Visiting LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries
This past Sunday, April 19, my wife Tracie and I attended the members’ opening event at the extraordinary new David Geffen Galleries at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The collection—selected from LACMA’s vast and comprehensive holdings—is organized by oceans, unburdened by constraints of medium, genre, era, or high/low classifications of art and design, engendering myriad readings of human creativity and dialogues through time and space. The serpentine building, designed by architect Peter Zumthor and negotiated through twenty years of thoughtful conversations with LACMA CEO Michael Govan, and interrogative imperative visions offered to the public, LA County, and LACMA supporters, radically alters the LACMA campus and the neighborhood in which it is embedded. The building’s bridging of Wilshire Boulevard, the disruption of what was, inevitably raised concerns and rankled some who had come to embrace these streets as they are, but this is Los Angeles, a place of metamorphosis and vision, and so.
The little guidebook to the new galleries given to LACMA members is titled, aptly, “Wander,” and offers mere footnotes to what you might encounter, encouraging you to make connections and interpretations as you will. There is a map to aid in spacial and oceanic orientation and for locating certain key works. The space encourages wandering, sauntering, exploring the art as you find it, as it resonates, minimizing prescribed paths and interpretations.
As for the raw concrete structure and the walls—pentimenti-laden, unpolished, sometimes absorbingly pigmented—some have criticized it as architecture overshadowing art. Nonsense. For me the structure brought first to mind ancient or medieval spaces created through generations, time-worn stone, containing grand works of sculpture and painting, art in situ, in dialogue with architecture and viewer, and feeling just right. Somatic memories of discovery, of seeing something new in a place that feels as if it had always stood where it is now.
Meandering through the galleries another memory surfaced. Years ago when our children were quite small, Tracie and I took them to a Werner Herzog film at a local art house theatre: Cave of Forgotten Dreams. In the film, Herzog and his companions documented their exploration of France’s Chauvet Cave, that contains some of the world’s oldest known paintings. The focused flashlights in the darkness, the silence, the crawling into an unseen space and rising to stand in awe before mysterious paintings of galloping horses and aurochs, clashing rhinoceroses, lions, and more, the floors littered here and there with bones. Our kids were mesmerized by it all, the exploration, the imagery, and Herzog’s narration in his unmistakeable voice speculating about purpose, meaning, or technique musing on the raw will to make such images in such difficult to navigate spaces. When we returned home, our kids excitedly disappeared into their room, and soon emerged wearing orange plastic construction helmets with attached lamps, and carrying a notebook and pencil. They spent hours exploring every closet in the house, making notes and sketches and whispering until they were satisfied with their discoveries and reported them to us at length. The LACMA David Geffen Galleries evoked a similar sense of childlike wonder as I roamed its rooms and open spaces, eager to make discoveries of my own.
Do visit when you can and please share your experiences.