The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opened its new David Geffen Galleries on April 19, featuring a groundbreaking installation organized around four bodies of water—the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea—rather than by country of origin or chronological sequence. Designed by architect Peter Zumthor, the 900-foot-long single-level space holds 2,500 to 3,000 objects, with 45 curators collaborating to arrange works from vastly different cultures and centuries together, allowing visitors to meander without prescribed pathways.
This curatorial approach matters because it directly challenges the traditional Western canon that has long shaped museum displays, which often prioritize hierarchies of whose art matters and in what order. By centering the installation on oceans as sites of connection rather than borders, LACMA foregrounds the cross-cultural exchanges that existed long before European contact, offering a more inclusive and globally minded model for museum curation that could influence how institutions worldwide rethink their permanent collections.