Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also known as LACMA, is the official and world-renowned art museum of the County of Los Angeles, California. Located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles. The museum is adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits.
LACMA is the premier visual arts museum in the Western United States and is the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago. Its holdings include more than 250,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, and in addition to displaying art, the museum puts on several movie series a year ranging from silent classics to modern foreign film.
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[edit] History
LACMA was founded in 1910 as part of the Museum of Science, History and Art in the Exposition Park area near the University of Southern California, and became an independent art-focused institution in 1961. The museum moved into 3 new buildings at its current location in 1965; the Ahmanson Building, Bing Center & Hammer Buildings, all designed by William Pereira. At the time, LACMA was the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art.
The Pavilion for Japanese Art designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, and the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes, both opened in 1988. In 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent May Department Stores building, increasing its size by 30 percent, now known as LACMA West, open since 1998.
Local sculptor Robert Graham created the towering Restrospective Column in 1981 as a welcoming artwork at the entrance of the museum.
[edit] Renovations
In 2004, LACMA’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano. The transformation consists of 3 phases. Phase I started in 2004 and is scheduled to be completed by February 2008. Phase III is scheduled to be completed toward the end of 2010.
On March 6, 2007, BP announced a $25-million donation to name the entry pavilion under construction as part of LACMA's renovation campaign the BP Grand Entrance. Solar panels atop the pavilion attempt to cast BP's as an environmental innovator. The $25 million gift matches Walt Disney Co.'s 1997 gift for Disney Hall as the biggest corporate donation to the arts in Southern California. In 2006, LACMA had previously announced the new entrance as the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion, in honor of their $25-million gift.
The glass-encased entry pavilion being constructed is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings. The BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) comprise the $191 million (originally $150 million) first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign. BCAM is named for Eli & Edythe Broad, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign and sit on LACMA's Board of Directors. [1]
An earlier plan for LACMA's transformation by architect Rem Koolhaas proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new museum. Phase I of the renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. [2]
On February 2, 2007 LACMA's director, Michael Govan, with artist Jeff Koons, revealed plans for a massive 161-foot-tall sculpture featuring a working 1940s locomotive suspended from a crane. The sculpture would be located at a redesigned entrance on Wilshire Boulevard, between the Ahmanson Building and the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum. [3][4]
[edit] Collections
LACMA's more than 250,000 objects are divided among ten departments in specific art-historical fields: [5]
- American Art
- Ancient and Islamic Art
- Costumes and Textiles
- Decorative Arts
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Far Eastern Art
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Photography
- Prints and Drawings
- Twentieth-Century Art
LACMA boasts one of the largest collections of Latin American Art due to the generous donation of more than 2,000 works of art by Bernard Lewin and his wife Edith Lewin in 1996.
[edit] References
- ^ Boehm, Mike (March 6, 2007), "BP gives $25 million to LACMA: The BP donation will go toward a solar entrance that the British oil firm hopes will invoke energy innovation.", Los Angeles Times
- ^ Chang, Jade (2005). Art/Shop/Eat Los Angeles. Somerset Books, 90-98. ISBN 1905131062.
- ^ Transforming LACMA > Progress Report. Retrieved on March 7, 2007.
- ^ Christie, Tom (February 2, 2007), "This Is Not a Very Large Train Engine Hanging From a Crane at LACMA: Not yet, anyway.", LA Weekly
- ^ Price, Lorna (1988). Masterpieces from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. ISBN 0-87587-146-1.
[edit] External links
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Official Website
- LACMA's online collection - Access to over 60,000 artworks from the museum's permanent collection.
