation. “Having concrete as the backdrop for the art is a great challenge curatorially,” said Emilia Yin, the founder of the Make Room gallery in Los Angeles. “But when it’s done right, it can be super exciting.”
An early critique by Christopher Hawthorne in the Punch List Architecture Newsletter last week called out cracks in the museum’s floors — flecked with tiny shells — and the fixed quality of the cul-de-sac-like gallery spaces. But Govan said these elements were deliberate, that they wanted the building to feel as if it had always been there and that the galleries reflect elements of experience, rather than one narrative. “It’s not linear,” he said.
Many people moving through the building on Thursday evening seemed to agree that the addition was a significant new contribution to the city’s public architecture, likening it to Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall or Diller, Scofidio and Renfro’s Broad museum — which itself is now expanding.
They marveled at the sweep of the space and at the expansive views facing multiple directions — the Hollywood Hills, Wilshire Boulevard, Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” public art and the percolating tar pits — as if these vistas were artworks themselves.
“I really love the windows that are showing Los Angeles,” said Alex Hajdu, a production designer. “It’s celebrating the landscape outside. It brings the city inside the museum.”
The evening began with a live DJ set in LACMA’s courtyard and featured local food trucks. A cocktail reception for invited guests in what will eventually be one of the museum’s three restaurants included the artists Lauren Halsey and Tacita Dean, as well as collectors like Joy Simmons and Janine and Lyndon J. Barrois Sr.
Museum directors flew in for the occasion, including Franklin Sirmans of the Pérez Art Museum Miami and — from New York — Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art, Anne Pasternak of the Brooklyn Museum and Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem, who serves on LACMA’s board.
Local museum executives included Joanne Heyler, of the Broad, and Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the former director of the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, nearing completion in Exposition Park.
But the evening was not about boldfaced names. It was for visitors like Ryan and Nancy Aubry, who brought their two young children — their son Beau said he liked that “the floor is shiny” — and Jon Hall, who brought his service dog, Miss Lillian.
“She’s very good in crowds like this,” Hall said proudly. “We take her everywhere.”
David Allen, an architectural engineer who is spearheading a jazz history museum in Oakland, said the Zumthor building brought to mind “harmony and melody.”
Climbing the museum’s seemingly floating outdoor staircases, the city’s residents seemed grateful for a glimpse of the building their taxpayer dollars had helped pay for. “This is the future,” said Francisco George, who sells vintage clothes and has worked as a docent at LACMA. “I think that this is going to set the standard for museums to follow.”
Petra Larsen, a costume designer, said she hoped that the project would serve as a community hub, adding that it symbolized the city’s resilience, optimism and innovation. “L.A. is a city that reinvents itself,” Larsen said. “It always has, and I think it always will. This building represents that.”
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for 30 years, covers arts and culture.
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