“I’ve got to get my Erewhon on,” joked Michael Govan, who downed a green juice from the luxury grocer ahead of LACMA’s press preview of the new David Geffen Galleries on Wednesday morning. “I need my vitamins.”
The LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Center director also confessed that his only exercise as of late is traversing the 110,000-square-foot concrete superstructure erected by Swiss Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor. The marathon project has been in fruition for 20 years, the last six of them in the construction stage. (The new space will open to the public on May 4.) The pair met through Gagosian artist Walter de Maria; Govan traveled to all Zumthor’s other buildings around the world—citing the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Germany as particularly inspiring—before officially bringing him on.
Govan’s brief to Zumthor was for everything to be on one floor, for the museum to have transparency on all sides, and for there to be no hierarchical structure to the design. Zumthor’s approach of using solid materials—in this case, concrete (“which is very environmentally friendly if it lasts 500 years” Govan added)—blended with the ephemerality of changing light thanks to the inclusion of windows on every side. He was partnered with the engineers at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for some of the profound engineering elements. Govan listed them off: 56 of the largest space isolators ever made, so the building can move five feet in any direction; and cantilevers that are necessary in this seismic zone. The building can even “jump” if needed. Behind the massive concrete walls, technicians can walk in to adjust the behind-the-scenes fixtures and machinery.
If the purpose of a museum is to see art, art you will see at the Geffen Galleries. Where else can you get thisclose to earthenware from China’s neolithic period? Or the ceramic tiled Henri Matisse that takes up an entire wall? There are over 1,700 works on display, meticulously considered by 45 curators who spent years debating and poring over LACMA’s archives of roughly 150,000 objects. Ultimately, they staged 80 or 90 micro exhibitions within the Geffen Galleries under the broader conceit of exploring trade and movement through oceans like the Mediterranean Sea and the Pacific.
In addition to the Geffen Galleries, the space includes an educational center which will feature programming year-round. Still to come are the theater, restaurant, and wine bar that are slated to open in September.
To toast the unveiling, a star-studded crowd turned out on Thursday night for the opening. It felt Oscar-like in its scope: Tom Hanks, Will Ferrell, Ava DuVernay, plus Gabbriette, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras et al. Upon walking in, the first thing Govan did was take a photo of his wife, Katherine Ross, amid a row of Rodins.
Once upstairs, there was Troye Sivan admiring the Francis Bacon triptychs of Lucien Freud, which was acquired by Elaine Wynn for $142.4m in 2014, and were gifted the museum after her untimely passing last year. (Wynn was a board chair for LACMA; Govan recounted how he missed her, but also expressed gratitude for being able to sit with the paintings recently for over an hour.)
Elsewhere, Bette Midler reapplied her lipstick amid Mesoamerican statues. Jeffrey Deitch admired Todd Gray’s Octavia’s Gaze with the artist himself. Dancers from the Seki Foundation acted as the Pied Pipers, ushering hundreds of well-heeled guests into a tent for a Mexican dinner by Gabriela Cámara of Contramar (Govan’s favorite restaurant). The evening raised a record-breaking $11.5 million for the museum. In between courses, nearly all who stepped to the podium (and yes, there was a teleprompter—this is L.A., after all) gave endless thanks to David Geffen, the benefactor who contributed $150 million to bring the LACMA project over the finish line. Despite having his name on the building, his presence caused one person at my table to comment incredulously, “He’s here?! He’s like Howard Hughes!”
