 | |
 Museum pavilion, 2014, prior to demolition | |
 Interactive fullscreen map | |
| Established | 1910[1][2] |
|---|---|
| Location | 5905Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles United States |
| Coordinates | 34°3′48″N118°21′33″W / 34.06333°N 118.35917°W /34.06333; -118.35917 |
| Type | Encyclopedic,Art museum |
| Visitors | 1,592,101 (2016)[3] |
| Director | Michael Govan |
| Architect | William Pereira (1965) Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (1986) Bruce Goff (1988) |
| Public transit access | Bus:20,217,720 or780 to Wilshire Bl and Fairfax AvFutureRail:Wilshire/Fairfax (service to begin in 2025) |
| Website | www |
TheLos Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is anart museum located onWilshire Boulevard in theMiracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to theLa Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 1961, splitting from theLos Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. Four years later, it moved to the Wilshire Boulevard complex designed byWilliam Pereira. The museum's wealth and collections grew in the 1980s, and it added several buildings beginning in that decade and continuing in subsequent decades.
LACMA isthe largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually.[4] It holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition toart exhibits, the museum features film and concert series.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of theLos Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, founded in 1910 inExposition Park near theUniversity of Southern California.
Edward W. Carter helped orchestrate the fundraising effort for LACMA in response toJ. Paul Getty's increasing reluctance to donate any more artworks to Los Angeles County.[5] Getty had donated a few excellent artworks such as theArdabil Carpet andRembrandt'sPortrait of Martin Looten, but then became aware of their shabby and disorganized presentation in the county's aging multipurpose museum and chose to establish hisown art museum next to his house.[5]
Howard F. Ahmanson, Sr.,Anna Bing Arnold andBart Lytton were the first principal patrons of the new county art museum. Ahmanson made the lead donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after theNational Gallery of Art.
The museum, built in a style similar toLincoln Center and theLos Angeles Music Center, consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and theLytton Gallery (renamed the Frances andArmand Hammer Building in 1968). The board selected LA architectWilliam Pereira over the directors' recommendation ofLudwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings.[6] According to a 1965Los Angeles Times story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million.[7] Construction began in 1963, and was undertaken by theDel E. Webb Corporation. Construction was completed in early 1965.[8] At the time, theLos Angeles Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles. When the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, but they were filled in and covered over when tar from the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits began seeping in.[7]
Money poured into LACMA during the boom years of the 1980s, a reportedly $209 million in private donations during director Earl Powell's tenure.[10] To house its growing collections of modern and contemporary art and to provide more space for exhibitions, the museum hired the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates to design its $35.3-million,[11] 115,000-square-footRobert O. Anderson Building for 20th-century art, which opened in 1986 (renamed the Art of the Americas Building in 2007). In the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new partially roofed central court, nearly an acre of space bounded by the museum's four buildings.[12]
The museum'sPavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architectBruce Goff, opened in 1988, as did theB. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden ofRodinbronzes.
In 1999, theHancock Park Improvement Project was complete, and the LACMA-adjacent park (designed by landscape architectLaurie Olin) was inaugurated with a free public celebration. The $10-million renovation replaced dead trees and bare earth with picnic facilities, walkways, viewing sites for theLa Brea tar pits and a 150-seat red granite amphitheater designed by artistJackie Ferrara.[13]
Also in 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacentformer May Company department store building, an impressive example ofstreamline moderne architecture designed byAlbert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998.[14]
In 2004 LACMA's board of trustees unanimously approved a plan for LACMA's transformation by architectRem Koolhaas, who had proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new single, tent-topped structure,[15][16] estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million.[17] Kohlhaas edged out French architectJean Nouvel, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities.[18] The list of candidates had previously narrowed to five in May 2001: Koolhaas, Nouvel,Steven Holl,Daniel Libeskind andThom Mayne.[18]
However, the project soon stalled after the museum failed to secure funding.[19] In 2004 LACMA's board of trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by architectRenzo Piano. The planned transformation consisted of three phases.
Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008. The renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissionedgraffiti art by street artistsMargaret Kilgallen andBarry McGee.[20] The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings. The BP Grand Entrance and the adjacentBroad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) comprise the $191 million (originally $150 million) first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign. BCAM is named forEli and Edy Broad, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign; Eli Broad also served on LACMA's board of directors.[21] BCAM opened on February 16, 2008, adding 58,000 square feet (5,400 m2) of exhibition space to the museum. In 2010 the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.[22]
The second phase was intended to turn the May building into new offices and galleries, designed by SPF Architects. As proposed, it would have had flexible gallery space, education space, administrative offices, a new restaurant, a gift shop and a bookstore, as well as study centers for the museum's departments of costume and textiles, photography and prints and drawings, and a roof sculpture garden with two works byJames Turrell. However, construction of this phase was halted in November 2010.[23] Phase two and three were never completed.
Specifics about the third phase, which initially was to involve renovations to older buildings, long remained undisclosed.[23] In November 2009, plans were made public that LACMA's director Michael Govan was working with Swiss architect andPritzker Prize laureatePeter Zumthor on plans for rebuilding the eastern section of the campus, the Perreira Buildings between the two new Renzo Piano buildings and the tar pits.[16][24] Architecture firmSkidmore, Owings & Merrill collaborated with Zumthor on the building's design.[25] With an estimated cost of $650 million,[26] Zumthor's first proposal called for a horizontal building alongWilshire Boulevard. It would have been wrapped in glass on all sides and its main galleries lifted one floor into the air. The wide roof would have been covered with solar panels.[27] In a later concession to concerns raised by its neighbor, thePage Museum, LACMA had Zumthor alter the shape of his proposed building to stretch across Wilshire Boulevard and away from theLa Brea Tar Pits.[26][28]
In June 2014, theLos Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved $5 million for LACMA to continue its proposed plans to tear down the structures on the east end of its campus for a single museum building.[29] Later that year, they approved in concept a plan that would provide public financing and $125 million toward the $600-million project.[30]
On April 8, 2019, the Zumthor-designed building was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The final approved building designed was scaled back from the original 387,500 square feet (36,000 m2) to 347,500 square feet (32,280 m2), with gallery space shrinking from 121,000 square feet (11,200 m2) to 110,000 square feet (10,000 m2). The new proposal also dropped the black form aesthetics, reducing it to a one-level, aboveground, glass-enclosed, sand-colored concrete building, to save costs. The design still calls for an arm above Wilshire Boulevard.[31][32]
Other than necessary mechanical systems and bathrooms, the building's entire second story will be devoted to gallery space.[25] Arranged in four broad clusters around the building, each one of the twenty-six core galleries is designed in the form of a square or a rectangle at various scales.[25] Other services, among them the museum's education department, shop and three restaurants, will be at ground level, as will a 300-seat theater in the section of the building on the southern side of Wilshire Boulevard.[25]
The total cost was estimated to be at $650 million, with LA county providing $125 million in funds and the rest raised by fundraising. LACMA raised $560 million by 2019[33] and $700 million by 2022. The total estimate is now at $750 million by 2023.[34]
In 2020, four buildings on the campus were demolished to make way for a reconstructed facility. His design drew strong community opposition and was lambasted by architectural critics and museum curators, who objected to its reduced gallery space, poor design, and exorbitant costs.[35][36][37] The re-designed final building was criticized by some local architects, including theLos Angeles Times editorial architectChristopher Knight, calling the plans "half baked".[38] Antonio Pacheco called the plans an "affront to L.A.'s architectural and cultural heritage."[39] Especially criticized was the plan's reduction in gallery space.[40] The plans raised significant controversy from Angelenos as well, prompting a "Save LACMA" campaign.[41]Los Angeles owns air rights above Wilshire, so the city council must give approval to the project, since part of the structure goes over the street.
Demolition of the Pereira buildings began in April 2020. The demolition was completed in October of that same year.[42] By 2021, construction slowed with the discovery of on-site fossil finds.[34] In the meantime, the Zumthor building opening was pushed back to 2024,[43] and eventually, 2026.[44] As of March 2025[update], parts of the plaza around the Zumthor Building were expected to open in mid-2025, ahead of the project's official completion.[45][46]
In 2010 LACMA partnered with theCity of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department in an effort to ensure the preservation of theWatts Towers, offering its staff, expertise, and fundraising assistance.[47] As of 2018, LACMA is working with Los Angeles County to develop a site at the Earvin "Magic" Johnson Park, which is close to Watts Towers.[48]
In 2018, LACMA secured a 35-year lease on an 80,000-square-foot, city-owned former Metro maintenance and storage yard from 1911 in the South Los Angeles Wetlands Park area.[48]
In 2023, LACMA and the foundation of the philanthropistElaine Wynn announced their partnership to launch theLas Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA).[49] That same year, the Las Vegas council approved negotiations to dedicate a parcel of land for the proposed 90,000-square-foot, three-story building of the Las Vegas Museum of Art inSymphony Park.[49][50]
With the support of a 2021 grant provided byArt Bridges and theTerra Foundation for American Art, LACMA launched a collaboration called Local Access, in which the museum shares portions of its collection with theLancaster Museum of Art and History,Riverside Art Museum,Vincent Price Art Museum atEast Los Angeles College, andCalifornia State University, Northridge, Art Galleries.[50]
In 1971, curatorMaurice Tuchman's revolutionary "Art and Technology" exhibit opened at LACMA after its debut at the1970 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan.[51] The museum staged its first exhibition by contemporary black artists later that year, featuringCharles Wilbert White, Timothy Washington andDavid Hammons, then little known.[52] The museum's best-attended show ever was "Treasures of Tutankhamun", which drew 1.2 million during four months in 1978. The 2005 "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" drew 937,613 during its 137-day run. A 1999 show ofVincent van Gogh masterpieces fromthe artist's eponymous Amsterdam museum is the third most successful show, and a 1984 exhibition of French Impressionist works is fourth.[53] In 1994, "Picasso and the Weeping Women: The Years of Marie-Therese Walter and Dora Maar" opened to rave reviews and large crowds, drawing more than 153,000 visitors.[54]
Since the arrival of current director Michael Govan, about 80% of just over 100 featured temporary exhibitions have been of Modern or contemporary art while the permanent exhibitions feature work dating from antiquity, including pre-Columbian, Assyrian and Egyptian art through contemporary art.[55]
More recent exhibits, focusing on popular culture and entertainment, have also been well-received, both by critics and patrons. Exhibits devoted to the works of movie-directorsTim Burton andStanley Kubrick drew especially positive reactions and responses.[56]
LACMA's more than 120,000 objects are divided among its numerous departments by region, media, and time period and are spread amongst the various museum buildings.[57]
The Modern Art collection is displayed in the Ahmanson Building, which was renovated in 2008 to have a new entrance featuring a large staircase, conceived as a gathering place similar to Rome'sSpanish Steps. Filling the atrium at the base of the staircase is Tony Smith's massive sculptureSmoke (1967).[58] The plaza level galleries also house African art and a gallery highlighting the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies.
The modern collection on the plaza level displays works from 1900 to the 1970s, largely populated by theJanice and Henri Lazarof Collection. In December 2007, Janice andHenri Lazarof gave LACMA 130 mostly modernist works estimated to be worth more than $100 million.[59] The collection includes 20 works byPicasso, watercolors and paintings byPaul Klee andWassily Kandinsky and a considerable number of sculptures byAlberto Giacometti,Constantin Brâncuși,Henry Moore,Willem de Kooning,Joan Miró,Louise Nevelson,Archipenko, andArp.[60][61]
The Contemporary Art collection is displayed in the 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), opened on February 16, 2008. BCAM's inaugural exhibition featured 176 works by 28 artists of postwar Modern art from the late 1950s to the present. All but 30 of the works initially displayed came from the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad (pronounced "brode").[62] Long-time trustee Robert Halff had already donated 53 works of contemporary art in 1994. Components of that gift includedJoan Miró,Jasper Johns,Sam Francis,Frank Stella,Lari Pittman,Chris Burden,Richard Serra,John Chamberlain,Matthew Barney, andJeff Koons. It also provided LACMA with its first drawings byClaes Oldenburg andCy Twombly.[63]
Back Seat Dodge '38 (1964), byEdward Kienholz, is a sculpture portraying a couple engaged in sexual activity in the back seat of a truncated 1938 Dodge automobile chassis. The piece won Kienholz instant celebrity in 1966 when theLos Angeles County Board of Supervisors tried to ban the sculpture as pornographic and threatened to withhold financing from LACMA if it included the work in a Kienholz retrospective. A compromise was reached under which the sculpture's car door would remain closed and guarded, to be opened only on the request of a museum patron who was over 18, and only if no children were present in the gallery. The uproar led to more than 200 people lining up to see the work the day the show opened. Ever since,Back Seat Dodge '38 has drawn crowds.[64]
The Art of the Americas Building has American, Latin American, and pre-Columbian collections displayed on the second floor and temporary exhibition space on the first floor. Formerly known as the Anderson Building, the Art of the Americas Building comprises galleries for art from North, Central, and South America.[65]
From 1972 to 1976,Donelson Hoopes served as Senior Curator of American Art.
LACMA's Latin American Art galleries reopened in July 2008 after several years renovation. The Latin American collection includes pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, Modern, and contemporary works. Many recent additions to the collection were financed by sales of works from an 1,800 piece holding of 20th century Mexican art compiled by dealer-collectorsBernard and Edith Lewin and given to the museum in 1997.[66]
Thepre-Columbian galleries were redesigned byJorge Pardo, a Los Angeles artist who works in sculpture, design, and architecture.[66] Pardo's display cases are built from thick, stacked sheets of medium-density fiberboard (MDF), with spacing of equal thickness in between the 70-plus layers. The laser-cut organic forms undulate and swell out from the walls, sharply contrasting to the rectangular display cases found in most art museums.[67]
The museum's pre-Columbian collection began in the 1980s with the first installment of a 570-piece gift from Southern California collectorConstance McCormick Fearing and the purchase of about 200 pieces from L.A. businessmanProctor Stafford. The holdings recently jumped from about 1,800 to 2,500 objects with a gift of Colombian ceramics fromCamilla Chandler Frost, a LACMA trustee and the sister ofOtis Chandler, formerLos Angeles Times publisher, andStephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer of Atlanta, whose family built the collection.[66] A sizable portion of LACMA's pre-Columbian collection was excavated from burial chambers in Colima,Nayarit and other regions around Jalisco in modern-day Mexico.[67] LACMA boasts one of the largest collections ofLatin American art due to the generous donation of more than 2,000 works of art byBernard Lewin and his wife Edith Lewin in 1996. In 2007 the museum signed an agreement with the Fundación Cisneros for a loan of 25 colonial-style works, later extended until 2017.[65]
The Spanish Colonial collection includes work from 17th and 18th century Mexican artistsMiguel Cabrera,José de Ibarra,José de Páez, andNicolás Rodriguez Juárez. The collection has galleries forDiego Rivera andRufino Tamayo. The Latin American contemporary gallery highlights worksFrancis Alÿs.[67]
The Hammer Building houses the Chinese and Korean collections.[58] The Korean art collection began with the donation of a group of Korean ceramics in 1966 byBak Jeonghui, then president of the Republic of Korea, after a visit to the museum. LACMA today claims to have the most comprehensive holding outside of Korea and Japan.[68] ThePavilion for Japanese Art displays the Shin'enkan collection donated by Joe D. Price. In 1999 LACMA trustee Eric Lidow and his wife, Leza, donated 75 ancient Chinese works valued at a total of $3.5 million, including important bronze objects and prime examples of Buddhist sculpture.[69]LACMA also has a rich collection of relics from India, mostly consisting of sculptures ofJain Tirthankaras, Buddha and Hindu deities. Many Paintings from India are also present in the LACMA.
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The second floor of the Ahmanson Building has Greek and Roman Art galleries. A large portion of the museum's ancient Greek and Roman art collection was donated byWilliam Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The museum's Islamic galleries include over 1700 works from ceramics and inlaid metalwork to enameled glass, carved stone and wood, and arts of the book from manuscript illumination toIslamic calligraphy. The collection is especially strong in Persian and Turkish glazed pottery and tiles, glass, and arts of the book. The collection began in earnest in 1973 when theNasli M. Heeramaneck Collection was gifted to the museum by philanthropistJoan Palevsky.[70]
In 1990Max Palevsky gave 32 pieces ofArts and Crafts furniture to LACMA; three years later, he added an additional 42 pieces to his gift. In 2000, he donated $2 million to LACMA for Arts and Crafts works. He supplied about a third of the 300 objects displayed in a 2004–05 LACMA exhibit, "The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: 1880–1920" and in 2009, the museum presented "The Arts and Crafts Movement: Masterworks From the Max Palevsky and Jodie Evans Collection".[71] With a single acquisition in 2009, LACMA became a major center for the study and display of 18th- and 19th-century European clothing when it bought the holdings of dealers Martin Kamer of London and Wolfgang Ruf of Beckenried, Switzerland—about 250 outfits and 300 accessories created between 1700 and 1915, including men's three-piece suits, women's dresses, children's garb, and a vast array of shoes, hats, purses, shawls, fans, and undergarments.[72]
Los Angeles sculptorRobert Graham created the towering, bronzeRetrospective Column (1981, cast in 1986) for the entrance of the Art of the Americas Building. A new contemporary sculpture garden was opened directly east of the museum's Wilshire Boulevard entrance in 1991, including large-scale outdoor sculptures byAlice Aycock,Ellsworth Kelly, Henry Moore, and others. The centerpiece of the garden isAlexander Calder's three-piece mobileHello Girls, commissioned by a women's museum-support group for the museum's opening in 1965. Situated in a curving reflecting pool, the mobile has brightly colored paddles that are moved by jets of water.[73][74]
The Ahmanson Building's atrium was remodeled to holdTony Smith'sSmoke, which had not been displayed since its original 1967 presentation at Washington, D.C.'sCorcoran Gallery of Art. The massive black painted aluminum artwork is made up of 43 piers and is 45 ft (14 m) long, 33 ft (10 m) wide, and 22 ft (6.7 m) high. The newly fabricated work was initially on loan from the artist's estate,[75] but in 2010, after several months of intense fundraising efforts, "the museum acquired the work for an undisclosed amount reported to exceed $3 million and [with an insurance valuation of] 'over $5 million.'"[76] The purchase was "made possible by The Belldegrun Family's gift to LACMA in honor of Rebecka Belldegrun's birthday", per the museum.[77]
Eli and Edythe Broad contributed $10 million to fund the purchase ofRichard Serra'sBand sculpture, on display on the first floor of BCAM when the building opened.[62][78]
Surrounding the BCAM building and LACMA's courtyard is a 100palm tree garden, designed by artistRobert Irwin and landscape architectPaul Comstock. Some of the 30 varieties of palms are in the ground, but most are in large wooden boxes above ground.[79][80] Directly in front of the new entrance to LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard, where Ogden Drive once bisected the 20-acre campus between Wilshire Boulevard and 6th Street, isChris Burden'sUrban Light (2008), an orderly, multi-tiered installation of 202 antique cast-ironstreet lights from various cities in and around the Los Angeles area. The street lights are functional, turn on in the evening, and are powered by solar panels on the roof of the BP Grand Entrance.
OriginallyJeff Koons'Tulips (1995–2004) sculpture was inside the Grand Entrance building andCharles Ray'sFire Truck (1993) was outside in the courtyard, both lent by the Broad Art Foundation. Both sculptures were removed after being on display for 3 months due to unexpected damage from patrons and wear.[81]
On February 2, 2007, Michael Govan, with Koons, revealed plans for a 161-foot (49 m)-tall Koons sculpture featuring an operational 1940slocomotive suspended from acrane. The sculpture would be located at the entrance on Wilshire Boulevard, between the Ahmanson Building and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum.[82][83] By 2011, after "the fundraising climate soured and Koons' California fabricator, Carlson & Co, went out of business after completing a $2.3-million feasibility study"[84] and a $25 million estimated cost, Govan said "We don't have a final method of construction, and I don't have a final fundraising plan."[85] Koons said they are now working with the German fabricator Arnold, outside of Frankfurt, to do an additional engineering study, and Govan says he has committed to spending half a million dollars for that study.[84] The museum hasJ.B. Turner Engine (1986), a small Koons piece which was shown in the 2006–2007 "Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" exhibition.[86]
Levitated Mass by artistMichael Heizer is the latest project at LACMA. On December 8, 2011, this 340-ton boulder, 21.5 feet (6.6 m) wide and 21.5 feet (6.6 m) in height, was ready to leave its quarry inRiverside County, after months of postponements.[87] It sits atop the 456-foot-long trench which allows people to walk under and around the massive rock. The move started on February 28, 2012, and completed on March 10, 2012. The art piece was opened on June 24, 2012, by Heizer, Los Angeles County SupervisorZev Yaroslavsky, and Los Angeles City MayorAntonio Villaraigosa.[88]
TheWallis Annenberg Photography Department was launched in 1984 with a grant from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. It has holdings of more than fifteen thousand works that span the period from the medium's invention in 1839 to the present. Photography also is integrated into other departments. Although LACMA's photo collection encompasses the entire field, it has many gaps and is far smaller than that of theJ. Paul Getty Museum.[89] In 1992 Audrey and Sydney Irmas donated their entire photography collection, creating what is now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art'sAudrey and Sydney Irmas Collection of Artists' Self-Portraits, a large and highly specialized selection spanning 150 years. The couple donated the collection two years before a major exhibition of the collection was mounted at LACMA; the display included photos of and by artistic photographers ranging from chemistAlphonse Poitevin in 1853 toRobert Mapplethorpe in 1988. Among other self-portraits in the collection were those ofAndy Warhol,Lee Friedlander, andEdward Steichen.[90] Audrey Irmas continues to buy for the collection, but now all the additions are gifts to LACMA.[91] In 2008 LACMA announced that theAnnenberg Foundation was making a $23 million gift for the acquisition of the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon collection of 19th- and 20th-century photographs. Among the 3,500 master prints are works by Steichen,Edward Weston,Ansel Adams,Eugène Atget,Imogen Cunningham,Catherine Opie,Cindy Sherman,Barbara Kruger, Ave Pildas[92] andMan Ray. The gift also provided an endowment and capital to help build storage facilities for the museum's photographic holdings, leading to its photography department being renamed the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography.[93] In 2011 LACMA and theJ. Paul Getty Trust jointly acquiredRobert Mapplethorpe's art and archival material, including more than 2,000 works by the artist.[94]
LACMA's film program was founded by Phil Chamberlin in the late 1960s.[95] In 2009 LACMA announced plans to cancel its 41-year-old film series, citing declining attendance and funding. The decision drew widespread criticism from cinephiles, including film directorMartin Scorsese, who wrote an open protest letter that was published in theLos Angeles Times. In response, the museum expanded its movie offerings and partnered with Film Independent to launch a new series. In 2011 LACMA and theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced partnership plans to open a movie museum within three years in the former May Co. building.[96] TheAcademy Museum opened in 2022.
In 2014, LACMA received a $500 million donation of art from businessmanJerry Perenchio. The 47-piece collection contains works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, René Magritte, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. LACMA executive director Michael Govan said it was the biggest gift in the museum's history, andThe Washington Post called it "conceivably one of the greatest art gifts ever, to any museum".[97] Perenchio's donation, which becomes effective upon his death, occurs only if the museum completes construction of the new building designed by Peter Zumthor.[97]
The $54 million Resnick Pavillon was made possible by a $45 million gift from the philanthropists for whom it is named.[98] On March 6, 2007,BP announced a $25 million donation to name the entry pavilion under construction as part of LACMA's renovation campaign the "BP Grand Entrance". The $25 million gift matchesWalt Disney Co.'s 1997 gift forDisney Hall as the biggest corporate donation to the arts in Southern California. Previously, in 2006, LACMA had announced that the new entrance would be called the "Lynda andStewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion", in honor of their $25 million gift.
On January 8, 2008, Eli Broad revealed plans to retain permanent control of his roughly 2,000 works of modern and contemporary art in the independent Broad Art Foundation, which loans works to museums, rather than giving the art away. Broad, as recently as a year prior, had said that he planned to give most of his holdings to one or several museums, one of which was assumed to be LACMA. However, LACMA remains the "preferred" museum to receive works from the foundation.[99]
Broad, previously vice chairman of LACMA's board of directors, financed the $56-million Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) building at LACMA; he also provided an additional $10 million to buy two works of art to be displayed in it. BCAM displayed 220 pieces borrowed from Broad and his Broad Art Foundation when it opened in February 2008. In 2001 LACMA was criticized for hosting a major exhibition of Broad's collection without having secured a promised gift of the works, an act that is prohibited at many prominent art institutions because it can increase the market value of the collection.[59]
In 2002 theAnnenberg Foundation gave the museum $10 million to establish a special endowment fund to support exhibitions, art acquisitions and educational programs at the discretion of its director. In recognition of the gift, LACMA named its leadership position the Wallis Annenberg directorship. In 2001 Wallis Annenberg endowed a curatorial fellowship program with a $1-million gift. In 1991, the foundation contributed $10 million to LACMA's endowment and in 1999 it donated $100,000 to provide arts education training for Los Angeles elementary school teachers.[17]
In 2001 the museum lost out on the modern art collection of Nathan and Marian Smooke, a former museum trustee and industrial real-estate developer whose heirs sold much of his collection at auction rather than donating it.[100][101]
In 1996 the museum suffered yet another serious blow when theGilbert Collection of Italian mosaics and other decorative objects, promised as an eventual bequest, and parts of which had been on display for decades, was withdrawn. The would-be donor claimed that the Museum had reneged on a written agreement to provide more exhibit space for it.[102][103] The collection is considered one of the finest in the world of its kind. Moreover, unlike the Hammer and Simon collections, it did not remain in the Los Angeles area but was removed to the United Kingdom.
Armand Hammer was a LACMA board member for nearly seventeen years, beginning in 1968, and during this time continued to announce the museum would inherit his whole collection. Hammer's collection included works fromVan Gogh,John Singer Sargent,Thomas Eakins,Gustave Moreau,Edgar Degas, andPaul Cézanne. When LACMA was offered a collection of works byHonoré Daumier, Hammer bought the works on the promise that he would give them to the museum. To LACMA's surprise, Hammer instead founded theHammer Museum, built adjacent toOccidental's headquarters in Los Angeles.[104]
Between 1972 and 2020, the Ahmanson Foundation spent about $130 million to finance the museum's acquisitions of 99 artworks, including masterpieces likeMagdalene with the Smoking Flame byGeorges de La Tour, others byRembrandt,Watteau andBernini, and a suite of 42 French oil sketches. The donations were not made with any contractual stipulations that the works remain on view.[105] In 2020, the foundation suspended the acquisition program.[105]
In the early 1970sNorton Simon, the chairman of Norton Simon, Inc., which owned Avis Car Rental, Hunt's Foods, Max Factor Cosmetics, Canada Dry Corp., and McCall's Publishing, among other interests, agreed to take the financial responsibility of the troubled Pasadena Museum of Art.Norton Simon Museum He subsequently donated his extensive collection to the new entity, now the Norton Simon Museum of Art. He had earlier made some indication of donating the work to LACMA.[59][99]
From 1946 to his death in 1951,William Randolph Hearst was LACMA's largest benefactor. He remains the largest donor to the museum in number of objects. His donations formed the museum's collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval and early Renaissance sculptures, and much of the collection of European decorative arts.[6]
Over the course of the LACMA's history, ten art councils—each supporting a specific area of the collection—have acquired or helped acquire nearly 5,000 works of art for the museum. The art councils comprise groups of art enthusiasts and professionals who pay a minimum of $400 a year in dues and organize projects to raise money for a favorite department.[106] Founded in 1952, the Art Museum Council is LACMA's first volunteer support council and supports the whole of the museum's endeavors. The Modern and Contemporary Art Council, founded in 1961, is the longest-running support group for contemporary art at any museum in the country.[107] In 1980, the museum's then active Black Historical Advisory Group, led by former trustee Robert Wilson, drove the museum to acquire Extended Forms (1975) by one of America's foremost sculptorsRichard Hunt.[108] In 1986 the Annual Collectors Committee weekends were started and have raised a total of $16 million for the purchase of 157 works, valued at $75 million.[109] The Photographic Arts Council, founded in 2001, is the youngest of ten 10 support groups, offering its members visits to artists' studios and private collections, curator-led tours of exhibitions and lectures about the care and conservation of photographs.[110]
Each year a distinguished group of donors contributes directly to the enrichment of LACMA's permanent collection through participation in the Collectors Committee, creating a fund to spend on art through purchasing tickets ranging between $15,000 and $60,000[111] for the event.[112] Once a year, the Collectors Committee members meet at the museum to hear acquisition proposals from the various curators. Each curator has roughly five minutes to plead their case to the patrons, who vote later that day at a black-tie gala event at the museum on which artworks should become the next acquisitions for the permanent collection.[111] The 2012 gala raised more than $2.8 million.[113] Since its inception in 1986, the event has brought some 170 works of art into the museum's collection.[114]
Inaugurated in 2011, the annual Art + Film Gala dinner features entertainment by international artists and is designed to help the museum shore up support from Hollywood leaders. Gala prices range from $5,000 for an individual gold ticket to $100,000 for a platinum table.[115] The 2022 gala raised more than $5.1 million for the museum's operations and collections,[116] up from approximately $4.5 million in 2018,[117] $4.1 million in 2013[118] and just under $3 million in 2011.[119]
Gala honorees have includedJudy Baca andDavid Fincher in 2023;[120]Helen Pashgian andPark Chan-wook in 2022;[116]Betye Saar andAlfonso Cuaron in 2019;[121]Catherine Opie andGuillermo del Toro in 2018;[117]Mark Bradford andGeorge Lucas in 2017;[122]Kathryn Bigelow andRobert Irwin in 2016;[123]Alejandro González Iñárritu andJames Turrell in 2015;[124]Barbara Kruger andQuentin Tarantino in 2014;Martin Scorsese andDavid Hockney in 2013; the lateStanley Kubrick andEd Ruscha in 2012; andClint Eastwood andJohn Baldessari in 2011.[125]
Along with other museums that have consigned works to auction in the past, LACMA has been sharply criticized for pruning its art holdings.[126] In 2005, on the occasion of the expansion, reorganization and reinstallation of its collection in 2007, LACMA auctioned 43 works atSotheby's. The works sold included paintings byAmedeo Modigliani,Camille Pissarro andMax Beckmann, sculptures byAlberto Giacometti andHenry Moore, and works on paper byPablo Picasso,Henri Matisse andEdgar Degas.[127] The biggest sale of works by the museum since the early 1980s, it was expected to fetch $10.4 million to $15.4 million; it eventually resulted in a total of $13 million.[126] Among the most valuable was a Modigliani portrait of the Spanish landscape painter Manuel Humbert, which sold for $4.9 million.[128]
In 1966 Maurice Tuchman, then curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, introduced the Art and Technology (A&T) program. Within the program, artists likeRobert Irwin andJames Turrell were placed, for example, at theGarrett Corporation, to conduct research into perception.[129] The program yielded an exhibition that ran at LACMA and traveled toExpo '70 in Osaka, Japan.[130] It also contributed to the development of theLight and Space movement.
In 2014, the museum opened its Art + Tech Lab, building on the legacy of the original Art and Technology program and its associated 1971 exhibition. Since then, the Art + Tech Lab has presented an annual series of artists’ projects that engage with contemporary technology.[131]
Andrea Rich won praise for doubling the museum's endowment, to more than $100 million, and for increasing attendance and pursuing programs and acquisitions that might appeal to the varied segments of the city's diverse population, like Islamic, Latin American and Korean art.[132] Rich resigned in part because of disputes with Eli Broad, including one over hiring a curator for the new Broad contemporary art center.[133] In 2008, LACMA made a formal offer to merge withMOCA and to help that museum raise new money from donors.[134]
Per the Los Angeles County Code and various operating agreements, Museum Associates, anonprofitpublic benefit corporation organized under the laws of the state of California, manages, operates, and maintains the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2011, LACMA reported net assets (basically, a total of all the resources it has on its books, except the value of the art) of $300 million.[135] That year, the museum's endowment grew from $99.6 million to $106.8 million.[136] By issuing $383 million in tax-free construction bonds,[137] the museum paid for its ongoing expansion and renovation, which has yielded the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion as well as other improvements. TheLos Angeles County provides around $29 million a year,[29] covering more than a third of the museum's operating expenses.[138]
LACMA typically raises around $40 million from donations and membership dues, which are accounted for as gifts, paying for almost half of LACMA's average expenses of about $92 million.[139]
Although attendance has grown in recent years, it still remained at 914,356 visitors in 2010.[140] In 2011, around 1.2 million visitors went to LACMA, making it the first time the museum broke the one million mark.[141] In 2015, attendance reached 1.6 million.[142]
In 1996, LACMA's board of trustees decided that the traditional dual role of director as chief administrator/artistic director should be split, and appointed Andrea Rich as president and chief executive officer of the museum, while Graham W. J. Beal ran its artistic programs.[144] As part of a 2005 restructuring, the president position was again made the second-ranking job in the institution.[145]
LACMA provides a home to the director. For that purpose, it has owned a 5,100 sq ft (470 m2)Hancock Park property since 2006.[146] In 2020, Museum Associates acquired a 3,300 sq ft (310 m2) house on a 7,800 sq ft (720 m2) lot inMid-Wilshire for $2.2 million.[147]
LACMA is governed by a board of trustees which sets policy and determines the museum's strategic direction. Board membership is one of the few concrete ways to measure philanthropy in the museum world. LACMA costs $100,000 to join; each board member commits to donating or raising at least another $100,000 a year for the nonprofit museum.[148] The museum currently has over 50 active board members; 30 of them have joined since 2006. Since 2015, the board has been co-chaired byElaine Wynn andTony Ressler.[149]
Notable current trustees include the following:
Notable past trustees include:
Notably,Tom Gores stepped down from his post as a board trustee in 2020, after advocacy groups Worth Rises andColor of Change had called for his removal over his investment inSecurus Technologies.[160]
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