LACMA's David Geffen Galleries / In-Depth Review & Interviews
- LA Art Documents
- May 14
- 3 min read
LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries
In-Depth Review & Interviews
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
April - May, 2026
Welcome to LA Art Documents special in-depth review for the opening of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries, featuring everything you need to know to appreciate LA’s monumental new building. In addition to our commentary we’ll weave in highlights from the opening remarks during the April 15 press preview followed by interviews with Naima Keith,Vice President, Education and Public Programs and Sharon Takeda, Senior Curator and Department Head of Costume and Textiles.
The inaugural installation for The David Geffen Galleries contains approximately 1700 works on display that will be in continuous rotation over time to reveal the over 155,000 thousand items in LACMA’s greater collection, allowing the public to see the objects on view in ways never before possible. Rather than adhering to a typical eurocentric museum hierarchy, the new David Geffen Galleries building provides a single floor to view the entire permanent collection combined in one place, redefining the experience by encouraging visitors to WANDER, as one would stroll a garden or hike a forest, through its 110,000 square feet of gallery space elevated 30 feet above ground level with sweeping views of the city alongside 6,000 years of culture and art from around the world in one awe inspiring setting.
For the current layout the museum curators decided to place works based on their creative connection and location to bodies of water: the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea. The result constructs unique conversations across time and place. It’s an unusual structure and premise befitting a city known for innovation and ingenuity.
The new building was designed by Pritzker-Prize award-winning architect Peter Zumthor, putting an undeniably noteworthy imprint on the already iconic Miracle Mile neighborhood, which is framed by the Brea Tar Pits to the east, and the Peterson Automotive Museum and Academy Museum to the West alongside LACMA’s Renzo Piano designed Broad Contemporary Art Museum and Resnick Pavilion, Chris Burden’s much beloved installation Urban Light, Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass, and the Pavilion for Japanese Art (which is for the first time truly visible and given proper framing by the removal of the old museum buildings and Zumthor’s new construction). The David Geffen Galleries building provides ample plaza space for outdoor events and shade for visitors during hot summer months, as part of its aim to be the living room for Los Angeles.
The construction of the new galleries has been twenty years in development and planning with over $875 million raised from both public and private sectors to aid the overall expansion. While preservationists lament the destruction of the original windowless mid-century buildings by William Pereira and some critics feel it features too much concrete or overshadows the artwork with sunlight and city views, most recognize the new building as a significant architectural treasure and a fitting tribute to a city defined by its concrete freeway structures, featuring soft inspired curves in contrast to the bleak starkness of some brutalist constructions. And for the first time, the new building extends LACMA over Wilshire Blvd, symbolically bridging the communities north and south of a perceived cultural divide the street has historically been.
The new campus provides ample space for stunning outdoor installations like Split Rocker, a fragrant and colorful 35 foot high sculpture by Jeff Koons featuring 45,000 flowering plants, a commissioned sculpture by Pedro Reyes, and Marina Castillo Deball’s Feathered Changes throughout the plaza floor based on designs from ancient Mexican murals. More additions are planned to join old favorites like Alexander Calder’s Three Quintains (Hello Girls) sculptural mobiles originally designed for LACMA’s 1964 opening which are propelled by water jets in a newly imagined pool by Zumthor, a redesigned Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden featuring works by Augustuh ROdahn, and Tony Smith’s massive minimalist geometric structure called Smoke which was formerly housed inside.
The new David Geffen Galleries ensures that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has yet another world class museum for one of the world’s greatest art collections and cultural centers.
