[...] it’s worth considering one of the issues that drove so much of the criticism: the ideal—said to be lost in the soon-to-be-transformed institution—of the museum as an “encyclopaedia” of collections, one necessitating a particular form of architecture permanently exhibiting its collection in chronologically sequenced galleries organised by medium and culture. — The Art Newspaper
Michael Conforti, former director of the Clark Art Institute and previously a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and also at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, writes in defense of LACMA's controversial plan of a considerably smaller 'expansion,' designed by Peter Zumthor, citing curatorial shifts in recent decades.
"The early 21st-century art museum, civic and social space that it also is, is designed for a public expecting an equal experience with art, architecture and amenities, a public with little consciousness of the square footage applied to any one of these," explains Conforti's opinion piece in The Art Newspaper. "Los Angeles is now committed to building such a museum, doing so as it plans other sites for curatorial activity, ones responsive to its special urban condition. This seems appropriate [...]."
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I'm not sure why the plan shrunk so much or turned beige, but just built it already and be done with it! Tired of looking at the millionth redo...
The new LACMA embodies a devolution of the museum into an Instagram oriented showroom. Deracinated objects from disparate periods will be piled together in the manner of a high-end antiques mall and displayed in a manner with less intellectual content than a Neiman-Marcus shop window. By dispensing with the notion of expert departments with dedicated galleries and moving curators into an off-site location, it will be easier for LACMA museum directors to downsize staff and eliminate departments that aren't sufficiently trendy.
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