Here is your first look at models and details of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor's proposed new building for LACMA. See these for yourself, along with a look at LACMA's architectural history and an overview of other Zumthor projects, in THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST: PETER ZUMTHOR RECONSIDERS LACMA, on view July 9-September 15, 2013 — facebook.com/lacma
For more information, visit lacma.org/zumthor.
3 Comments
Yesterday, at LACMA, there were six news-trucks, two helicopters, dozens of police and one diver submerged in the methane bubbling black lake , the La Brea Tar Pits. No they weren't looking for Zumthor. The police could care less. The diver was searching for evidence, a weapon tossed in the tar two years ago. I was at a crime scene.
Among the hundreds of visitors, children and museum workers that use the museum park the dozens of overheard conversations played like radio scanning.
I thought I heard Zumthor explaining his new project to some museum official or journalism. I was a fly in a crowd all i heard was voices. This is part of what i heard...
"...its all about art's origins , mankind's birth, here in the Pit's primordial black ooze. The tar. the oil, the layers of history.... That is my inspiration for the blackness, the swirling overhead walkways. We are looking at mans history and his fate!"
... are you proposing to tear down the existing buildings and bring LACMA back to the stone age. What about the Goff designed Price Oil Pavilion for Japanese art?
That will stay I like the metaphor. Oil. A light pavilion floating on oil. Oil is black. I want everything black. As Mick Jagger sings, Paint it Black.
But the methane gases, the sulfurous odors. The Tar pits are always releasing smelly gases. In the summer the park stinks. Hot with methane and sulfur gas. This is no place to show art.
Ah, you understand. Art is hell.
eric chavkin
@Eric I didn't realize a diver could survive being submerged in the methane bubbling black lake.
also interesting the way they are marketing the idea of giving energy back to the city, more than it reqs. interesting in which case to juxtapose this choice against the green roof in San Francisco over the California Academy of Sciences. Blavk vs green...
The diver said afterwards that this was his most dangerous dive. Zero visibility and poisonous. Feeling thru the tar until he found the weapon. That takes guts..
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