The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is debuting a radical curatorial overhaul within its new David Geffen Galleries, moving away from traditional 19th-century departmental silos. Led by Director Michael Govan and a team of 45 curators, the museum is implementing a cross-disciplinary approach that organizes the collection around "oceanic nodes"—the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific. This strategy allows for the juxtaposition of disparate media and cultures, such as contemporary photography alongside ancient textiles, to highlight the historical circulation of ideas and people across bodies of water.
This shift represents a significant departure from the Beaux-Arts model of art history, aiming to dismantle rigid hierarchies and fixed notions of geography. By integrating diverse media and time periods into shared spaces, LACMA seeks to reflect a more interconnected global history. The inclusion of site-specific commissions, like Todd Gray’s monumental assemblage, serves to anchor these new narratives, signaling a major institutional bet on thematic, non-linear storytelling as the future of the encyclopedic museum.