The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will host a free campus-wide Block Party on Saturday as part of its grand opening celebration for the David Geffen Galleries. The event features free admission, art activities, live music, food, and the Los Angeles debut of "The Art Parade," a public procession expected to draw over 1,000 artists to Wilshire Boulevard. The festivities run through Monday and include a soccer-juggling workshop, a World Cup watch party, a performance by L.A. Dance Project, a public discussion between LACMA CEO Michael Govan and Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma Golden, a summer solstice dance, and a sound bath experience.
The Block Party matters because it marks the public celebration of LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, which opened in May as the centerpiece of the museum's campus transformation. The event is intended to welcome the broader Los Angeles community to the new 110,000-square-foot gallery space, which houses works from LACMA's collection of over 155,000 objects. This grand opening weekend underscores LACMA's role as a major cultural institution in Los Angeles and its efforts to engage the public through free, inclusive programming.