The David Geffen Galleries building under construction earlier this year on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus Photo: Benjamin Sutton
Supporters and critics of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (Lacma) new $750m building will have to wait a little longer to fully assess the final product. According to a staff memo obtained by The Los Angeles Times last week, the museum has pushed back the planned opening of the building—officially the David Geffen Galleries—until 2026. Construction of the building was originally expected to be completed in December 2024. Now, the museum hopes to secure a temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO) by 28 May 2025.
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 TCO. 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.
In August 2023 the museum announced that it had reached its $750m fundraising goal for the capital campaign to build the new pavilion. A Lacma spokesperson tells The Art Newspaper that the museum has now raised $788m as part of the overall Building Lacma campaign. Of that sum, $715m is for the building itself.
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". A Lacma spokesperson tells The Art Newspaper that this decision was actually made in 2019, and that municipal authorities had been made aware of the decision.
The museum is still pursuing development of a facility within Earvin “Magic” Johnson Park, in the city's Willowbrook neighbourhood. Further afield, Lacma is also 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.
