Latest news with #DavidGeffenGalleries
Time Out
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
You can step inside LACMA's new building months before opening during this Kamasi Washington performance
We've just crossed the year-to-go mark until the opening of LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries, and as promised, the Miracle Mile museum is offering a pretty unique opportunity to step inside the building's empty interior. L.A. native, Kendrick Lamar collaborator and all-around saxophone wizard Kamasi Washington will headline three performances inside the new building this June—months ahead of its artwork-filled April 2026 opening. But he won't be alone: More than 100 musicians will be scattered across 110,000 square feet of vacant gallery space. Washington's performances on June 26, 27 and 28 will tackle Harmony of Difference, a six-movement suite that he released eight years ago—but that's never been performed live in its entirety. 'I wrote Harmony of Difference in 2017 to celebrate the beauty of humanity's diversity through a metaphor of music,' Washington said in a statement. 'In music it is the combination of different notes, chords and rhythms that create beautiful songs. The same is true in life; most of humanity's greatest achievements came from the combined efforts of people of different backgrounds with different knowledge and abilities.' Washington goes on to elaborate on the Geffen Galleries' unique acoustic properties; visitors will hear both the direct sounds from nearby musicians as well as the 'spirit' of other farther-away groups of performers. If you want to check out the performance inside the Peter Zumthor-designed building, LACMA will release limited batches of tickets in three waves: – May 2 at 10am ($60, LACMA members $48) – May 22 at 10am ($75, LACMA members $60) – June 12 at 10am ($100, LACMA members $80) This won't be the only opportunity to step inside the empty galleries, though you'll need to be a LACMA member to take advantage of the others. The museum will hold a series of sneak peaks divided up by membership tiers: a reception for Partner-level members on June 29; Friend, Supporter and Partner-level on June 30; Individual and Dual-level on July 1; all levels from July 3 through 5; and NexGenLA members on July 6—that's the free membership tier for kids 17 and under (and an accompanying adult). Back to the Harmony of Difference preview: I'll just add that it's worth seeing Washington perform live in just about any setting, but I happen to think stepping inside an empty museum—before walls and artworks forever alter the interior—is a one-of-a-kind experience for art and architecture lovers. A decade later, I still look back fondly on a sound-and-video installation staged inside the Broad months before it officially opened.
Los Angeles Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
New LACMA building preview event stars Kamasi Washington with 100 musicians
Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new David Geffen Galleries will become a sonic vessel in late June when Grammy-nominated composer and jazz musician Kamasi Washington, joined by an ensemble of more than 100 musicians, will perform a series of shows inside the new Peter Zumthor-designed building. The artists will be dispersed throughout the 110,000 square feet of gallery space, and the building itself will become an integral part of the acoustic experience, the museum said. Washington is set to perform his six-movement suite, 'Harmony of Difference,' a concept album that was released to critical acclaim in 2017. Many of the musicians joining him are L.A.-based artists that Washington has played with over the years. The performances — on June 26, 27 and 28 — will mark the first time that the suite has been performed in its entirety in front of a live audience, and the music is meant to unfold as a work of art, in a way that can't be replicated again. 'The Geffen Galleries has a truly unique acoustic environment that is perfect for 'Harmony of Difference,' ' Washington said in the announcement. 'As people walk through the galleries, they will directly hear the musicians they are closest to, while hearing the 'spirit' of the other groups.' Washington's appearances are the first of many events leading to the grand opening of the building in April 2026. Tickets for the shows will go on sale on three dates. The first performance goes on sale May 2 at 10 a.m. The next performance goes on sale May 22 at 10 a.m. The final performance goes on sale June 12 at 10 a.m. Tickets are $48 to $100. From June 29 through July 6, LACMA members will be invited to tour the building prior to the art being installed. Work began on the David Geffen Galleries in 2020, and 90% of construction was completed late last year. The 900-foot-long poured concrete structure spans Wilshire Boulevard. The museum has announced a trio of recent commissions and released a detailed outline of its restaurants, theater and amenities.
Los Angeles Times
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
How to see the new LACMA up close: Museum sets opening for plaza around new building
This summer, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open parts of the plaza around its David Geffen Galleries, giving the public its closest glimpse yet of the new Peter Zumthor-designed building spanning Wilshire Boulevard. LACMA will give tours of the raw, empty building for donors and members in June, the museum said Tuesday. Musical performances by Kamasi Washington will take place inside the new building June 26-28, the museum said. Additional details about the events were not released. The museum restaurant Ray's + Stark Bar and the LACMA store will open to the public in new locations later this year ahead of the David Geffen Galleries' official grand opening, which remains slated for April 2026. Earlier this week The Times reported that LACMA's 3.5 acres of park space will include a plaza that will be home to Mariana Castillo Deball's 75,000-square-foot textured concrete artwork 'Feathered Changes,' which acts as the ground below the building and suggests various routes around the campus. Additional outdoor works joining Chris Burden's 'Urban Light' installation of city streetlamps and Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass' include a 12-foot-tall interactive sculpture of a flying saucer by Shio Kusaka plus other works by Liz Glynn, Thomas Houseago, Pedro Reyes and Diana Thater. LACMA's collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin will occupy a new 8,000-square-foot garden on the north side of Wilshire. Major construction on the new building was completed in late October, at which point scaffolding came down and the city got its first real view of the 900-foot-long concrete structure. LACMA announced on Tuesday that the north wing of the museum will be called the Elaine Wynn Wing in honor of the trustee and board co-chair who donated $50 million toward the project. The south wing has yet to be named. A second restaurant will open on the south side of Wilshire, where a parking lot had been. The south end of the new building will be anchored by the new Steve Tisch Theater for film screenings, lectures, musical performances and other programs.
Los Angeles Times
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
New LACMA building to get three outdoor artworks to join ‘Urban Light' and the Rock
Three artists have been commissioned to create the first wave of installations for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new David Geffen Galleries, scheduled to open in April next year. The expansive site-specific works will help to define the look and feel of the Peter Zumthor-designed building, and in the case of one artwork — a 75,000-square-foot stretch of embellished and brushed concrete — literally provide the ground on which visitors walk. The artists — Mariana Castillo Deball, Sarah Rosalena and Shio Kusaka — were all picked based on their previous work at LACMA and for how themes espoused in their art, including land rights and a fascination with the cosmos, fit with the ethos of the new building's modernist design. 'I have a rule in my life: If you get stuck, you ask people for advice. If you get really stuck, you ask an artist,' said LACMA President and Chief Executive Michael Govan during a recent visit to the site, where Castillo Deball was immersed in crafting her piece, 'Feathered Changes.' The idea for Castillo Deball's commission rose from the question of what to do around the 900-foot-long concrete building, which curves over Wilshire Boulevard and is outfitted with floor-to-ceiling glass. Traditional landscape architecture wasn't cutting it, Govan said, and he kept thinking about the idea of a map on the ground. 'Feathered Changes' serves as the museum plaza floor and occupies an area roughly the size of three football fields. It forms a series of concrete islands leading to various entrances and extends through the restaurant. The piece, which is characterized by an earth-colored mix of unfinished concrete that both complements and contrasts with the building, is imprinted with pieces of Castillo Deball's feathered serpent drawings inspired by ancient murals from Teotihuacán, Mexico. Other areas are raked in patterns resembling a Zen garden, and some contain replica tracks of native animals, including coyotes, bears and snakes. Small stones have been cast into the mix, creating a rough, uneven color and texture. 'This is the biggest challenge I've had in my life,' Castillo Deball said after using a custom rake to carve wet concrete at the base of the building. Concrete workers swarmed around her in hardhats. 'It's a place that is gonna be totally public, so everybody can go in and step on it,' she said. 'It's a very democratic piece of art that is also in dialogue with this amazing building, with the collection, with the curators.' Castillo Deball, who splits her time between Mexico City and Berlin, is no stranger to large-scale, L.A.-based projects. She created four landscape-focused collages for the concourse level of Metro's Wilshire/La Cienega station. But the LACMA commission is by far the biggest piece of art she has made, and she said she's learned a great deal from the process. 'I feel like an engineer,' she said, smiling from under her hardhat. 'I never knew so much about concrete and rebar.' Castillo Deball also relishes collaborating with the team of specialized workers employed to assist her in pouring — and taming — the tricky cement. 'They're all Mexican. They come from Jalisco, and we communicate in Spanish,' she said. 'And they always ask me, what am I doing? What does it mean? And then a lot of solutions, we also develop them together. And they're so curious and proud that a Mexican artist is doing something like this.' The building, which has asymmetrical overhead lighting resembling stars, represents the sky, Govan noted, and Castillo Deball's artwork tethers the building to the land. 'All the other ground solutions seemed mechanical,' Govan said. Govan had recently flown in from Tilburg in the Netherlands, where he visited the TextielMuseum's TextielLab with interdisciplinary artist and weaver Sarah Rosalena. Her commission — an 11-by-26½-foot tapestry invoking the ethereal topography of Mars — was being woven on one of the largest Jacquard looms in the world. A few weeks later, a test swath of the tapestry was shipped to LACMA so Rosalena could see how colors and materials looked and felt. 'I was really interested in pushing the textile to really think about terrain,' said Rosalena, standing over the tapestry, which was laid out on a long conference table in a nearby office tower with a bird's-eye view of the new building. 'So that's experimenting with different yarns. Some of it looks like clouds. Some of it almost looks like ocean or water. Some of it looks atmospheric, but definitely otherworldly.' Rosalena is an Angeleno of Wixárika heritage whose practice merges ancient Indigenous craft with computer-driven science and technology to challenge colonial narratives and examine global problems such as climate change and cultural hegemony. She has fond memories of watching her grandmother weave on a backstrap loom while growing up in La Cañada Flintridge, and found that she was just as skilled at computer programming as she was at making textiles. 'My mother would also do a lot of weaving and beading,' said Rosalena, a professor at UC Santa Barbara. But it wasn't until she got interested in photo and digital media processes that she saw their relationship to weaving. When it's complete, the tapestry, 'Omnidirectional Terrain,' will hang on the 30-foot wall in the museum restaurant, where it will be visible through the glass that looks in from the courtyard and Castillo Deball's 'Feathered Changes.' The patterns that Castillo Deball will have created underfoot will run beneath Rosalena's work — the earth beneath a mercurial red sky. The third commission, by ceramicist Kusaka, will be around the corner from the first two, in a plaza. Kusaka laid out a series of drawings on small white pieces of paper on the conference table, tracing the evolution of her idea from a basic sketch to what she hopes will be its final iteration: a 12-foot-tall interactive sculpture featuring a flying saucer atop a cone of bright light, which children and adults can enter, ostensibly to be beamed up to the craft — if only for a fun photograph. 'When students are in the education center, they're looking through glass at it, which will be a nice inspiration,' Govan said. 'You'll also see it as you're on Wilshire. What is that interesting thing? So that was the idea.' Creating visitor attractions that can be shared on social media has proved a savvy marketing strategy at LACMA, where Chris Burden's 'Urban Light' installation of city streetlamps and Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass,' often referred to as the Rock, have grown from Instagram moments to beloved civic landmarks. Kusaka's playful forms are most commonly seen in her ceramic pots, vases and vessels, often glazed with bright colors and decorated with whimsical geometric patterns. Her obsession with space and space creatures finds its lineage in some pots she shows from a book of her work. Some have buttons resembling the control panel of a spaceship; others have little faces that could be alien. 'I don't like making big things for no reason. I really like small things I can hold,' Kusaka said. 'But it's really fun to have a reason that I can go this big, which might be a part of why I want a person to go inside.' Kusaka was born in Japan and learned traditional crafts from her grandparents. Her grandmother taught tea ceremonies, and her grandfather taught calligraphy. 'I never thought that I was gonna relate to what they did at the time. But I do see the relationship now,' said Kusaka, explaining how she began her study of ceramics in college in Boulder, Colo. 'So I was touching ceramics a lot, and then I learned how to look at tools and to appreciate their functions.' Her fanciful commission for LACMA charts a new course, but in a way, she said, it's still a vessel.
