Supporters and critics of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (Lacma) new $750m building will have to wait a couple more years to fully assess the final product. According to a staff memo obtained by The Los Angele Times last week, the museum has pushed back the planned opening of the building—officially the David Geffen Galleries—until 2026. The opening date was previously scheduled for December of this year.
The memo, written by J. Fiona Ragheb, Lacma’s deputy director of curatorial and exhibitions, states that public access may be granted two weeks after the museum obtains a temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO), which is expected to occur in May 2025. According to the Times, the institution is brainstorming public programmes that would allow visitors to experience the new Peter Zumthor-designed building during this interim period when a TCO has been granted but no art has been installed.
“Once the building is turned over, we are imagining a short period (10-14 days) that will be reserved for programming that takes advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to work with the empty building,” Ragheb wrote.
Once completed, the David Geffen Galleries will house works from Lacma’s permanent collection. The galleries will be thematically arranged according to the six oceanic regions. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans have two designated areas each, according to the Times, which also reported that the project’s budget has reached in excess of $835 million. (In August 2023 the museum announced that it had reached its $750m fundraising goal for the capital campaign to build the new pavilion.)
The new building’s namesake, David Geffen, is a US entertainment tycoon best known for co-founding the film studio DreamWorks SKG. He is also the owner of what is estimated to be the world’s most valuable private art collection, valued at around $2.3bn and spanning around 150,000 objects.
In addition to the extended timeline for the new building, according to a recent Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners report, the museum has abandoned its plans to open a satellite space at the South Los Angeles Wetlands Park, part of a 2017 initiative to create a “de-centred” museum. The museum had been granted a 35-year, rent-free lease on a former bus depot at the park in 2018. The project has been canceled, with the report stating that the “the cost to repair and retrofit” the building “will far exceed what Lacma had initially estimated”.
Meanwhile, Lacma is moving forward with a partnership with collector and philanthropist Elaine Wynn to help develop—and lend its permanent collection to—a new $150m art museum in Las Vegas.
