we all know the expansion is well under way. But I can't see that anyone has posted this signature sculpture by Jeff Koons which would stand at the new museum entrance.

While technically not a building, this proposed sculpture would be just over 16 stories tall!

Crap. I can't figure out how to post the rendering. Anyone have a sec to post "how to post a pic" for tech UNsavvy me?

OR just go here. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/arts/design/05koon.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

-doug

Here you go....

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e124/fnee1901/Koons450.jpg

Crap. I can't figure out how to post the rendering. Anyone have a sec to post "how to post a pic" for tech UNsavvy me?
-doug

just get the URL of the image [from the website, or your own]

and add [ img ] at the front and [ / img ] at the back and presto! images.

just do it with out the spaces.

for instance...
http://www.google.com/images/logo_sm.gif
is [ img ] http://www.google.com/images/logo_sm.gif [ / img ]
or http://www.google.com/images/logo_sm.gif

I THINK THIS BELONGS UP ON THIS THREAD!?
LOS ANGELES METRO: Development outside Downtown Los Angeles

Well, this thread will be ok as long as we include pics of the current LACMA, the renderings and news articles. Surfnspy, please alter the first post to include these aspects.

Where's "Surfnspy" at so he can add the images and we can get this thread going???

that is one WEIRD sculpture/stature........hmm....i dont know what to think....how much money are they spending on it?!?:dunno:

I'm sure is some kind of donation for the Museum. Therefore we should showcase it for everyone to check it out. Also the fact that is going to be sixteen stories.... Wow!

March 6, 2007

BP gives $25 million to LACMA
The BP donation will go toward a solar entrance that the British oil firm hopes will invoke energy innovation.

By Mike Boehm, Times Staff Writer

A $25-million donation from BP has capped phase one of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's three-part expansion and renovation campaign. Solar panels atop a new entry pavilion named for the British oil company will signal BP's wish to be seen as an environmental innovator. LACMA plans to announce today that the glass-encased structure will be called the BP Grand Entrance. It's under construction along with the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum, with both additions to the museum's Wilshire Boulevard campus projected to open next February. The entrance is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings.

Bob Malone, chairman and president of Houston-based BP America, said the gift betokens a commitment to the arts and a steady philanthropic role in Los Angeles. Before it was merged into BP in 2000, L.A.-based Arco was hailed locally for its philanthropy, including a $10-million donation in 1997 for the Walt Disney Concert Hall. To allay concerns over the merger, BP promised to donate at least $100 million to California charities within 10 years. Malone said that BP's gift to LACMA is free-standing and won't be counted toward the $100 million. He said the same goes for a recently announced $500-million, 10-year research grant to UC Berkeley and other institutions to develop alternative, cleaner-burning fuels.

Since 2002, BP has agreed to more than $125 million in legal settlements with state and regional agencies over pollution problems.

BP reported profits of $22 billion in 2006 and a record $22.3 billion in 2005. The $25 million for LACMA matches Walt Disney Co.'s 1997 gift for Disney Hall as the biggest corporate donation to the arts in Los Angeles' recent memory. It comes as the arts recede as a cause for big corporations. A survey by the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research organization, showed a 6.1% drop in average arts giving from 2002 to 2005, according to figures from the Americans for the Arts advocacy group.

Malone said he became a LACMA fan while president of BP's L.A.-based Western regional office from 2000 to 2002, before his four-year transfer to London. "There's a huge need not to lose the arts" as a focus for corporate philanthropy, said Malone, who announced a three-year, $3.4-million BP grant to the Chicago Symphony in November.

He said that Eli Broad, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign with his wife, Edythe, was a rainmaker for the donation. More than a year ago, BP first gave $1 million to LACMA's endowment campaign. Malone said he subsequently called Broad after being put in charge of U.S. operations, asking him to recommend causes in L.A. "where we could make a difference."

In courting the gift from BP's top executives in London, LACMA Director Michael Govan said he emphasized "access and energy" as hallmarks of the new museum entrance that would be a symbolic fit for a gasoline seller (BP's brands in California are Arco and Thrifty) interested in making art more available to the public. It was BP's idea to make the energy connection literal. The solar panels will help feed the museum's power needs.

Last year, LACMA announced it was going to name the new entrance the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion, in honor of their $25-million gift early in the campaign. Lynda Resnick, a vice chair on LACMA's board said they were happy to step aside to clear the pipeline for BP's millions; they'll instead apply their donation — and more — to an as-yet-unannounced, "really exciting" new feature in the second phase.

Without giving details, Govan, hired just over a year ago, said he had "expanded the ambition" of LACMA's pay-as-you-go overhaul and expansion. The first-phase goal was $150 million when announced two years ago; BP's gift closes out first-phase fundraising at $191 million. Govan said that "although we exceeded our goal," factors such as financing and rising construction costs do not mean that LACMA has a $41-million windfall.

For BP, environmentally tinged largess comes after several years of environmental mishaps in California. In 2002, BP paid the state $45.8 million to settle a suit over pollution from leaking gasoline storage tanks. Later, air quality regulators sued over leakage of smog-forming chemicals at BP's Carson refinery. BP settled for $81 million.

"Yes, we've had some incidents ... we deeply regret, and we're in action to get those right," Malone said. Topping a structure like the LACMA entrance with solar panels sends a message that BP and California are serious about setting a green example, he said.

And putting an oil company's name on LACMA's doorway brings an unusually high potential for controversy, Govan acknowledged. "What was convincing to me was their commitment to sustainable energy.... We won't make the transition without the help and cooperation of these major corporations."

... Very interesting*

March 9, 2007

LACMA director changes plan for new entrance
Citing the city's fine weather, director Michael Govan opts for an open-air design instead of a 'glass box.'


By Mike Boehm, Times Staff Writer

Visitors to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will get an alfresco welcome when its new entrance pavilion opens next winter, instead of the glassed-in greeting initially envisioned two years ago by architect Renzo Piano.

The switch comes at the behest of museum director Michael Govan who, after being hired away from New York's Dia Art Foundation a year ago, decided that a glass pavilion would be a waste of good Southern California weather. The BP Grand Entrance, named Tuesday in honor of a $25-million gift from the oil company, will have a roof for rare rainy days and solar panels to exploit the many sunny ones. Otherwise, it will be an open-air structure, a sort of mega-gazebo on the museum's doorstep, supported by steel beams painted a bright red-orange.

"I come from New York, and it would kill me to go into a glass box" instead of enjoying the weather while milling outside the museum, Govan quipped in an interview after announcing the BP donation from a podium set up in front of the entrance's steel skeleton.

Along with the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, under construction just west of the new entrance and also expected to open next February, the BP Grand Entrance is a signature feature of Phase One of the museum's incremental renovation and expansion. Two additional phases are projected, but only after enough money is raised for each part; fundraising is now complete for the first phase at $191 million, which will cover construction and a boost to LACMA's endowment.

Other new features of the first phase are a park behind the Broad building, dotted with large sculptures, and an underground parking garage. Construction expenses, including architects' fees and other "soft costs," are projected at $156 million, LACMA officials said.

Omitting glass walls and doors saved $2.5 million, but Govan said the change to the entrance is "not about savings, it's about efficiency and meaning." The signal he hopes visitors will get by being outside on arrival is that the museum is an outdoor experience as well as an indoor pursuit, "a kind of town square for Los Angeles" — with the park and its sculptures to be enjoyed along with the works inside the seven exhibition buildings strung along Wilshire Boulevard.

Make that eight, if Govan has his way with another new element: an additional museum building that would be planted over the parking garage during the LACMA makeover's second phase. He wants more space to show off the collection, which ranges from ancient to contemporary art, and to give the museum more flexibility for hosting traveling exhibitions.

Govan said that architect Piano has made preliminary schematic drawings for the building, and that its planning is being funded with part of the $25 million that LACMA backers Lynda and Stewart Resnick initially gave for the first phase, but decided to apply to Phase Two after BP stepped forward with its gift. Phase Two also includes renovations to the former May Co. department store building known as LACMA West.

Govan said the new Phase Two museum of his dreams would be comparable to Dia:Beacon, the skylit former factory on the Hudson River in Beacon, N.Y., whose renovation he had overseen. The hallmarks, he said, would include lots of natural light, flexibility and a spacious "generosity of feeling ... elegant and functional."

I have to check it out....

of the old entry vs. the new entry?

LA Times wonders why no one is interested in the paper. Here is a good example of poor journalism. A major new sctructure is announced, yet there are not pictures. ARGH!

-doug

...oh look who decide to show up after creating a thread!

March 10, 2007
LACMA is considering a palm garden

Diane Haithman

On the heels of a vote by city officials to stop planting new fan palm trees in favor of sycamores, oaks and other leafy native species, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art says it is considering adding more palms as part of the redesign of its Wilshire Boulevard campus.

In a conversation with Robert Irwin, designer of the Getty Center gardens, at a museum event Thursday night, LACMA director Michael Govan said the museum was working with Irwin on tentative plans for a palm garden for the 17 acres of parkland behind the museum.

"It's just in process, not definite — there's no funding, no nothing yet," Govan said in an interview Friday. "We're doing research now about collecting palms; we made a few jokes about the mayor getting rid of palms. The thing is, they have so much to do with Los Angeles, they're such visible symbols of the city. One of the reasons Robert Irwin loves the palms is how the beautiful tall trunks hold the light, the sunset and sunrise of L.A."

Govan said the tentative plan called for adding new varieties of palm trees to complement the washingtonian and date palms already standing near the front of the museum campus. "If the palms of the city start to get replaced by oak trees, certainly they'll then find themselves as cultural objects, and it's almost incumbent on the museum to begin to collect them," he said.

March 28, 2007
Resiliency is built into LACMA’s redesign
Renzo Piano calmly proceeds, despite returns to the drawing board and elements pulling focus from his architecture.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-03/28650513.jpg
A $25-million gift from petroleum company BP prompted a new idea: an open-air entry hall with rooftop solar panels.

By Christopher Hawthorne, Times Staff Writer

In the last decade or so, we have learned to think of new museum buildings as a form of architectural entertainment — the more easily understandable, the better. The architecture itself may be elaborate (Libeskind in Denver, Herzog & de Meuron in Minneapolis) or refined (SANAA in New York, Gluckman in San Diego), but the aesthetic statement is almost always straightforward, the authorship of the buildings impossible to miss. Museum directors, as they pursue expansion, have been willing to sell off paintings and even trim their curatorial staffs. But cover up the architectural logo? Never.

That helps explain why the recent changes to Renzo Piano's expansion plans for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art seem so surprising, or at least so resistant to quick analysis. They are likely to make the experience of visiting LACMA richer even as they embrace a pop sensibility and veer close to some New York clich–s about California culture. And in bringing art and corporate identity to the foreground, they dim the spotlight on pricey, name-brand architecture.

The first phase of the expansion, budgeted at $156 million, includes a new parking garage, an expanded garden and two buildings by Piano along Wilshire Boulevard: a simple entry pavilion, which the architect originally modeled on L.A.'s Case Study houses, and the travertine-wrapped Broad Contemporary Art Museum, or BCAM.

Orchestrated by Michael Govan, who took over as LACMA director last year, the updates to the extension operate on two tracks. The first has to do with fundraising and programming. With some help from Eli Broad, Govan landed a $25-million gift from BP that will transform the pavilion into an open-air entry hall with solar panels on the roof — and the British oil company's name on the front. He then persuaded Lynda and Stewart Resnick, whose own $25-million gift was originally earmarked for the pavilion, to direct it instead to the construction of a new single-story gallery building by Piano directly behind BCAM. It will be part of the expansion's second phase, which will also include updates to the former May Co. building at Wilshire and Fairfax, known as LACMA West.

Even while executing that sleight of hand, Govan was recruiting artists to fill in the spaces around and in front of Piano's buildings. Surrounding BCAM like a wreath — or a playful chokehold — will be a palm garden by Robert Irwin, who proved with his garden at the Getty Center that he is hardly shy about confronting architectural celebrity. And just in front of the BP structure will be Jeff Koons' "Train," a massive artwork that includes a 70-foot locomotive dangling from a 160-foot crane.

Compared with Piano's earliest plans, the result, at least as Govan sees it, will be a museum more playful, more colorful and more comfortable with the fact that it is located in Southern California. The open-air pavilion will operate not just as a pathway into the galleries but also as a more conspicuous entry to the museum's parkland and sculpture gardens, which Piano's design extends to the north and west.

Govan's LACMA will also reduce the emphasis on the Piano brand. Recruited by Broad to replace Rem Koolhaas, whose aggressive scheme to remake the museum foundered on fundraising shoals, Piano brought his usual focus on clarity and refinement to the LACMA plan. He drew a thick east-west axis connecting LACMA West to the rest of the museum. And he filled out the BCAM design, the heart of his proposal's first phase, with broad, strong gestures. H-shaped in plan, the building will show art on three high-ceilinged, column-free floors.

But Piano had been working to loosen up his architecture for a Los Angeles audience long before Govan arrived here from the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Early on, he attached a bright red escalator and stairs to the exterior of the blocky BCAM building and endorsed the idea of draping billboard-scale tapestries across its Wilshire facade. He tried to channel Charles and Ray Eames and Pierre Koenig in the entry pavilion. Not since he and Richard Rogers designed the 1977 Pompidou Center in Paris, Piano said last year, had he so fully embraced levity and color in a museum design.

For Govan, clearly, that effort didn't go far enough. Bringing Irwin and Koons on board will add some pop energy, a sense of humor and a touch of irreverence to the new LACMA buildings. Both the Koons train and the Irwin palm garden — but especially the train — carry heavy symbolic weight and a sensibility that couldn't be more different from Piano's work. The architect's recent projects stress rationality, the careful manipulation of light and a seamless, elegant marriage of technology and design. The train, which hangs perpendicular to the ground, seems to be hurtling straight at the pavement, ready to smash all those ideas to bits.

In part — and there is really no getting around this fact — the new elements also serve to camouflage Piano's architecture.

The architect himself, ever charming and unflappable, betrayed no anxiety about the new plan as he walked through the still-skeletal BCAM recently wearing a white hard hat. He praised Govan as a client, and it's easy to imagine that on an intellectual level, at the very least, the new director is a compelling sparring partner. To a different architect — younger, more aggressive, less sure of himself — Govan's changes might have been deeply threatening and maybe even cause for walking off the job altogether.

But just as there were risks in Piano's attempts to ground his LACMA design in L.A. culture — the connection to the Case Study program, for example, was a bit strained from the start — there are in Govan's as well. Any New York art expert ready to catalog the joys of Southern California — the sunshine! the scent of tropical flowers! all those cars on all those boulevards! — has to be careful not to alienate the locals with that very enthusiasm.

We should be glad, then, that Govan is at least polished enough not to resort to the crumbling clich–s we heard last week from Alanna Heiss, the director of the Queens, N.Y.-based MoMA affiliate P.S. 1. Heiss and P.S. 1 hold an annual competition to pick an architect to decorate the museum's courtyard during the summer. This year, the winner was a team made up of two 38-year-old architects from L.A., Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues.

Praising their design in the New York Times, Heiss said, "It seemed to us East Coast people really a present from the wilderness of California dreams."

We West Coast people hardly know where to begin with that phrase: the wilderness of California dreams. (I would have loved to run it by Milton Wexler, the analyst who worked for so many years with Frank Gehry and died two weeks ago at 98.) At the very least, if anyone wants to organize a conference on the theme of California art and architecture as seen through the lens of New York provincialism, we have a ready title.

Govan arrived in that wilderness last year with a deep supply of architectural credibility, having overseen the planning for Dia's outpost in Beacon, N.Y., along the Hudson River. In that 2003 project, Govan — working with Irwin and the New York architecture firm Open Office — turned an old Nabisco factory into one of the best new museum spaces to open anywhere in the last decade. Avoiding architectural fireworks, it is marked by a keen sense of proportion and light and a scrupulous attention to detail. Its success should buy Govan some time to execute his own vision here.

Still, there are few expansion projects in the country with more moving parts and a more tangled history than the one he has inherited at LACMA. Even if the first two phases come off cleanly — and that remains a pretty big "if" — there is the looming question of how to handle the jumble of buildings to the east: the Ahmanson, the Bing and the Hammer, not to mention the courtyards and staircases that connect and encircle them. Those buildings will be more resistant to architectural unification than the west side of the campus has been; figuring out what do with them is precisely where Govan will earn his keep.

http://www.calendarlive.com/media/photo/2007-02/27712757.jpg

New York Times
Friday, April 6, 2007
A Museum Takes StepsTo Collect Houses
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: March 15, 2007

Shortly after moving here last year to take over as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan started looking at houses -- not as a place for him to live but as potential museum pieces.

His idea -- one that has rarely, if ever, been tried on a large scale by a major museum -- is to collect significant pieces of midcentury residential architecture, including houses by Rudolf M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright, and to treat them as both museum objects and as residences for curators.

While he has yet to acquire any properties, Mr. Govan said this week that he certainly had his eye on some, including Frank Gehry's landmark residence in Santa Monica, a collage of tilting forms. In an interview Mr. Gehry confirmed that Mr. Govan had discussed the idea with him but said that no agreements about the house's future had been reached.

Mr. Govan, who moved here in March 2006 from New York, where he directed the Dia Art Foundation, said his project had been driven by the immediate impression that in Los Angeles, a city defined by outdoor spaces, architecture is inseparable from art.

''It started with an effort to rethink the museum, looking at the resources that are both locally powerful and internationally relevant,'' he said. ''It's clear that the most important architecture in Los Angeles is largely its domestic architecture. I've talked certainly to a number of people who have interesting architecture, and I'm beginning to talk to other people about raising funds to preserve these works.''

The potential cost of the houses varies widely. Many of the most distinctive properties, in Beverly Hills or the Hollywood Hills, have most recently sold for millions of dollars. Others, like Schindler's Buck House, on Eighth Street, barely two blocks from the museum, sold for less than half a million dollars in 1995, although it clearly would be worth more than double that today.

Mr. Govan was reluctant to discuss his plans in detail, partly because he has taken only ''baby steps,'' he said, but also because he does not want to set off bidding wars for houses in which he is interested. He said he hoped the museum could either buy houses or have them donated, the same ways that a museum would go about acquiring paintings or sculptures.

''This whole initiative will depend on generosity,'' he said. ''In the same way that someone would donate a Picasso, we want people to think of ways to see these houses as works of art and to think about ways to preserve them.''

Although he said he had received an ''enthusiastic response'' when he presented the idea to the museum's trustees, ''we have no funds at the moment'' dedicated to the effort, he added.

But the idea has already started to generate chatter in the architecture community here. Richard Koshalek, president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and a former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, said Mr. Govan's effort was ''not only crucial for the city of Los Angeles but for the history of modern architecture.''

''Architects learn from other architects,'' Mr. Koshalek said. ''This history will be lost if people like Michael do not take this kind of initiative.''

While owning an architecturally significant house in Los Angeles has long carried a certain cachet, many potentially valuable works have fallen into disrepair or been greatly altered by renovations undertaken by a succession of owners.

''A number of them haven't been touched,'' Mr. Govan said. ''But many have been badly renovated and fundamentally changed. So I think it's kind of the last chance to try to preserve a group of these as a collection.''

Mr. Govan's idea is perhaps all the more remarkable because the Los Angeles County Museum does not have a department of architecture or design, unlike some older institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But one of the museum's first acquisitions after Mr. Govan moved to Los Angeles, after 12 years as director of Dia, was a high-rise office interior by the Modernist architect John Lautner.

The Lautner office was formerly owned by James F. Goldstein, a real-estate investor who had Lautner design the space in 1987 for the 20th floor in a building in Century City, the commercial development on Santa Monica Boulevard in west Los Angeles.

In 2005 Mr. Goldstein was informed that his lease for the space would not be renewed, and a foundation devoted to saving Lautner works began seeking a patron who would preserve the space.

The Los Angeles County Museum initially turned down the proposal because museum officials felt it did not have the room to display the 800-square-foot office. But once Mr. Govan arrived, he seized the opportunity to acquire the work for an undisclosed amount and use it not as an exhibit but as an office -- specifically, his.

The museum now plans to install the office, which includes copper walls, a wood ceiling and a floor of black slate, as part of the renovation of the May Company building, a former department store that is on the western edge of the museum's 20-acre campus on Wilshire Boulevard. That renovation is planned for 2008 or 2009, and Mr. Govan said he hoped to use the space as his regular office, allowing visitors access to it as an exhibit on weekends.

Similarly, he said he hoped to use the houses that he collects not strictly as museum pieces but as housing for museum staff members, a perk that he said he believed would help the museum attract new curatorial talent.

''A lot of curators here have sought out interesting houses,'' he said. ''I thought, 'You could just have house tours on a regular basis to allow the public to have access to them.' ''

Although it does not have a design collection as such, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has hardly ignored the city's architectural history. In 1987 it organized a tour in the Silver Lake community of houses by Schindler, Neutra and other architects of the 1920s, '30s, '40s and '50s. In 1965 the museum published ''A Guide to Southern California Architecture,'' a book that, although out of print, is prized by real-estate agents here who specialize in architectural gems.

Various Los Angeles organizations have also sponsored tours of houses that were built as part of the Case Study program: two dozen prototypes of modern architecture, by Charles and Ray Eames, Neutra and Pierre Koenig, among others, that were commissioned by Art & Architecture magazine and built from 1945 to 1964.

Silver Lake, an area around a man-made reservoir in the hills east of Hollywood, is the site of dozens of houses that would be potential acquisitions for the museum. The 2200 block of Silver Lake Boulevard, for example, has no fewer than five houses by Neutra, who was encouraged to migrate from Vienna to Los Angeles by Schindler, who was himself born in Austria and had worked in Chicago and Los Angeles as a construction supervisor for Frank Lloyd Wright.

Schindler's work is also ubiquitous around Los Angeles. In 2001 the magazine ArtForum listed 32 significant works by Schindler, several in the parts of Los Angeles that visitors to the city rarely get to, including Torrance, Glendale, South Central and Woodland Hills.

Mr. Govan said that because the institution was a county museum, he did not intend to limit his collection to the area immediately around the museum's west Los Angeles location.

With Mr. Govan's plans already being discussed in architecture and real estate circles, the museum is certain to face some competition to acquire properties, including that ofMr. Gehry. His Santa Monica house, built in 1978 and remodeled in 1993, is known for its distinctive exteriors, which include corrugated metal, plywood and chain-link fencing.

It is also in the sights of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Mr. Gehry said, which has talked to him about its registering the house or acquiring it once he completes a new residence in nearby Venice, Calif.

''In the meantime,'' Mr. Gehry said, ''I'm living in it.''

any updates?

i drove by yesterday.

Much progress on the new museum buildings--they appear from the outside to be nearly done. They are very boring tho. Just beige stone boxes side by side about 60 or so feet tall.

The new entry pavilion is long and low and very low key.

Per bold banners around the site, the new compex and entry are scheduled to open Feb 2008.

Sorry no pix.

One of these days I'm gonna learn how to post!

Pictures of what is a very important L. A. location would be appreciated. :banana:

i know. I know. I am going to learn how to post.

One of these days.

And yes, it will be a huge addition to L.A. once it is done. Still nothing like MOMA, bust noteworthy nonetheless. My only concern, with the huge new facility at LACMA, what is going to happen to poor little MOCA downtown? Isn't that museum already struggling?

September 15/16, 2007

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October 20, 2007

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From Flickr, by Renegade of Funk

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Huge gift helps LACMA enter the modern age

The museum announces a gift from Janice and Henri Lazarof of 130 works by artists including Picasso, Giacometti, Brancusi and Matisse, greatly improving a weak part of the collection.

By Suzanne Muchnic, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 12, 2007

In a single stroke of philanthropy, two scrupulously private L.A. art collectors have transformed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's holdings of modern art.

Janice and Henri Lazarof have given the museum 130 works by major artists, LACMA officials said this week. The gift includes 20 works by Pablo Picasso spanning 65 years, seven figurative sculptures and a painting by Alberto Giacometti, and two versions of Constantin Brancusi's signature bronze, "Bird in Space."

The museum did not disclose the value of the artworks, but recent auction sales of similar pieces suggest that the collection is worth more than $100 million. It is the largest single donation of its kind locally and one that will greatly enhance LACMA's collection.

"It's a major deal to get this work in one fell swoop, at a time when the art market has made it nearly impossible for museums to purchase work of this quality," said Michael Govan, LACMA's director. "This significantly expands the modern collection, where we need help. We have major works and landmark things like the Robert Rifkind collection of German Expressionism, but we don't have the richness and depth of modern art that you expect of a museum of this scale. This gift doesn't complete the picture, but it adds a lot."

About 80 works from the collection will go on view Jan. 13, a month before the museum unveils the first phase of an ambitious expansion and renovation program that includes a new contemporary art building financed by Los Angeles collector-philanthropist Eli Broad. The Lazarof donation will debut in three galleries on the plaza level of the Ahmanson Building, in a new 22,000-square-foot showcase for modern art.

Although Henri Lazarof is a veteran composer and his wife, a daughter of the late banker-philanthropist S. Mark Taper, is president of the S. Mark Taper Foundation, the couple have maintained an unusually low profile in art circles. Their names are not on art magazine lists of top collectors, but for about 25 years they have assembled works by a who's who of 20th century figures, including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro and Henry Moore.

Encompassing small pictures designed for intimate viewing as well as large artistic statements, the couple's donation includes two-dimensional works in oil, watercolor, charcoal, pencil and collage, and sculptures of alabaster, marble and steel. Presented as a fractional and promised gift, it makes LACMA a part owner of each piece, with remaining shares to be given over time.

Among the Picassos are 17 portraits, such as a tiny Rose Period painting from 1906; twisted images of the artist's mistress Dora Maar from the 1930s; and a monumental likeness of his wife Jacqueline painted in the early 1960s. About two dozen works by Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger represent the influential Bauhaus school in Germany. There are also Impressionist pieces by Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, but the gift is primarily a Modernist bonanza.

Stephanie Barron, the museum's senior curator of modern art, who has worked quietly for years to secure the collection for the museum, said the Lazarofs are "incredibly rare" philanthropists who have collected for their own pleasure, completely out of the limelight.

"I watched their collection grow from modest to interesting to remarkable to astonishing, to the point when I felt I had to do everything I could to make the case for it to come to the museum," Barron said. "Not since the David Bright collection came to us in the mid-1960s has there been a single addition that allows the modern collection to turn a corner like this."

Janice Lazarof said she and her husband reached their decision after a lot of thought and exploration of possibilities. Henri Lazarof, who was born in Bulgaria and moved to California in 1959, was a member of UCLA's music faculty from 1962 to 1987.

"As longtime residents of Los Angeles, we have watched the museum being built and going through all of its changes," Janice Lazarof said. "Now there is a whole new change, and we just felt this is where the collection belonged. We wanted to do something that would bring pleasure and last for many generations in a beautiful new home. We wanted to be able to enjoy watching other people enjoy what we had enjoyed for so many years."

The gift is a coup for LACMA, which has lost promised and hoped-for collections in the past, including those of Armand Hammer and Norton Simon, who built their own museums, and actor Edward G. Robinson, who sold his art holdings as part of a divorce settlement.

The Lazarof donation comes at an auspicious time, as LACMA's campus on Wilshire Boulevard is undergoing a sweeping transformation. Phase one of the expansion, which includes the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, will provide a new showcase for recent works. The Ahmanson Building, on the opposite side of a new entry plaza, has been reconfigured to give visitors a more complete sense of art history, Govan said.

"There are many publics in Los Angeles, many tastes," he said. "The museum is expanding on many different levels, and other surprises are coming. This is a good time to reinstall the modern collection in proximity to contemporary art."

Among the donated works

Janice and Henri Lazarof have given the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 130 works by major artists. A selection of significant pieces is shown.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-12/34219109.jpg
"Bird in Space," a 73-inch-
tall polished bronze
sculpture made by
Romanian artist Constantin
Brancusi in 1927, is a
signature work by this
leading Modernist. Highly
refined abstractions from
nature, the sculpture and a
companion piece are the
first Brancusis in the
museum's collection.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-12/34219153.jpg
"Head of a Woman," a 1906 Rose Period
painting by Pablo Picasso, is an archetypal
early work by the Spanish artist who dominated
20th century art. The 13 3/4 - by-8 1/2 -inch
oil is a mask-like portrait thought to depict the
artist's companion Fernande in the style of
Iberian sculpture.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-12/34219151.jpg
"The Cage," a 1950 bronze sculpture by Swiss
artist Alberto Giacometti, portrays emaciated
figures confined in a box-like space. The spare
artwork, about 3 feet tall, reflects the postwar
sensibility of an artist who focused on human
brutality and existential angst.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-12/34219113.jpg
"Glass, Bottle and Playing Card," a 1912 oil by French artist
Georges Braque, is a classic Cubist work. A collage-like
composition that merges different points of view in a new kind
of realism, it blends fragments of ordinary objects into a
multifaceted oval.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-12/34219138.jpg
"The Dancers," an 1898 pastel by French Impressionist Edgar
Degas, is among the earliest pieces in the Lazarof gift. The
abruptly cropped composition is a snapshot-like view of the
ballet that epitomizes the artist's talent for stopping motion with
extraordinary freedom and verve.

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Source: Los Angeles Times (http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/la-et-lacma12dec12,0,1860516.story?coll=la-home-center)

Wonderful.

"There are many publics in Los Angeles, many tastes," he said. "The museum is expanding on many different levels, [B]and other surprises are coming. This is a good time to reinstall the modern collection in proximity to contemporary art."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Los Angeles Times (http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/la-et-lacma12dec12,0,1860516.story?coll=la-home-center)


Stay tuned!!

January 10, 2008

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2102/2183863701_ca355730a4_b.jpg
From Flickr, by Here in Van Nuys

They're storing them onsite, vertically, attached to a field of temporary concrete,..interesting :)

BCAM Opens February 16
Order free tickets now for opening weekend and member previews.

LACMA Free Community Weekend Sponsored by Target
February 16–18
Join us for the opening of Transformation Phase I featuring the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, BP Grand Entrance, and outdoor works by Chris Burden, Robert Irwin, Jeff Koons, and Charles Ray. Bring family and friends for a free weekend of celebration including performances by the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company • found sound by Alan Nakagawa and musical guests • live music and DJs • artists' workshops • free photo booth.
February 16–18 | 11 am–8 pm | Free tickets required

You must reserve free tickets ahead of time. Tickets are dated and timed. You may reserve your tickets by visiting online ticketing and selecting "Exhibitions" on the left hand side of the ticketing page. You may also visit the LACMA box office, or call the box office at 323 857-6010.

January 3, 2008

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From Flickr, by optionthis

January 7, 2008

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2230/2175460425_c08b80d85e_b.jpg
From Flickr, by btmeacham

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From Flickr, by btmeacham

January 19, 2008

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From Flickr, by rodknee_ty2003

LA County Museum of Art Receives $10 Million Gift

January 16, 2008

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced Wednesday a $10 million gift to support art programs and acquisitions at its soon-to-open Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

A first-floor gallery at BCAM, which is scheduled to open next month at the redesigned LACMA campus on Wilshire Boulevard, will be named after Jane and Marc Nathanson to honor the gift from their foundation, a LACMA statement said.

The Nathanson's gift comes at a time when LACMA says it is waging a campaign to make contemporary art one of its primary areas of focus. "With our ongoing involvement in contemporary art in Los Angeles, Marc and I felt the time was right to participate in LACMA's campaign," said Jane Nathanson, adding that with BCAM's forthcoming opening, "L.A. is on its way to becoming one of the contemporary art capitals of the world."

Jane Nathanson, a psychologist and family therapist, is a LACMA Board of Trustee member as well as a trustee for UCLA Medical Center, and, along with her husband, she has been a supporter of the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. On Feb. 9, she will preside at the opening gala for BCAM, which opens to the public on Feb. 16.

Marc Nathanson, a cable TV pioneer, is vice chairman of Charter Communications, the company to which he sold Falcon Cable TV, which he founded in 1975. He also chairs Mapleton Communications, which owns and operates 40 radio stations in the western United States, and sits on boards at UCLA, USC and the L.A. Philharmonic.

BCAM, a 70,000-square foot structure that cost $56 million to build, was paid for by Los Angeles philanthropist and collector Eli Broad, who also provided a $10 million fund for the acquisition of artworks and lent 220 pieces for the inaugural exhibition.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: cbs2.com (http://cbs2.com/local/lacma.Jane.and.2.630712.html)

January 19, 2008

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2303/2204931540_a7c5f81c00_o.jpg
From Flickr, by cc10

January 13, 2008

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2035/2192919498_4ff774747b_b.jpg
From Flickr, by MondaynightLA

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2300/2192130861_ba27c8bac0_b.jpg
From Flickr, by MondaynightLA

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2028/2192920046_05773ca831_b.jpg
From Flickr, by MondaynightLA

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2343/2192984294_eca5e98b9a_b.jpg
From Flickr, by MondaynightLA

Turns out this is a sculpture, and these lights are staying right where they are, to illuminate the ridiculous stairway attached to the rather upscale looking stonework for all to see.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2035/2192919498_4ff774747b_b.jpg
From Flickr, by MondaynightLA

I think it's pretty ugly :D

Putting finishing touches on LACMA's addition
Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee192/trolltoast/35388438.jpg
Charles Ray 's "Firetruck ," a 46 1/2 -foot-long sculpture of a toy firetruck, is put in place just a day before the unveiling of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum to the media.
A day before the unveiling of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum to the media, sculptures were still being positioned and paintings rearranged.
By Anne-Marie O'Connor, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 8, 2008
LACMA director Michael Govan squinted into the sun and watched a weathered forklift cradle a Charles Ray sculpture -- a toy firetruck blown up to the size of a real one and intended to be confused for the real thing. As the sculpture settled into position on the plaza, a Los Angeles firetruck pulled up behind it and a fire marshal climbed out for an inspection.

"I love it that the first visitor was the fire marshal," Govan said. "It was like some kind of apparition."

So was LACMA. On Wednesday, just a day before its unveiling for media from around the world, the museum's revamped campus was still a work in progress. Buzzing around its centerpiece, the $56-million Renzo Piano-designed, travertine-covered Broad Contemporary Art Museum, an army of workers fine-tuned metalwork from cherry pickers, dealt with a forest of two-story palms and worked all night on an elevator shaft that frames a Barbara Kruger mural with haunted eyes and a George Orwell warning from "1984": "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever."

In this maelstrom, the Jeff Koons sculpture "New Hoover Deluxe shampoo polishers" -- aesthetically anointed cleaning equipment lined up on a blanket on a gallery floor -- was easy to confuse with one of the piles belonging to the construction crew.

Jasper Johns' iconic 1967 painting of an American flag was accompanied by a dissonant anthem that could have inspired John Cage. Drills whined, hammers pounded and loud unidentified booms resonated as workers consummated the myriad details that will culminate in the "Birth of BCAM," which opens to the public Feb. 16.

"It's exciting," said Lynn Zelevansky, contemporary art curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

"A little too exciting?" Govan asked.

Apparently not. The night before, "with great trepidation," Govan said, he and his staff had asked installers who had hung and labeled works by Warhol and John Baldessari to switch the paintings to opposite ends of the vast third-floor gallery.

Now, Warhol's sexually charged, gunslinging Elvis ambushes viewers at close range, leaning against a wall to the right as they walk in, instead of far across the gallery, where a Baldessari now proclaims: "Everything is purged from this painting but art, no ideas have entered this work."

Out on the plaza, the 46 1/2 -foot-long "Firetruck" rested on its big rubber tires, while its sculptor meditated on the uses of his art.

"I haven't seen it in a while, with kids climbing on it and jumping and breaking it," the blue-jeaned Ray said. "They always end up doing it. It kind of invites you to. It can always be fixed. Originally, I thought it could be a kids toy.

"But I don't own it," he reminded himself. It belongs to the Broad Art Foundation.

Was the installation going as planned? "There is no plan," Ray shrugged, making way for the forklift. "Just whatever works."

But Govan and Zelevansky seemed to have a number of plans as they walked briskly through BCAM.

Upstairs, men in heavy construction boots swarmed around the three-story elevator shaft and Kruger mural, called "Untitled (Shafted)." Elevator workers had worked 8 p.m.-to-5 a.m. shifts so the piece could be carefully installed by day.

"We knew it would be last-minute, but I didn't know how last-minute," Govan said. "You're hit with a thousand things at the end. There's the drama."

Still to come? "Last Chance Lost," a Jack Pierson neon sculpture whose title is spelled out in mismatching neon letters that seem to have dropped off one of the forlorn nighttime diners painted by Edward Hopper. Just this week,Govan and his staff changed their mind about where to put it, to give it more impact.

"You can work with models, but they fall short," Govan explained, before walking away to deal with a cellphone call.

Out of the fray are the finished galleries. Zelevansky walked through a quiet assemblage of Ed Ruscha works, then a gallery holding the comic-styled book Pop Art of Roy Lichtenstein, pausing before the plaintive young woman of "I . . . I'm Sorry."

It seemed unnaturally still.

"Once art gets on a wall, it's reified somehow," Zelevansky said. "We're having a good time. This is the best time."

Back at the elevator, Govan stopped before a worker who was vigorously rubbing a prominent spot on a central white wall.

"The donor plaque," Govan said with a meaningful look.

A particular donor?

"Guess," he challenged, smiling. "You have one guess."

The plaque was for Edythe and Eli Broad, who recently announced they were lending, not giving, their art to the Broad Contemporary Art Museum -- an 11th-hour revelation that still seems to dwarf every other last-minute detail.

Govan surveyed the vast white walls of the cavernous space. "There's room for more names," he said.

anne-marie.oconnor@ latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-02/35452223.jpg
Guests take in the Urban Light installation and a dragonfly (on stilts), left, greets them as the Broad Contemporary Art Museum is unveiled at LACMA on the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles.

Gala Opens New L.A. Art Museum

Glitzy debut of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, or BCAM, marks rebirth after difficult times at LACMA.

By Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 10, 2008

The "spider" escalator of the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum was red, the fire escapes were red, Charles Ray's 46½-foot "Firetruck" was red. And for one star-studded night, even the carpet was red. BCAM, as Italian architect Renzo Piano's travertine-clad creation is known, was all the buzz.

After years of operating in undeserved anonymity, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had its big moment in the sun -- or starlight -- Saturday night. More than 1,100 prominent entertainment industry figures, artists, executives and civic leaders gathered for the grand opening. Taiko drums heralded the first arrivals, and the guests mingled with stilt-walkers in elaborate costumes.

With the splashy gala, LACMA suddenly finds itself relaunched among the world's notable museums.

Maria Shriver, wearing a long gown in shades of gray, white and black with a tulle overskirt and a short charcoal gray jacket, praised the new building. "When you have a museum like this it becomes a destination museum," she said. California's first lady was later joined by her husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Saturday's festivities, featuring dinnertime entertainment by Lionel Richie, capped several days of kickoff events. As darkness fell, Hollywood luminaries began arriving with a fanfare akin to that of Oscar night.

Actress Rita Wilson, elegant in a pleated ivory Lanvin dress, said, "I think anything like this is great for Los Angeles. L.A. has amazing museums, but it's not what you come here to see. People go to Disneyland."

With tables costing $25,000 (silver), $50,000 (gold) or $100,000 (platinum), the event reportedly raised more than $5 million. The guest list included a who's who of museum directors: Nicholas Serota of Britain's Tate Gallery, Earl A. "Rusty" Powell III of the National Gallery of Art (and former LACMA director), Thomas Krens of Guggenheim Museums Worldwide and, from close to home, leaders of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Getty, the Hammer and other local institutions.

Mingling with them were artists from the local scene and elsewhere: John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Damien Hirst, Ellsworth Kelly, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Richard Serra, Ed Ruscha. All have works displayed in BCAM.

As LACMA director Michael Govan made clear last week to anyone within listening distance, this is certainly a museum transformed -- physically and artistically.

Where Ogden Drive once bisected the 20-acre LACMA campus between Wilshire Boulevard and 6th Street, visitors now stroll through Burden's "Urban Light," an installation of 202 restored and working vintage streetlights. The inviting outdoor "lobby" stands in sharp contrast to the imposing edifice and subway-like staircase that leads to the "old" central plaza.

Architect Frank Gehry said, "I think it's great. They finally made an entrance where you know where to go in."

Light is a suitable metaphor for a museum that is marking a rebirth after enduring years of very public disappointments.

"It's a rebirth because the museum experience is now going to be so much easier," said William H. Ahmanson, a LACMA trustee. "It's more accessible."

It was Andrea Rich, the museum's former director, who in the late 1990s first suggested adding a Broad building for contemporary art that would link scattered parts of the campus.

In 2001 the museum launched an architectural competition. The winner, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, advocated demolishing four of the six buildings and replacing them with a single, tent-topped structure for an estimated tab of $300 million.

Billionaire Eli Broad, with his wife, Edythe, was prepared to give $50 million to the project, but no other major donors surfaced. After Los Angeles County voters fell just shy of the two-thirds majority vote needed to approve a bond measure intended to raise a chunk of the money, LACMA scrapped the Koolhaas plan and went back to the drawing board. With Rich's blessing, Broad took charge of the contemporary art project and personally wooed Piano for the job.

The false start was the first in a string of highly public embarrassments for the museum.

In 2006 LACMA lost out on a great work of art. That year the museum had been displaying, to great acclaim, a handful of works by Gustav Klimt, including a 1907 painting, the so-called gold portrait of Vienna aristocrat Adele Bloch-Bauer, which had been looted by the Nazis and returned to a Los Angeles woman and her relatives. The museum scrambled to find the money to acquire the portrait, but its hopes were dashed when New York cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder bought the painting for the museum he founded, the Neue Galerie. The reported $135-million price tag was at the time the highest known price paid for a painting.

Then came perhaps the most bruising blow.

As LACMA was preparing last month for the BCAM opening, Broad dropped the bomb: He had decided not to give his 2,000-piece art collection to LACMA, as had long been anticipated, but rather to have his Broad Art Foundation keep all the artworks and lend them often to museums.

Although Govan and LACMA contemporary art curator Lynn Zelevansky maintained that Broad's decision was no surprise to them, it rattled the art world, which has seen LACMA stung by would-be donors, including Norton Simon and Armand Hammer, both of whom founded their own museums.

Still, Broad footed the $56-million cost of erecting the new building and chipped in $10 million more for artworks on the inside. BCAM opens with its interiors dominated by about 200 pieces borrowed from Broad and his foundation, as well as other collections, including LACMA's. At every preview and gala, LACMA's Govan has praised Broad's art savvy and generosity.

LACMA officials and trustees say the goal of the expanded museum is to bring in more people -- more tourists, more Angelenos.

Whether Los Angeles will emerge as the contemporary art capital of the world, as Broad hopes, remains to be seen. With the hoopla past, said Melody Kanschat, LACMA's president, "now it's going to be about the real people who use it."

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Source: Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-museum10feb10,1,6962915.story?ctrack=1&cset=true)

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-02/35334923.jpg
Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW: Broad Contemporary Art Museum
source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-bcamarch7feb07,0,6797660.story

Renzo Piano's extension of the L.A. County Museum of Art reveals a clash of cultures between benefactor Eli Broad and Director Michael Govan.
By Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 7, 2008
You know that well-worn architectural saying: A great building requires a great client.

In the case of Renzo Piano's extension of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which opens Feb. 16, the equation isn't quite so straightforward.

To begin with, LACMA has added substantially more than a single building. Though the 60,000-square-foot Broad Contemporary Art Museum, or BCAM, is getting most of the attention, Piano's changes to the sprawling museum campus also include a new entry pavilion and covered pedestrian walkway set back from Wilshire Boulevard, along with a reconfiguration of the ground floor of the 1965 Ahmanson Building to the east.

More to the point, it's a little hard to tell exactly who Piano's client is.

Is it Eli Broad, the billionaire LACMA trustee and donor who flew to Europe to recruit Piano personally after a bolder, more expensive expansion plan by Rem Koolhaas fell through?

Or is it Michael Govan, who took over as LACMA director two years ago, assuming responsibility for a design by an architect he likely would never have chosen himself?

The answer, of course, is both: Each man has a legitimate interest in even the most minor details of the expansion plan. Last month, after Broad made the surprise announcement that he wouldn't be donating his extensive collection to the museum, there was plenty of speculation about when and why his discussions with Govan over the fate of the artworks might have turned sour. But so far we've paid virtually no attention to the delicate back-and-forth between Govan and Broad over the details of Piano's design.

What a visit to the new LACMA makes clear is the extent to which the western half of its campus has become contested space, straining to hold two very different ideas of how a museum in Los Angeles should look and operate. One view belongs to Broad, 74, and the other to Govan, who is three decades younger. Much of the fun of making sense of the expanded museum, in fact, lies in figuring out whose influence and sensibility can be glimpsed in which parts of the new construction.

Broad has operated here as a patron in the classic sense of the word, working with his handpicked architect to produce a handsome, well-made container for his extensive collection.

Govan, though he would never say so publicly, seems to see that vision as largely out of date, or least inappropriate for a place as young, dynamic and distrustful of institutional wisdom as Los Angeles. He clearly would prefer that the museum's new architecture represent a highly informal, ever-changing city where art is produced and redefined on a daily basis and not just bought, sold, duly cataloged and hung on walls.

Each one has found a separate sphere of influence in the first phase of the Piano extension. (A new free-standing gallery by Piano to the north of BCAM, along with a renovation of the old May Co. building by the Culver City firm SPF:a, will follow in the next few years.) BCAM itself, not surprisingly, is Broad's territory, a building for which he footed the entire $56-million bill and where Govan has held comparatively little sway. To hold Broad's art, Piano has produced a crisp travertine-clad box with galleries on three levels. Its dramatic, high-ceilinged top floor bathes works by Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly and others in natural light that is very clear and nearly colorless, if a bit thin.

Piano's attempts to add color and a sense of energy to the exterior of the box with a scaffold of escalators and stairs, which he collectively calls "the spider," suggest that he is looking back to his professional youth, specifically to the Pompidou Center in Paris. Designed with Richard Rogers, that exuberant, deeply optimistic museum helped make Piano's name when it opened in 1977.

The spider succeeds in lending some playfulness to a building that is otherwise rather formally dressed. Framed in steel beams painted a bright shade of red, the spider's various cantilevered platforms offer broad views toward the Hollywood Hills. On the other side of BCAM, facing Wilshire, John Baldessari's twin, oversize banners -- each one measuring roughly 52 by 55 feet -- work to essentially the same effect. So does the building's saw-tooth roof line, created by a high-tech collection of fins and screens designed to keep harsh southern light from hitting the top-floor art.

But that exterior flair can't entirely disguise the fact that, at least inside, the building is well-behaved to a fault, with gallery spaces that are hushed and relentlessly rectilinear. In the rather banal ground-floor galleries, where two new pieces by Richard Serra hold court, the low ceiling is crisscrossed with lighting tracks that distract from the monolithic visual power of the massive works.

The art and architecture combine in BCAM to suggest that its name is a bit of false advertising: Piano's design is contemporary in the same way that the pieces inside by Koons, Ellsworth Kelly and Barbara Kruger are contemporary -- which is to say, not quite. Seen in the most cynical light, the whole enterprise seems stalled in the late 1980s, which is when Piano's museum work and many of the edgier artists in Broad's collection hit their stride.

Around the edges of BCAM, meanwhile, Govan has found plenty of opportunities to tweak Piano's scheme. His first move was to bring in the artist Robert Irwin, who so famously clashed with Richard Meier, another Broad favorite, over landscape design for the Getty Center. At LACMA, Irwin has added a necklace of palm trees on the perimeter of BCAM and in other outdoor spaces that were freed up when the museum demolished a parking garage and filled in a stretch of Ogden Drive north of Wilshire. Especially on the northern edge of BCAM, the thickly arranged palms take Piano's crisp pedestrian axis and transform it into something messier and more layered.

Govan saved his most dramatic interventions, though, for a pair of open spaces carved out by Piano: one in the new forecourt, which sits between Wilshire and the entry pavilion, and the other on the ground floor of the Ahmanson Building. Piano planned both as civic, European-style gathering spots. Govan, as if rejecting that notion as hopelessly nostalgic, responded by giving over most of each space to an artwork that grabs your attention away from the architecture and won't let go.

He added a huge Tony Smith sculpture, "Smoke," to the Ahmanson atrium, where it hovers dramatically over a new grand staircase leading up to LACMA's eastern courtyard. And in the forecourt, which Piano is fond of calling a "piazza," Govan decided to squeeze in a dense installation of 202 vintage lampposts by artist Chris Burden. Titled "Urban Light," the piece is a kind of pop temple, deftly straddling the lines between art and architecture and between seriousness and irony. It's also a joy to walk through. But there's no getting around the fact that it turns what might have been an actual public square along Wilshire -- a space defined from day to day by the people using it -- into an outdoor room for one sizable and very insistent piece of art.

In the latter stages of his career, the 70-year-old Piano has evolved into a kind of surgeon. Instead of architectural fireworks, what he offers his museum clients is coherence, largely unadorned: strong axes sliced confidently across a site; substantial materials; the accomplished manipulation of shadow and light.

Those skills are all in evidence in the LACMA expansion, particularly in BCAM's top-floor galleries and in the new pedestrian walkway, which offers a clear connection between the May Co. building, on the western edge of the museum campus, and the Ahmanson to the east. Thanks to Govan, they share space with -- and cede ground to -- some other, very different attitudes about what a museum in 21st century Los Angeles ought to be.

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee192/trolltoast/34258353-13172511.jpgWell..now I know we're gonna be all right :)

Did anyone read the NY Times take on the BCAM premiere?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/arts/design/15cont.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/arts/design/15broa.html?_r=1

They hated on everything from the architecture of the museum to the art we had inside of the museum.

...We must be doing something right. :lol: ;)

^yeap we must... there will be a lot of people wanting to check out that monstrosity..lol.

They hated on everything from the architecture of the museum to the art we had inside of the museum.

...We must be doing something right. :lol: ;)

:lol:

I went to their little college night thing tonight.
The galleries were pretty fun. I actually like it.

I went to their little college night thing tonight.
The galleries were pretty fun. I actually like it.

There was a college night tonight? was it free? I go to a freakin art college and i dont even know when an art museum has a college night, that's sad...

Yeah it was free :D

Here's a video I took of the last 20 or so minutes that I was there.

NdEiQv1VTtI

..there's an emergency when it's on..:cheers2: I think we saw the inside of your mouth more than anything else :) (I like your work on LOST better)

"lights"? :D

no better way to do a video there then one as random as that, haha

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-03/36649668.jpg
GROWING INDEED: LACMA is expanding its footprint.

LACMA's Latest Purchase: Land

LACMA purchases a tract across Wilshire from the new Broad Contemporary.

By Anne-Marie O'Connor, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 12, 2008

Further expanding its 20-acre campus, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has purchased a sizable parcel of land across the street from its ambitious new showcase, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, for what sources involved with the deal said was close to $12 million.

City Councilman Tom LaBonge said the parcel would not only expand the Miracle Mile museum district but also possibly serve as a stop on a future subway to the sea.

"This is a victory. Urban lights is what this is all about," LaBonge said, alluding to the Chris Burden sculpture of streetlights newly installed along Wilshire Boulevard at LACMA.

"This is part of the big plan," LaBonge said. "It's all going to be complementary, and one day there's going to be a subway stop there, and everybody in the county can ride transit to that wonderful complex of art museums.

"We should build our city culturally," LaBonge said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he was attending a National League of Cities conference and lobbying Congress on issues such as air quality, the Los Angeles River restoration and Los Angeles International Airport.

LACMA spokeswoman Barbara Pflaumer said she was "delighted" by the acquisition but could offer few details, such as the size of the lot.

"We saw this as an opportunity to develop key parts of the campus," Pflaumer said. "We don't have specific plans for the property. It was an opportunity to buy something, and we bought it. . . . We'd love a subway stop."

Pflaumer said the county did not pay for the purchase but declined to say who had. The reported price was about half of what LACMA paid in 1994 for the May Co. property adjacent to the museum.

LaBonge, whose district includes the site of the purchase, said the parcel encompasses a five-story office building completed in 1960, at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Ogden, and a construction site to the rear of it, which had been planned as a loft complex by a division of Miami-based Lennar Corp.

Kevin Farr, president of the Southern California division of Lennar Urban, which sold the property to LACMA, said the purchase closed escrow in late February.

"They've jumped Wilshire Boulevard," Farr said. "We had been working on a development, but the museum was a much more interested buyer than we were a developer at this point."

Lennar's Southern California urban development group, which builds high-density residential projects, had planned to build "Gallery Lofts," whose address was listed as 6006 Wilshire Blvd.

The projected complex was an upscale residential project intended to "bring loft-style living to new heights" of "metropolitan energy, urban luxury," according to its online brochure.

But at the moment, the project is an unfinished low-rise skeleton that many of its neighbors view as an eyesore.

LaBonge said the LACMA acquisition solidifies a cultural hub in walking distance of the Page Museum, the Petersen Automotive Museum and the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

"You go up three blocks to the Farmers Market and you're in heaven," he said. "Just like in the nation's capital in the Mall, Los Angeles will have a wonderful location. There's a lot of complement when you cluster museums together. It's a great plus."

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Source: Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-lacma12mar12,1,3114930.story)

Alright Broad! Alright LaBonge!

This is part of the big plan," LaBonge said. "It's all going to be complementary, and one day there's going to be a subway stop there, and everybody in the county can ride transit to that wonderful complex of art museums.

"We should build our city culturally," LaBonge said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he was attending a National League of Cities conference and lobbying Congress on issues such as air quality, the Los Angeles River restoration and Los Angeles International Airport.

:yes:

He's got the big picture...

LaBonge said the LACMA acquisition solidifies a cultural hub in walking distance of the Page Museum, the Petersen Automotive Museum and the Craft and Folk Art Museum.


Now check that out. Because of that, we're going to see wonderful things spring from out of that unintentionally. Good stuff. :cheers:

http://la.curbed.com/uploads/2008.02.train.jpg

Dangling Locomotive on Wilshire: Entirely Doable (http://la.curbed.com/archives/2008/04/jeff_koons_loco.php)

By Dakota
April 28, 2008

The New York Times follows up on a feasibility report delivered to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) regarding that planned train--specifically, a 1943 Baldwin locomotive designed by artist Jeff Koons--that would hang outside the museum. According the paper, a firm specializing in large art projects such as this one looked at the specifications of the Koon train and gave it a thumbs up. "...[the firm's founder] said that the prospects look good. “There were a number of technical issues,” he said. “We were unsure they could be resolved. But it appears like they can.” More details about the locomotive: The wheels would spin 100 miles per hour and steam would "belch" three times a day from the thing.
At the Ready When Artists Think Big (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/arts/design/27fink.html?_r=1&scp=13&sq=los+angeles&st=nyt&oref=slogin) [NY Times]
LACMA looks to its landscape as fertile grounds for art (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-bcam3outdoorfeb03,1,6217053.story) [LA Times]

The wheels would spin 100 miles per hour and steam would "belch" three times a day from the thing. There's no way I'm standing under that thing!!

one word, "earthquake!!!"

I think its awesome. Not particularly art worthy, IMO, but just as something mindless and huge...something to see just because its so crazy and there.

WHat about rust and age?? How will that affect the thing??
Id think twice befi=ore i get under the thing!! lol

It is crazy! It is nuts, especially if it's in operation as an up-ended locomotive. You just don't see that anywhere these days. People will wait at the location for its showtime. Kind of like seeing Kong. You want to be there when it breaks free...

I dont think it will break free...but that would be a pretty unique way to die...crushed by suspended locomotive.

Couple to give $45 million for new LACMA pavilion
The new exhibition pavilion was designed by architect Renzo Piano to complement its neighbor, the Broad building, which opened this year. The couple will give about $10 million more in artwork.
By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 29, 2008

In a move that will significantly bolster the ongoing expansion and refurbishment of the region's largest public art museum, a Los Angeles philanthropic couple will give $45 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and be honored with a new exhibition pavilion bearing their names.

The new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, a one-story structure designed by architect Renzo Piano and enclosed in glass and travertine marble, will be named for the donors, Beverly Hills residents whose vast business holdings include a floral wire service, a bottled-water enterprise and some of the nation's largest orchards. Lynda Resnick has served on LACMA's board of trustees since 1992 and is chair of the museum's acquisitions committee.

The Resnicks, longtime art collectors, have also promised LACMA unspecified gifts of art valued at $10 million.

The new pavilion will be immediately north of the $56-million Broad Contemporary Art Museum, also designed by Piano, which opened in February. It will mark the initiation of what LACMA is calling Phase II of its plan to upgrade and unify the sprawling, somewhat patchwork campus that occupies a lengthy stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. The new pavilion is expected to open in mid-2010.

The donation will be formally announced at a news conference this morning at the museum.

"This is really like a big historic event," Michael Govan, LACMA's director and chief executive, said in an interview last week. "This is what LACMA has wanted for a long time."

Govan said the new pavilion, which will rise about 28 feet from ground level and contain 45,000 square feet of exhibition space, could be used to host a variety of traveling and special exhibitions, including some drawn from LACMA's own collections. It will be the eighth building on the LACMA campus, which stretches from the La Brea tar pits on the east to the former May Co. department store on Fairfax Avenue to the west.

The gift's timing also ensures that expansion plans will proceed apace on a complex that historically has grown mainly in fits and starts.

"I'm so grateful to Lynda and Stewart not just for doing it but for doing it now," Govan said. "It should be a wave of momentum."

In an interview at the couple's art- and antiques-filled home, Lynda Resnick expressed hope that the new pavilion would augment Piano's and LACMA's vision of creating a more physically open, less imposing campus where visitors would feel more welcome than they may have in earlier phases of the museum's life.

"We're a county museum, and we serve the people, so if we intimidate the people we're not serving them," she said. She described the new pavilion as "a lovely Renzo building" that "won't overwhelm the art. It will enhance it."

The Resnicks' gift represents more than double their previously announced pledge of $25 million to fund a new entrance pavilion for the museum.

When BP (formerly known as British Petroleum Co.) stepped forward in March 2007 with its own $25-million gift to sponsor what is now known as the BP Grand Entrance, an open-air, solar-paneled structure, the Resnicks, in consultation with Govan, decided to increase and redirect their gift as part of Phase II, which also will include an overhaul of the former May Co. building, now known as LACMA West.

While Govan termed the Resnicks' change of plans "a leap of faith," the couple expressed confidence in the 45-year-old director, who took over LACMA's top job two years ago.

"We're very impressed with the leadership; we're very impressed with the institution," Stewart Resnick said.

Jane Nathanson, a LACMA trustee and close friend of the Resnicks who with her husband, Marc, recently gave $10 million to the museum, said that Govan had been "very persuasive" in making the case for the new building. She said the Resnick Pavilion will be a step forward in LACMA's goal of creating a coherent design complex that allows visitors to survey what the museum hopes eventually will be an encyclopedic collection.

"It will sort of complete the circle that people will make," Nathanson said of the new structure.

Architecturally, the pavilion will be a clear relative of the taller Broad building. Like the Broad, its roof will feature a saw-toothed configuration of panels that will allow carefully filtered light to pour in.

Govan likened the new pavilion in some respects to the Dia: Beacon building, the former Nabisco factory on the Hudson River that was converted into a museum during Govan's tenure as director of the New York-based Dia Art Foundation.

"Here's the beauty of the building," Govan said of the Resnick addition. "It's all skylights. So there's the wow factor."

Although Govan said he could not yet name specific exhibitions that would be held at the new building, he mentioned an upcoming show of late-period Renoir works as well as exhibitions taken from the museum's costumes and textiles department as possible candidates.

He also reiterated his belief that LACMA's expansion, though large in scale, is necessary even in these times of economic uncertainty.

"I believe we're not expanding beyond our means relative to the scale of the city," Govan said. "We're playing catch-up."

^^ Now that's what I'm talking about! Any others out there?

http://www.artdaily.com/imagenes/2008/09/30/Lynda-2chico.jpg
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=26400

^ NO

wow, that structure can really take up space..

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-12/43864231.jpg

Los Angeles County Museum of Art proposes merger with MOCA
The offer sets up a face-off between LACMA and the city's most powerful arts patron, Eli Broad, who has offered $30 million to the Museum of Contemporary Art.
By Diane Haithman and And Mike Boehm
The Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2008

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art proposed a merger with the financially struggling Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday.

The proposal provides a second bailout option for the downtown museum, which earlier received an offer of $30 million from billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad.

The merger plan sets up a face-off between L.A.'s most powerful arts patron and the museum with the largest art collection west of the Mississippi.

Under LACMA's proposal, MOCA's Geffen Contemporary space in Little Tokyo could become the primary venue for exhibitions and programs -- shifting the focus from MOCA's signature, but smaller, Grand Avenue building. Artwork from MOCA's world-renowned collection would also be displayed at LACMA's Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, which is under construction on LACMA's Wilshire Boulevard campus.

MOCA's board of directors met Tuesday but said in a statement that no decision was reached. The board is set to reconvene Thursday.

"We're giving them an alternative. It's their decision," said Michael Govan, the county museum's director and chief executive officer. "In a tough spot, it's always better to have alternatives."

He said any decision would be made on MOCA's timetable, not LACMA's.

Broad, who funded the $56-million building for LACMA that bears his name, dashed the county museum's hopes of acquiring his extensive private collection of contemporary art when he disclosed in January -- just before the gala opening of BCAM -- that he would instead keep his holdings in his own private foundation for loan to multiple museums. Broad recently disclosed plans to build yet another museum on the Westside for his collection.

Once LACMA's most powerful and influential trustee, Broad is now a life trustee of the county museum, but in that capacity is not a voting member and therefore was not among those who voted for the merger plan, Govan said Tuesday. Broad is also a non-voting life trustee of MOCA, where he was founding chairman.

The bailout offered by Broad calls for MOCA to match half of his $30-million pledge. Broad would designate $12.5 million to help replenish MOCA's endowment, with the remainder to cover deficits and future exhibitions. The offer would compel the museum to raise large sums in a dismal economic climate.

Broad declined to be interviewed but said in a statement: "The Broad Foundation favors any solution to MOCA's current financial situation that accomplishes five things: maintains MOCA's independence, keeps MOCA headquartered on Grand Avenue, continues MOCA's world-class exhibition program, preserves its collection for view by the broadest public, and provides financial assurances that would provide the institution with long-term financial health."

Since 2000, MOCA has overspent its revenues by $1 million a year on average, burning through reserves to pay bills. The economic crisis turned the chronic problem into an emergency.

Govan said the proposed merger presents a viable option for stabilizing MOCA's finances. LACMA's $68.2-million budget for 2007-08 was more than triple MOCA's expenses of about $20 million. The merger would not require any additional funding from LACMA's landlord, Los Angeles County, which provides nearly a third of its budget.

In tough economic times, Govan said, merging the boards and resources of the two museums would allow MOCA to take advantage of LACMA's strength in fundraising, the county museum's extensive and still-expanding gallery space and the greater attendance that LACMA has enjoyed.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said a merger would mean "considerable savings, not token savings" to MOCA's operating budget. LACMA has not spelled out specifics about staff cuts or the makeup of a combined board.

As a cost-cutting move, the Geffen Contemporary will close from early January through mid-June.

"A key element of the proposal is to keep the Geffen open all the time," Govan said. "We could work together . . . to think about how to utilize these spaces. Right now, the No. 1 spot is Grand Avenue, the No. 2 space is Geffen; we might reallocate space in a very different way.

"The Geffen space has this kind of beautiful, soulful presence that wants certain kinds of programs. . . . It actually functions better for some things, worse for others because it doesn't have the same climate control and all those other things," Govan said.

He thinks that showing MOCA's art in LACMA exhibition spaces would allow the public to see more, not less, of MOCA's collection at any given time. "Ours is a complement to theirs; theirs is the premier collection," Govan said. LACMA's contemporary art holdings are strongest in Southern California artists, while MOCA's are more international in scope.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the merger plan. City Council President Eric Garcetti painted LACMA's overture as civic and cultural poaching and questioned whether MOCA could hold onto its identity.

"Mergers often sound good at the beginning, but later on the smaller party often gets swallowed up and forgotten," Garcetti said. In light of major development plans for Grand Avenue as an arts corridor, he expressed fears that MOCA's headquarters there might become "the stepchild" of the institution.

Garcetti warned that a merger might jeopardize MOCA's two $1 leases with the city, one on the Geffen Contemporary, the other on the land beneath the MOCA-owned Grand Avenue museum.

Aiming to discourage the merger, Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes MOCA's downtown venues, introduced a council motion Tuesday asking the city Community Redevelopment Agency to give MOCA $2.8 million in rent money derived from the neighboring California Plaza development.

Although all the details have yet to be worked out, Govan said the hope is for the two museums to maintain separate memberships and identities. "The thing to understand is that we're not swallowing up MOCA," he said.

http://www.artdaily.com/imagenes/2008/09/30/Lynda-2chico.jpg
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=26400

even though it takes up space, at least it is not SCI-Arc, and it takes you a year to walk from one end to another

http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/5467/sciarcislongyz0.jpg

might as well turn a skyscraper on its side.

Hey, actually that is not a bad idea.

HAHA, useless... museums are different though. you don't want to be in an elevator or on escalators the whole time

HAHA, useless... museums are different though. you don't want to be in an elevator or on escalators the whole time

that is true. However at least it could have more style. I am sure there is other buildings taking up the same amount of land that looks better.

"I like the palm treethhhh!!!" http://www.easyfreesmileys.com/smileys/free-cute-smileys-246.gif (http://www.easyfreesmileys.com/Free-Cute-Smileys/) (suck suck suck suck suck....)

i agree. but i would also like to see a non-model rendering

MOCA accepts Broad's lifeline, appoints CEO
Museum of Contemporary Art votes to accept Eli Broad's $30-million bailout offer. UCLA Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young is appointed the museum's first chief executive.
By Diane Haithman
The Los Angeles Times
December 23, 2008

After weeks of conjecture, the board of the financially strapped Museum of Contemporary Art has voted to accept a $30-million bailout offer from billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a founder and life trustee of the museum and the city's largest arts patron.

In addition, MOCA's beleaguered director, Jeremy Strick, has resigned and MOCA has appointed UCLA Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young as the museum's first chief executive.

The Broad deal, to be announced today, ends speculation that the museum might opt to accept a merger offer made last week by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

According to the agreement, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation will match contributions to MOCA's endowment up to $15 million and provide $3 million a year for exhibition support for five years.

In an interview Monday, Broad, a staunch downtown supporter, said he made his offer because it would be a "real blow to this city" if the downtown museum, a linchpin of the planned Grand Avenue redevelopment, did not survive.

Broad said that he was not requiring MOCA to raise $15 million in matching funds in order to receive the $15-million challenge grant but rather would match endowment funds "dollar for dollar" with what MOCA was able to raise from trustees and others, with a cap of $15 million.

"It's very simple -- they raise a dollar, the foundation puts in a dollar," Broad said.

The agreement also includes a 90-day window to "allow any responsible party to replace the Broad Foundation on identical terms."

In an interview Monday, MOCA board co-chairmen Tom Unterman and David G. Johnson said that museum trustees had pledged or promised more than $20 million in new gifts since the museum's financial troubles became public in November. The executives declined to name specific board members who were planning donations.

Broad's agreement calls for MOCA to "continue operating as an independent world-class contemporary art museum" and to maintain both its headquarters on Grand Avenue and the Geffen Contemporary space in Little Tokyo. The plan requires MOCA to "keep its collection intact and not sell any works of art."

The agreement also requires MOCA to operate with an annual budget of "no less than $13 million and no more than $16 million in cash expenses" but says that the museum may operate at a higher level if it has the cash income to do so. In recent years, the museum's budget has averaged $20 million, Unterman said.

Broad said that he did not demand the resignation of Strick or the appointment of Young in order for MOCA to accept his challenge grant, although he supported both decisions and was consulted about the choice of Young.

Through a spokeswoman, Strick, who led the museum for nine years, declined to comment.

During his tenure, Strick presided over financial shortfalls that resulted in the museum's dipping into funds from "restricted" accounts.

"We're a donor -- we're not on the board, we're not running MOCA in any way, shape or form," Broad said of his charitable foundation.

Broad's decision to make the $30-million offer to MOCA in November pitted the city's most powerful arts patron against LACMA, which houses the largest art collection west of the Mississippi.

Broad, who funded the $56-million Broad Contemporary Art Museum on the LACMA campus, dashed the county museum's hopes of acquiring his extensive private collection of contemporary art when he disclosed plans in January to instead retain his holdings for loan to multiple museums. He said Monday that he perceived no rift between himself and LACMA and would continue to support both the county museum and MOCA.

Unterman said Young was being given the title "chief executive officer" rather than director because Young is expected to oversee the museum's business operations rather than make artistic decisions.

"Chuck Young is a very distinguished leader and fills many roles, but he would be the first person to say that he is not a person of the art world," Unterman said. "We didn't want to connote that he is going to be the next director of the museum."

Young will work in tandem with a newly appointed advisory committee of arts leaders, including John R. Lane, president and chief executive of the New Art Trust and director emeritus of the Dallas Museum of Art; Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs; John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum; and financial advisor Gary Cypres. A successor to Strick has not been named.

Broad, 75, made his initial fortune in real estate through Kaufman & Broad, now KB Home. He also founded and led SunAmerica, now a subsidiary of American International Group, until 2000, when he stepped down to concentrate full time on philanthropy.

Although also noted for substantial gifts toward educational and medical institutions, Broad made a spate of major donations to Los Angeles arts institutions in 2008. Not only did the Broad Contemporary Art Museum open, but the businessman also donated $6 million to Los Angeles Opera for its upcoming production of Wagner's "Ring" cycle and $10 million to the new Broad Stage at Santa Monica College.

December 30, 2008

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oh common! is it a building or a tent now? better put a rug over the cement

Imperfect! You hath strayed far from your peasant holdings into King territory. Well played, sir!

muhuhuhu >=]

June 23, 2009

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Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor planning LACMA makeover
December 1, 2009 | 5:39 pm

The dream of razing four of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s oldest buildings — or at least radically reconfiguring the dreary, closed-in quadrangle they occupy – is being resurrected at the Wilshire Boulevard institution.

The Architect’s Newspaper reports that museum leaders are working with this year’s Pritzker Prize winner, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, to formulate a long-range plan for getting rid of the problematic buildings and plaza, and replacing them with a more open and inviting structure.

A previous plan to tear down the buildings and build something revolutionary in their place died in a 2002 bond referendum. A 60.5% majority favored the arts bond proposal that would have given LACMA $100 million toward architect Rem Koolhaas’ $300 million-plus plan to replace everything on the eastern end of the museum’s Wilshire Boulevard campus, except for the distinctive Pavilion for Japanese Art. In place of the three 1965 gallery and theater buildings, and a fourth that opened in 1986, LACMA would have become a single structure on concrete stilts, topped by a billowing, tent-like roof.

California law, however, requires a two-thirds super-majority for tax-backed bond issues. With the economy in a post-9/11, post-tech-bubble recession, LACMA leaders abandoned Koolhaas’ all-at-once plan and adopted a gradual, $450 million project that could be built in stages, on a pay-as-you-go basis.

So far it has yielded buildings designed by Renzo Piano: the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a new entrance pavilion, and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, due to open next year. As for those older, east-campus buildings, the plans called for some renovations, but no tear-down and rebuild.

But the Architect's Newspaper report by Edward Lifson indicates that the dream of undoing the uninviting architectural tangle in one fell swoop still lives.

Zumthor has been visiting and helping LACMA leaders brainstorm about a remake of the eastern end of its 20-acre campus -- again excluding the Japanese Pavilion.

The architect tells Lifson he’s been on board since April, working with "a large team from LACMA" to come up with ideas about "what a new building for the entire collection could be like." Most probable, he says, would be "a sequence of period galleries with a long corridor."

Zumthor is quoted as saying the design work alone would take two to three years, and that it could take a decade to complete the project. But he said he would try to come up with a preliminary plan quickly, so that museum director Michael Govan, who had worked with Zumthor on a never-realized project in his previous job running the Dia Art Foundation in New York, will have something to show prospective donors.
Zumthor says he and Govan want to take advantage of LACMA’s Hancock Park surroundings and emphasize open, outdoor space. "Michael and I have the feeling that all of Los Angeles is waiting for some real public space," the architect, who lived in L.A. during the 1980s while teaching at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, told Lifson.

Govan couldn’t be reached today. He told the Architect’s Newspaper that planning is in "the earliest phases of thinking," and that the poor economy for the current construction project makes this a good time to strategize about better days ahead, including what to do with properties LACMA owns across Wilshire Boulevard from its current row of structures.

"If I were to have my way," he said, "I’d like to see the whole campus transformed, edge to edge, over about 15 years."

-- Mike Boehm

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/12/lacmas-dream-of-unknotting-the-east-side-of-its-campus-lives-with-pritzker-winner-peter-zumthor-on-t.html

Shot mid December.

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Fancy...?

Nice pics, Mark! A little HDR action :)

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-08/55817038.jpg
'Fashioning Fashion' at LACMA's Resnick Exhibition Pavilion
Among the opening exhibitions at the new museum pavilion is a fashion-forward trip from the Age of Enlightenment through World War I. The items come from the museum's recently and vastly expanded holdings.
By Booth Moore
Los Angeles Times Fashion Critic
August 29, 2010

John Galliano, a student of history unlike any other designer of his generation, has imagined runway collections from French Revolution-era street scenes, Napoleon-era cartoons and the life of Pocahontas. His globetrotting research trips are legendary, taking him from the teahouses of Japan to the ruins of Egypt. But who would have thought that when he wanted to see some of the world's finest examples of European clothing from the Age of Enlightenment to World War I, he would find them in Los Angeles?

In April of last year, Galliano, who designs 32 collections each year between his namesake label and Christian Dior, visited the dim, closet-like space that is the costume and textiles department of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He spent two hours marveling over delicate gold embroidery and accordion-pleated sleeves, instructing a cadre of assistants to snap photos from different angles.

Researchers, costume designers — and the public — soon will be able to view some of what he saw when the museum's $54-million Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opens Oct. 2 with "Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail 1700-1915." The exhibition, one of three opening in the new space designed by Renzo Piano, is the most comprehensive of any European costume exhibition in the museum's history.

And yet what will be on display is just a fraction of a major acquisition spearheaded in 2007 by museum Director Michael Govan, costume and textile department curators Sharon Takeda and Kaye Spilker, and donors Michael and Ellen Michaelson and Suzanne Saperstein. Amassed over 50 years by two European collectors, the total collection is "museum-changing," according to Takeda, and will feed exhibitions for years to come.

The tumultuous period represented in "Fashioning Fashion" is similar to our own. The Old World was being rocked by the forces of revolution, global trade expansion and technical advances. Fashion went from being a form of handcraft enjoyed by the aristocracy to an industry of mass production.

Most of the pieces shown here are one of a kind and would have been owned by the wealthy, including a spectacular bejeweled and feathered turban made by French designer Paul Poiret for his wife, Denise, to wear at their Arabian-themed "Thousand and Second Night" party in 1911. And the red-white-and-blue embroidered French Revolutionary-era vest that Galliano writes about in his preface to the exhibition catalog.

"You can spend hours studying this vest," he says of the piece, which has a butterfly with clipped wings embroidered on the lapel. A precursor to the slogan T-shirt, the vest seems to play to both sides of the political conflict, with embroidered phrases that read, "The habit does not make the monk" and "Shame upon him who thinks evil of it."

In this exhibition, the delight is in the details — in the precision of stripes on an 1850 man's tartan vest that line up just so, and the charm of an embroidered silver bird that perches just below the knee on a women's red stocking that dates from 1700-1725.

To give some context, the curators begin with a visual timeline, using all-white ensembles to show how dramatically the women's silhouette changed, from accentuating the hips with rectangular-shaped panniers that could stretch to 6 feet wide during the 1760s and '70s, to pushing up the bust in the Neoclassical Empire styles of Napoleon's court in the early 1800s, to pushing out the bum with bustles that molded the torso into an S-shaped curve in the 1880s.

Later, we get to see the foundation garments that achieved body modification in the age before plastic surgery, including a collapsible bustle, a leather corset that predated Vivienne Westwood's by nearly a century and a pair of "Moulin Rouge"-era fetish boots that lace all the way up the leg and could easily be mistaken for Christian Louboutin's Fifre boots from last fall. The bellwether of modernity is a delicate flower-appliquéd cotton brassiere designed in 1915 by Poiret, who gave women permission to ditch their corsets for his diaphanous dresses.

The men are the eye candy, at least in the timeline, dressed like peacocks in the 18th and 19th centuries in elaborately quilted and embroidered waistcoats and breeches made of colorful velvets, silks and lace, only to end up in 1911 in the businessman's sober gray suit-and-tie that has remained largely unchanged for the past century. (Curiously, in the middle of the 19th century, there was a bit of an Armani moment, seen on an 1840s single-breasted thigh-length coat with ease through the sleeves, paired with loose-fitting trousers.)

Other thematic sections highlight textiles and trim — the bling that the upper classes relied on to communicate wealth before logos. Indeed, the fabric, not the design, was the most expensive part of high fashion in the 18th century. Trade routes brought new silks and dyes from the Far East, and different colors and patterns were trendy from one season to the next. Textiles were so treasured, in fact, that they were passed down or repurposed into other garments.

"Globalism then meant exotic," Takeda says. "Now, it's about getting something cheaper from China."

"And everything looks the same," Spilker adds.

Trimmings were sold by weight and were so valuable that they could be transferred from one garment to another. A golden-hued silk dress from the 1760s is "frosted" with pure silver lace. Even more impressive is an 1845 black satin gown with an expansive train covered in gilt copper thread, which belonged to Queen Maria II of Portugal. It was handcrafted using a technique called "satin stitch," meaning that much of the thread lies hidden from view. The queen was so rich, it seemed, she could afford to decorate the inside of her clothes.

But the days of the royals were numbered. Revolution was spreading across Europe in 1848, and excess was out. "It was wartime," Spilker says. "You were supposed to look like a citizen because it was an uprising of the common people."

Fashion adapted by switching the emphasis "from surface to structure."

"The way to show you were wealthy was by how well your clothes fit," Spilker says. The art of tailoring is another theme of the exhibition, showcased on a man's cinnamon-colored wool tailcoat from Scotland, circa 1845, pad-stitched inside for a smooth finish, with sleeves sculpted to fit into the arm's eye, and M-shaped notches marking the transition between the drape of the shawl collar and the sharpness of the wide lapels. The piece isn't so much designed as engineered.

Eventually, mechanized production put Savile Row-type tailoring within reach of the public too. But it also put many artisans out of work, as spinning, weaving, printing, embroidering and sewing could be done more quickly and cheaply in factories. The end result is today's culture of fast fashion. Now that clothing is so inexpensive it's practically disposable, you have to wonder if fabric and fit will ever have the same currency again.

The exhibition runs through March 6.


Read More: http://www.latimes.com/features/image/la-ig-lacma-20100829,0,5081775.story

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http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/levitated-mass



Between a rock and LACMA, it's a hard place
When installed at the art museum, a 340-ton boulder will become part of a sculpture called 'Levitated Mass.' Getting there from Riverside County is a logistical challenge and a bureaucratic one.
By Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times
3:58 PM PST, November 24, 2011

The object: A 340-ton, 211/2-foot-tall chunk of granite, sitting in a quarry in Riverside County.

The mission: Lift it and haul it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on a 106-mile journey.

Degree of difficulty: High. Very high.

This is no ordinary rock. The massive boulder is supposed to form the centerpiece of artist Michael Heizer's outdoor sculpture called "Levitated Mass," part of a planned permanent display on the north side of LACMA's Wilshire Boulevard campus.

If only the rock could really levitate. Moving it is turning out to be tougher than expected, and the museum, which was supposed to take delivery in August, now says the rock likely won't leave the quarry until the end of December.

"The move ain't gonna be a picnic," says Rick Albrecht, the project's logistics supervisor whose company, Emmert International, has moved nuclear generators and a 19th-century historic home, so he knows a thing or two about heavy lifting. "But the preparation is the biggest job."

Here's the plan. The big rock sits in Stone Valley quarry, a 90-acre wash of gray and brown framed by dusty, granite hillsides and Riverside's Jurupa mountains. Truckers must wrangle the boulder from the quarry onto a 294-foot-long, modular, centipede-like "transporter," which will carry it through the night on its journey across three counties.

Top speed? Seven miles per hour.

Work crews from 100 utility districts will accompany the rock to take down traffic signs, overhead wires and other obstacles, then reinstall them once the giant transporter moves on. A signal expert will move and then reinstate the traffic lights that otherwise would be mowed down like blades of grass by the transporter, which is nearly as wide as three freeway traffic lanes.

There will be flag crews to stop traffic and a security detail. And, of course, the requisite documentary film crew.

Once in place, the boulder will rest atop a 456-long, ramp-like slot in the ground through which visitors will pass, making it appear that the rock levitates above them. The whole project — cost of the rock, its transport and construction of the sculpture site — will cost up to $10 million, which the museum has raised from private donors, including Terry and Jane Semel, Bob Daly and Carole Bayer Sager.

It is, as LACMA director Michael Govan is fond of noting, a process not unlike that facing the ancient Egyptians when they built the pyramids.

But the Pharaohs didn't have to contend with a thicket of bureaucracy. Even before they get underway, the movers must negotiate with city and county and state officials for the myriad permits required to cross jurisdictions — more than 100 in all.

And local officials are determining which roads and bridges are large enough and strong enough to withstand the weight. Permits are in flux for four cities, with Diamond Bar doing engineering studies on its portion of the proposed route.

"It's intensive," concedes Albrecht, something of a modern-day cowboy with a bushy mustache, silver hoop earring and a deep, above-the-neck-tan. He is standing in Stone Valley, eerily quiet but for the intermittent bleeping of a bulldozer and the occasional rumble of loose rock tumbling down quarry walls.

"Everyone has to be in agreement. It's always changing. Then we re-route. The [permitting] process generally takes a year, and we have six months. So we've been fighting like crazy to get it done."

Albrecht's brother Mark, lead project manager at Emmert, is the Oz-like figure behind boardroom doors, negotiating with municipalities for permission to travel their roads. Rerouting, he says, sets off a domino effect of changes involving multiple crews, scheduling tangles, new test drives, yet more permits — and each time pushing back the rock's leave date.

Meantime, the engineering feat that is the transporter raises its own set of obstacles.

"Try turning a vehicle like that," Rick Albrecht says, pointing out that the transporter will often have to drive on the wrong side of the road to make a turn.

Which is why the rock will travel at night, on roads closed to traffic — a combined 1.2 million-pound load traveling so slowly that the journey will take nine days. The rock itself will be shrink-wrapped for protection and the vehicle illuminated by more than 800 feet of string lights for visibility.

Parking? "The middle of the road, the only place big enough," Rick says. Multiple permits were needed to park the rock during the day.

Tim Culverwell is the green light, red light guy — literally. As a superintendent at LA Signal, he'll have the laborious job of moving traffic signals.

"We're gonna end up flashing, lifting and turning almost every traffic signal pole that we pass," he says. "We've never had to go to this extreme on a load before; it's up to a two-hour process per pole."

If all this seems excessive, the artist's assistant, Tim Cunningham, is quick to play devil's advocate. "I've found it amusing from what I've read in the press about the expense, the naysayers. It's as viable as any other public works project," he insists. "And this is creating jobs above and beyond the aesthetic appeal — for Emmert, the riggers, the truckers, the utility guys working overtime — and the country needs jobs."

Stephen Vanderhart, co-owner of the quarry, has found the experience a mixed blessing. The transporter which was built around the rock, sits smack in the middle of his mining area disrupting production. But what the quarry has lost in production, it's gained in PR, Vanderhart says. Stone Valley gets about half a dozen calls a day from people asking if the rock has moved, and visitors stop by every week to gawk.

"It's amazing; people who aren't necessarily into art are excited about it because of the mechanics, the geology of it," Vanderhart says.

The night the boulder begins its epic journey, Vanderhart plans to see it off with an open-air barbecue for about 300 people at the quarry, complete with a DJ and custom T-shirts as souvenirs.

What will the T-shirts say? "Big … Rock … Move!"



Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-lacma-rock-20111125,0,6052405.story

Levitated Mass boulder moves next week (probably)
Kevin Roderick • February 23 2012 6:31 PM

Photographer Gary Leonard is really looking forward to the move of that 340-ton boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He got a call last night from the quarry in Riverside County: the truck is scheduled now to roll out next Tuesday, Feb. 28, after a little bon voyage party on the site. The night route taken to Wilshire Boulevard is going to be laborious and take most of two weeks. As of October, they were talking about the move requiring special parking in eight different jurisdictions — Pomona, Rowland Heights, Chino Hills, La Mirada, Long Beach, Lakewood, West Carson and Los Angeles — and the temporary relocation of utility wires or other accommodations by 100 different utilities. Like I said, it's a big boulder. The installation envisioned by artist Michael Heizer is a large concrete trench on the lawn out back of the museum.

A story at ZevWeb agrees the move is scheduled for Tuesday night Feb. 28, escorted by eight CHP officers.

http://www.laobserved.com/