Latest news with #Split-Rocker
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
LACMA opens its new building for a sneak peak: Photos from the first preview
The concrete walls of the David Geffen Galleries were still bare Thursday evening. The landscaping outside is still settling in, and pockets of construction were still visible. But the minute the music poured out of the upstairs entryway, it finally hit: The new LACMA is actually here. After five years of construction, so much debate about its scale, design and ambitions, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held its first event Thursday night inside the Peter Zumthor-designed building. A sprawling, immersive concert by composer and SoCal jazz hero Kamasi Washington called for multiple bands, each with about a dozen musicians, to play site-specific arrangements throughout the empty galleries before art has been installed. A woodwind ensemble overlooked Park La Brea through floor-to-ceiling glass; a choir stacked harmonies that floated over the span of the structure as it crossed Wilshire Boulevard. Hundreds of VIPs and members of the media took it all in. The project has its skeptics, including how the museum's permanent collection will function in it. But for now, museum members could slink about the echoing halls of L.A.'s newest landmark and ponder the possibilities. Guests at the sneak peek inside the new building Thursday cross a glass-lined expanse that crosses over Wilshire Boulevard. LACMA Director Michael Govan addresses members of the media assembled for the first public peek inside the empty building, which still needs to complete some construction details and install the art before opening, targeted for April 2026. The design of the museum has morphed over the years, from a dark, curvaceous amoeba-like form that echoed the nearby La Brea Tar Pits to a design that retains the curves up top but shifts to rectilinear glass on the galleries level below. The preview event Thursday featured musicians staged throughout the building. Preview events give museum members a chance to view Zumthor's design before art is installed. One of the lingering questions is how the concrete walls will fare given the museum's new plan to shift from permanent collection displays to ever-rotating exhibitions — and all the rehanging of artworks that will be required. The setting sun casts long shadows from visitors looking out toward the rooftop of Renzo Piano's Resnick Pavilion and, off in the distance on the left, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures' domed terrace. Artist Tony Smith's installation 'Smoke' has a new home outside the David Geffen Galleries. The museum recently announced the addition of a forthcoming Jeff Koons' sculpture, 'Split-Rocker.' 'Smoke' rises near a long entry staircase to the new building. When the new building opens in April 2026, LACMA has said, the ticketing process will be handled at kiosks on the ground level. Inside another one of the galleries. Some of the architecture-circle speculation about the building has centered on the finish of the building's concrete, inside and out. The view from the David Geffen Galleries as it crosses Wilshire Boulevard. Times art critic Christopher Knight, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his early analysis of the LACMA building plan, and Times music critic Mark Swed attended the preview concert event Thursday. Check back for their first impressions of the new space.
Time Out
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
It may not have any art yet, but LACMA's new building offers plenty to look at inside
There's not a single piece of artwork to see on the concrete walls of LACMA's new building right now. And yet, this is undoubtedly the most exciting art destination in Los Angeles this weekend. Months ahead of the galleries' planned April 2026 debut, and before the institution begins installing artwork, LACMA has allowed the public to take a peek inside its new David Geffen Galleries—to the tune of a one-of-a-kind performance from local saxophone extraordinaire Kamasi Washington, no less. For the museum members and everyday Angelenos who were lucky enough to secure tickets, they'll find more than 100 musicians split between 10 performance areas, with each ensemble playing a different component of the six-part jazz suite Harmony of Difference; you might catch Washington soloing on sax toward the center of the building, but round a corner and you'll hear the buzz of a brass section or the echoing voices of a choir. But what about the building itself? The Peter Zumthor-designed replacement for LACMA's myriad mid-century buildings on its eastern campus consolidates collections into a single-floor, 110,000-square-foot amoeba-shaped space. It's also, since its unveiling in 2013 and start of construction in 2020, invited plenty of strong opinions about everything from its aesthetic to its footprint. So what's it like to actually step inside (still sans art, of course)? I was invited to the museum on Thursday for the first of three performances. About an hour before sunset, I filed past the familiar spider-like lines of Tony Smith's Smoke sculpture and hoofed it up the long staircase into the David Geffen Galleries (there are elevators, as well). I passed by what looked like a ground-floor restaurant space and a future bookshop but could only gawk from outside. Upstairs, though, I was free to roam across the entire floor—and roam I did. The building isn't broken up into traditional rooms; instead, there are roughly two dozen enclosed galleries toward the center of the structure, while the entirety of the exterior is lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. The views are absolutely dreamy and offer a fresh vantage point that makes it feel as though you're floating above one of L.A.'s most crowded cultural corridors. Each curve unveils a new, unexpected perspective: overlooking the lake at the La Brea Tar Pits, eye-level with the bubble-like theater of the Academy Museum and literally on top of the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Yes, the building spans the busy road (Jeff Koons's floral Split-Rocker sculpture will eventually anchor the outside of the southern side), and it's tough to articulate just how wild it is to shuffle along the museum floor and suddenly find yourself crossing over the iconic street. At every point, the architecture perfectly frames each vista, so—for better or worse—expect plenty of posing, particularly as the setting sun floods the west side with dramatic lighting. Despite all of those windows, it was easy to get a little bit turned around inside of the space—but I imagine that'll be much less of an issue once there's actually artwork installed. For now, it's a lot of unadorned concrete, so if you're not looking out a window, there are no other visual cues to place exactly where you are. Without paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations, the interior galleries feel raw and empty because they're, well, raw and empty right now—so I'll hold off any sort of proper judgment until after the installation process has wrapped up. (You can see how the galleries will look with art inside over on LACMA's site.) When Washington's performance wound down, it was dark out. As I descended the staircase out of the David Geffen Galleries, Urban Lights' rows of streetlamps glowed in the background. On my way in, I thought some angles of the building were more flattering than others; the profile of the tar pits side looks beautiful, but stand close enough to the western tip and it feels a little like a low-angle selfie. But as I was exiting and looked back up the staircase at night, it was as if the entire building was floating. It was oddly peaceful—and already difficult to imagine the museum and Wilshire Boulevard without it. Check out some more photos below. Kamasi Washington continues his performances on Friday and Saturday—tickets are unfortunately sold out—followed by a series of member previews of the building. The David Geffen Galleries open April 2026.
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Jeff Koons outdoor sculpture ‘Split-Rocker' will anchor LACMA's new building
A new acquisition has bloomed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is expected to announce Monday that Jeff Koons' monumental topiary sculpture 'Split-Rocker' will anchor the east side of the campus at the new David Geffen Galleries building. The 37-foot-tall living sculpture, created in 2000, is designed to nurture more than 50,000 flowering plants and will be seeded in August with the hope that it will be fully established by April, when architect Peter Zumthor's new poured concrete building is scheduled to open to the public. 'I couldn't be more thrilled than to have a piece of floral work in Los Angeles where — horticulturally — there's such a wide variety of plants that can be used in its creation,' Koons said in a phone interview from his New York studio. 'I hope people going back and forth on Wilshire Boulevard, and people visiting the museum, are able to enjoy and experience the change in the piece.' The acquisition and continued maintenance of 'Split-Rocker' was paid for by the foundation of longtime LACMA donors and Koons supporters Lynda and Stewart Resnick. It's been in the works for years, during which time LACMA and Koons consulted with a team of area horticulturalists who zeroed in on which plants would thrive during which times of year. Koons said he's excited to use native succulents and drought-tolerant plants as well as perennials and annuals that will provide a richness of color. The sculpture features two toy rockers— a horse and a dinosaur — that are split in half and paired unevenly down the middle for an angular Cubist effect. It's made of steel armatures and outfitted with an internal irrigation system. 'Split-Rocker' will be the first outdoor work of art guests will see driving west on Wilshire from downtown. It will sit across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits' tragic woolly mammoth family, adding a playful bit of fantasy architecture to LACMA's 3.5-acre park space. The sculpture will join the museum's other highly recognizable works of public art, including Chris Burden's 'Urban Light' and Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass,' as well as a newly commissioned children's garden sculpture of a whimsical UFO by Shio Kusaka and Mariana Castillo Deball's 'Feathered Changes,' which stretches over three football fields of raked, carved and imprinted concrete composing the museum's plaza. LACMA is also reinstalling Alexander Calder's monumental 'Three Quintains,' which was commissioned for the then-new museum complex in 1965. Tony Smith's massive 'Smoke' sculpture already has been installed. 'From the day I landed, I obviously knew I wanted to focus on L.A. artists,' said LACMA Chief Executive and Director Michael Govan. 'But then I wanted to just bring a little New York too.' 'Split-Rocker,' like Koons' only other topiary sculpture, 'Puppy' from 1992, was created as an edition of one, plus one artist proof. LACMA has acquired the artist proof, which in 2014 towered over visitors to Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Edition 1 of 'Split-Rocker' is currently installed at Glenstone, a museum in Potomac, Md. The artist proof of 'Puppy' famously greets visitors to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Edition 1 is at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Conn. 'Out of those four cities, L.A. is the only place where there's good weather all year round, and it doesn't have to go to sleep in the winter,' Govan said of 'Split-Rocker,' noting how excited he is to see it change with the seasons. The idea for 'Split-Rocker' came to Koons when he noticed his son's rocking horse in one corner of a room, and a rocking dinosaur in another. 'And I thought, oh my gosh, if you would just split those two down the center and then put their two profiles together, it would be kind of like a Picasso piece,' Koons said. 'Because the one eye of the dino would be looking one way, and the eye of the pony would be looking completely in a different direction, and their profiles would not line up perfectly.' When Koons began creating color schemes for the piece, he divided it into five different shading groups, with the dinosaur imbued with a different color range than the pony. 'When you plant it, you try to take control, and you're able to put certain colors and certain plants in certain areas,' Koons said. 'But at a certain point you have to walk away, and it's in the hands of nature.' Govan said he believes in the power of public sculpture and hopes 'Split-Rocker' and the other monumental works on the LACMA campus will serve as beacons to passersby, beckoning them to explore further inside. They also are powerful tools of social media marketing, as guests photograph themselves and essentially promote a visit. One of Govan's earliest memories, he said, is visiting his grandparents in Chicago and seeing the Picasso in Daley Plaza out the car window. 'It was was one of my first entry points to art, and art in public, as a very young person, and I never let it go,' Govan said. 'Kids should see something on the street that's art — not a building — that makes them want to get out and go back.'
