The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its highly anticipated David Geffen Galleries will officially open on April 19, 2026. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the 110,000-square-foot horizontal structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and represents the culmination of a multi-decade campus expansion. The inaugural installation will feature approximately 3,000 objects curated by a team of 45, showcasing a non-traditional, integrated approach to the museum's permanent collection.
This opening marks a definitive moment for Los Angeles's cultural landscape, concluding a controversial and lengthy construction period. By eschewing traditional chronological and regional silos in favor of thematic displays that pair European antiquities with global contemporary commissions, LACMA is signaling a major shift in encyclopedic museum curation. The project also significantly increases public accessibility by creating 3.5 acres of new parkland and open-air plazas for monumental sculpture.