The David Geffen Galleries, the new $724-million building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), opened to members, drawing thousands of visitors on its first day. The massive concrete structure, which has been a subject of public debate for its cost and design, finally allowed Angelenos and dedicated travelers to experience its spaces and inaugural installations firsthand.
The artist duo DRIFT launched their 'Franchise Freedom' performance, a swarm of over 1,000 illuminated drones, above the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The event celebrated the public opening of the museum's new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries, creating a dialogue between the dynamic, airborne artwork and the building's horizontal, sand-toned concrete architecture.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is set to inaugurate its long-awaited David Geffen Galleries with a gala and ribbon-cutting ceremony. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the 900-foot-long horizontal structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and features a single-level exhibition space elevated 30 feet above the ground. The inaugural installation, curated by a team of 45, moves away from traditional chronological and geographical silos in favor of thematic, interconnected narratives that reflect the diversity of modern Los Angeles.
Artist Su Xiaobai will present a major solo exhibition titled "Alchemical Universe" at the Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel as an official Collateral Event of the 61st Venice Biennale. Curated by Stephen Little of LACMA, the show features 35 works spanning two decades, highlighting Su’s transition from oil painting to the mastery of natural lacquer. The exhibition includes his latest series, "Niao Niao," which utilizes mineral and metallic powders to create monochromatic, ethereal surfaces that emphasize material spontaneity over rigid artistic control.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is preparing to open the David Geffen Galleries this spring, marking the culmination of a nearly two-decade campus overhaul led by director Michael Govan. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million concrete structure spans 900 feet and is elevated 30 feet above ground to create a public plaza. The new building features 110,000 square feet of gallery space on a single horizontal level, utilizing unconventional materials like gray concrete and floor-to-ceiling windows to integrate natural light.
The Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) has revealed renderings for its new 60,000-square-foot building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré. Set to open in 2029 at Symphony Park in downtown Las Vegas, the four-floor museum features a stone mosaic façade sourced from the Red Rock Mountains, a shaded front porch, a canyon-like grand staircase, and galleries inspired by Modernist architect Paul R. Williams. Baobab trees, symbolizing community, inform the design. The $200 million capital campaign, supported by the late Elaine Wynn and other trustees, has passed the halfway mark. The museum is a partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) and will showcase works from its collection, with Lacma director Michael Govan serving as a founding trustee. A satellite exhibition, Family Album, is currently on view, and a 15,000-square-foot gallery and media lab will open next year.
Christopher Knight, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for the Los Angeles Times, is retiring after more than 40 years in the field, with his final day set for November 28. Knight spent 36 of those years at the Los Angeles Times, becoming one of the last full-time art critics at a major U.S. daily newspaper. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2020 for his incisive coverage of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's proposed overhaul, and received a $50,000 Lifetime Achievement Award for Art Journalism from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation the same year. Knight also authored two books and appeared on programs like 60 Minutes and PBS NewsHour.
Former Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith, who led the auction house from 2015 to 2019, has emerged as a prominent supporter of blockchain art. The article traces his connection to artist Robert Alice, who first encountered Smith while working as a porter at Sotheby's. Alice, a pioneer in NFT art, sold the first NFT through a major auction house at Christie's in 2020. Now, his blockchain-based painting BLOCK 1 (24.9472° N, 118.5979° E) from the Portraits of a Mind series is being offered at Sotheby's with an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. Smith, who owns another work from the series, is not the consignor or guarantor but expresses hope the sale will promote Alice's work, Bitcoin, and Sotheby's, particularly among younger generations.
Staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) announced their intent to unionize as part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The new union, Lacma United, will represent over 300 museum employees across curatorial, visitor services, education, and publications departments. Workers cite fairer compensation, expanded benefits, and increased transparency as key motivations, and have requested voluntary recognition by November 5. The effort joins AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36, which has supported union campaigns at other Los Angeles institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its long-awaited David Geffen Galleries expansion will open in April 2026, over two decades after the project was first announced in 2001. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million serpentine structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and replaces several older buildings, increasing gallery space from 130,000 to 220,000 square feet. The project faced numerous setbacks, including public criticism of the design, concerns over the nearby La Brea Tar Pits, the discovery of sabre-toothed tiger skulls during construction, pandemic delays, the departure of longtime donor The Ahmanson Foundation, and Zumthor's distancing from the project in 2023 due to cost compromises. A series of soft openings are planned for summer 2025 before the full public debut.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has released new photographs of its David Geffen Galleries, designed by architect Peter Zumthor with SOM as collaborating architect. The building, a long horizontal glass and concrete structure curving along Hancock Park and Wilshire Boulevard, opened temporarily for a three-day preview last week and is scheduled to open to the public in April 2026. The 347,500-square-foot wing includes 110,000 square feet of gallery space, along with street-level pavilions housing a theater, store, bar, and education center. To mark the preview, LACMA hosted three "sonic previews" featuring composer Kamasi Washington leading over 100 musicians in a performance of his work Harmony of Difference. Architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne described the wing as "bold and compromised in nearly equal measure," while Zumthor noted that curators initially critical of the spatial layout have begun to appreciate the space and the beauty of the handmade concrete structure.
Photographer Iwan Baan has released images of the completed David Geffen Galleries, the long-awaited Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) expansion designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The undulating, glass-and-concrete building stretches along Wilshire Boulevard, elevated 30 feet above street level, and is set to open fully in April 2026. Major construction finished at the end of 2024, with some lower-level spaces already open. The single-level design eliminates traditional hierarchies, placing all artworks on the same plane, and the building aims for LEED Gold certification with low-carbon concrete and natural ventilation.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new building, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, marking a major milestone in the museum's long-awaited expansion and renovation. The new structure replaces four outdated buildings and aims to modernize the campus while improving visitor experience and exhibition space.
Artist Shaniqwa Jarvis is set to debut her first UK solo exhibition, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," at London’s Public Gallery on April 30, 2026. The show features twelve new works that blend photography with silk, mirrored surfaces, aluminum, and collage to explore themes of grief, memory, and renewal. Central to the exhibition are immersive silk installations that create live double exposures and a new film work that weaves together personal archival footage with intimate conversations on motherhood, labor, and identity.
Peter Zumthor, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, discusses the making of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA) new David Geffen Galleries in an interview. He explains his rejection of overly slick, corporate architecture in favor of a raw, handmade concrete structure, describing the building as a "concrete sculpture." Zumthor details his collaboration with LACMA director Michael Govan, who encouraged him to incorporate "American roughness" into the design, a lesson Zumthor says he has brought back to his European practice.
Los Angeles is preparing a comprehensive Cultural Olympiad for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, led by LA28 senior vice president Dwayne Jones and executive director Nora Halpern. The program will feature free sports movie screenings, live music, food experiences, art installations, community events, and special exhibitions at local museums. Sixteen local artists have been commissioned to create posters honoring the games, with a dedicated gallery exhibition planned for July 2027. A new digital calendar and mapping tool will help residents and visitors navigate the cultural offerings, and institutions like LACMA, the LA Philharmonic, and the Museum of Latin American Art have already expressed support.
Artist Todd Gray’s solo exhibition, "Portals," at Perrotin Los Angeles features a series of complex photographic assemblages that challenge the historical relationship between Blackness and European colonialism. By stacking framed images of West African landscapes, slave forts, and Renaissance interiors, Gray creates textured collages that collapse geographic and temporal boundaries. Notable works like "Paradox of Liberty" confront the hypocrisy of Enlightenment figures like Thomas Jefferson by physically obscuring his image with the architecture of the slave trade.
Rhae Lynn Barnes, a scholar at Princeton, has published a new book titled "Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment," which examines the pervasive history of amateur minstrelsy in American life from the 19th through 20th centuries. Drawing on two decades of archival research, Barnes reveals how blackface performances were not confined to professional theaters but were common in living rooms, schools, USO shows, fraternal lodges, and even Japanese internment camps, involving figures like Shirley Temple, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby.
A new Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, titled "In the Shadow of the Pandemic Cliff," was presented at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The report, prepared by Westwood Economics and Planning Associates, analyzes financial data from 2011 to 2023 for nonprofit cultural organizations in Los Angeles County, including museums, art schools, and performing-arts groups. It reveals that while revenues for these nonprofits surged by 47% during the early pandemic years due to special relief funding, that support has since faded. By 2023, 60% of surveyed organizations reported less public funding and 51% saw declines in private donations, a trend the report calls the "Covid cliff."
The Vincent Price Art Museum is hosting 'Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture,' an exhibition drawn from LACMA's collection that explores self-portraiture through over 50 contemporary American artists working in photography, prints, drawings, video, and installation. The show includes a video series featuring artists like Jessica Wimbley, who discusses her work 'Cabinet Portrait: Wife Portrait' (2022), a large-scale reimagining of a 19th-century cabinet card bridal portrait that centers Blackness in American material culture by depicting herself in a non-traditional black wedding dress. The exhibition runs through August 30, 2025, with a related collage workshop led by Kalli Arte Collective on August 23.
The City of Las Vegas is partnering with the future Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) to present a contemporary art exhibition titled "Family Album" at the newly unveiled Las Vegas Civic Center Art Gallery. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the show features family photographs from over 20 intergenerational artists, including Dannielle Bowman and Janna Ireland, and runs from September 4, 2025 through January 9, 2026. This marks the first public-facing program for LVMA, which has been in development since 2023 and is expected to break ground on a $150 million facility in Symphony Park as early as 2026, with a projected 2028 opening.
The article describes the author's evolving impression of the newly opened David Geffen wing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), designed by architect Peter Zumthor. Initially visiting at 11am, the author found the $724 million, 110,000 sq ft building to be a "dismal, dated, inelegant brute," with thick bronze windows, dark concrete slabs, and bunker-like galleries. However, returning at 4pm, the author experienced a transformation: golden afternoon light warmed the concrete, illuminated the interiors, and revealed the building as a "brilliant innovation and true gift to the city." The article details the building's 20-year design evolution, challenges including fossil discoveries on site, and Zumthor's public frustrations with the compromised details.
The article reports on the exhibition "Act on It! Artists, Community, and the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles," currently on view at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History through August 31, 2025, before traveling to the Vincent Price Art Museum and CSU Dominguez Hills in 2026. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the show revisits the legacy of the Brockman Gallery, founded in 1967 by brothers Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis in Leimert Park. As one of the first Black-owned commercial galleries on the West Coast, it provided a vital platform for Black artists during the Black Arts Movement, showcasing early works by figures such as Betye Saar, David Hammons, John Outterbridge, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Doyle Lane. The gallery also expanded into a nonprofit cultural hub through Brockman Gallery Productions, offering residencies, film festivals, and jazz concerts.