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It once seemed like a herculean, if not insurmountable, challenge – raising $600 million or more for an ambitious modernist building to serve as the new home for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Skeptics abounded when plans were first announced three years ago. But momentum now seems to be shifting in LACMA's favor with the announcement this week of two major donations that will push the fundraising campaign near the halfway point.
— Los Angeles Times
The donations together amount to the largest the museum has ever received. Elaine Wynn, a major collector and co-chair of the museum, pledged $50 million. Former Univision chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio has promised to give $25 million for the project.Both donations hinge on the successful launch... View full entry
Not to worry, Gowan said, we’ll just pop in extra entrances if and when we need them. — Los Angeles Review of Books
Veteran architecture critic Joseph Giovannini writes a long format, meticulous, repetitious, detailed, campy, foxy, fundamental, accurate, conjectural, civic, economic, organizational, institutional, back of the house, sobering, exemplifying, nerdy and most serious to date criticism of LACMA... View full entry
Once a free-flowing, biomorphic design inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits and the work of the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the design has become noticeably more angular and muscular in recent weeks. It now features double-height galleries made of white or light-gray concrete and poking up above the roofline of the rest of the museum [...]
"No one will call it a blob anymore," LACMA Director Michael Govan said ... "Peter hasn't given up the curve. But he's really, really reined it in."
— latimes.com
Related news: Peter Zumthor pushes LACMA redesign to the curb to make room for tar pitsL.A. County supervisors approve initial funding for new LACMA buildingPeter Zumthor's $450,000,000 'Black Flower' for LACMA View full entry
The Board of Supervisors has approved a road map for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as it plans a $600-million makeover that would tear down and rebuild most of its Miracle Mile campus [...].
If there are no serious bumps in the road ahead, the plan would yield a streamlined, curving 410,000-square-foot new museum building designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that would open in 2023, spanning Wilshire Boulevard with an enclosed bridge that doubles as gallery space.
— latimes.com
Previously View full entry
It would be better to reconsider this wholesale demolition. Especially as the proposed replacement, designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, leaves much to be desired. [...] Or maybe it’s the quintessential Angeleno building? After all, replacing an aging faithful spouse with a younger, more stylish trophy wife is an established Hollywood custom. — Zócalo Public Square
"We're working with the other owners of the property and with Metro," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. "There's good reason to build a major development there. You've got subway access and density on Wilshire. My dream is some beautiful piece of architecture with an architecture and design museum at the base, which would add to Museum Row."
If built, the tower would offer a dramatic vertical complement to the relentlessly horizontal LACMA gallery building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor
— latimes.com
How's this for a yin-yang in the new Los Angeles: if this goes through, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) would be responsible for two majorly different impositions on Wilshire Blvd., the city's foremost thoroughfare and itself an icon. One: a street-straddling horizontal art... View full entry
Architect Peter Zumthor has dramatically revised his design for a new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, creating a new bridge-like section of the building that would span Wilshire Boulevard.
The new design is meant to address concerns that the original plan would encroach on, and potentially damage, the La Brea Tar Pits at the neighboring Page Museum, casting a shadow over the largest pit.
— latimes.com
"Bracingly forward-looking, Zumthor's design for LACMA would give the city a much-needed jolt of architectural energy." — Los Angeles Times
Zumthor's design, which obliterates the original campus of LACMA, would cost an estimated $450M to construct, with another $200M in soft and operating costs built in.A few questions abound: is this really any different (in overall approach) than OMA's ill-fated masterplan from roughly 10 years... View full entry
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, an acclaimed Swiss architect is hoping to pull off what an acclaimed Dutch one could not.
Next month LACMA will publicly unveil a $650-million plan by Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor for a dramatic new museum building along Wilshire Boulevard.
— latimes.com