LACMA will open new building in 2026; the scaffolding falls

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries will open to the public in April 2026, the museum announced Friday as scaffolding around the Peter Zumthor-designed building is lowered, revealing the widest view yet of 900 feet long. Poured concrete structure spanning Wilshire Boulevard.

During the Times’ tour of the site this week, LACMA said 90% of construction has been completed and the project is moving toward its final phase. In early 2025, the museum said, it will begin moving key staff and operations into the building. At some point, probably in the spring, museum members and others will have a chance to tour the empty building, LACMA said. Then, pieces from the museum’s collection will begin arriving in the 110,000 square feet of gallery space.

Drivers and pedestrians approaching the museum from the east will pass under the entire span of the building’s 150-foot clear bridge, which frames Chris Burden’s famous “Urban Light” sculpture as the boulevard curves slightly to the north and Continue toward the LACMA campus on a slight downward slope. The portion of the building that stands on the south side of Wilshire, where a surface parking lot once stood, will include a cafe overlooking the street, as well as a 300-seat theater located on one of the seven, 30 – foot-high ground-level pavilions that hold up the museum’s exhibition floor. Other pavilion bases will house a restaurant, the LACMA store and the WM Keck Education Center, the museum said.

LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries seen from above, showing the La Brea Tar Pits in the distance.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Those viewing the building from the street can catch a glimpse of LACMA’s 1988 Japanese Pavilion beneath the curvilinear body of the new building. Visitors approaching from the La Brea Tar Pits can see parts of “Urban Light” and will eventually have a more direct walking connection between the tar pits and the LACMA campus. Passersby can get a better sense of the new building’s 243 floor-to-ceiling windows, which the museum touts as providing 360-degree views of the city but which have been a source of angst among architecture enthusiasts such as the curved glass in previous planes. It has been replaced by linear glass at odds with the concrete arches.

Early renderings of the building showed the windows with curtains, and there has been much speculation about what these curtains will look like and the extent to which they will be transparent. In 2022, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded LACMA $500,000 for “custom gallery elements,” including “light-blocking curtains” and “custom casework.”

LACMA’s latest announcement does not address the issue of curtains, but does note that art will be displayed on light-filled terraces as well as in screened indoor galleries suitable for light-sensitive works. “Thousands of works of art in our collection can be safely displayed in natural light,” the museum states on its website. “In fact, the sculptures, tiles, ceramics and more were intended to be viewed in natural light, and many were made to be displayed outdoors.”

LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries cross Wilshire Boulevard.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

LACMA has compared Zumthor’s design to a type of living organism. In fact, the raw concrete already shows signs of wear, with water stains and other irregularities. The exterior walls are pierced at several points with circular holes that allow air to enter and leave the building. The outline of the triangular ribs of the building’s core can be seen from the ground, looking up.

LACMA CEO Michael Govan has long said the Zumthor building will not have a traditional main entrance. Tickets will be available for purchase on both sides of Wilshire. Two cantilevered staircases rise from street level to these entrances, and the building is mirrored with their curves.

“LACMA is part of a larger whole, which includes our neighbors La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, the Academy Museum, the Petersen Automotive Museum and Craft Contemporary,” Govan said. “It’s 30 acres with approximately 500,000 square feet of space for exhibitions, restaurants, theaters and outdoor events. “We are excited to be a great resource for Los Angeles.”

Construction of the Zumthor building began in 2020. but it’s been in the works for more than a decade.. The Times art critic Christopher Knight has called it the “Incredible museum that is getting smaller and smaller” noting that the new building has less exhibition space than the four buildings that were demolished to make room for it. LACMA maintains that with the addition of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum building in 2008 and the addition of the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion in 2010, the new LACMA will have more gallery space than in 2007.

LACMA announced an official opening date of April 2026 for its new David Geffen Galleries designed by Peter Zumthor.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

The Times reported that the The original cost of the project was $650 million. which increased after a year-long delay precipitated by the discovery of fossils and tar beneath the construction site.

A LACMA representative cited a partial project cost of $715 million that included “hard costs, soft costs and contingencies (includes construction furniture, draperies/curtain tracks, landscaping, site work, etc.).” The cost of installing the art exhibit and display cases was not included in that total, and the museum said it does not yet know what the total cost of the project will be.

“Of course, in the end we will be happy to report that we are investing even more in LACMA beyond the building, including public art,” Govan said.

A source previously told The Times that the total cost of the project is around 835 million dollars. LACMA disputed that estimate. “As of today we don’t have a total,” Govan said in an interview. “There is no $835 million budget that I have seen or that I know of.”

Fundraising, the museum said, has exceeded goals and amounts to 793 million dollars.

“Aside from a huge, unprecedented paleontological find and tar, which set us back a year, when you take everything into account, including inflation over time and apples-to-apples comparisons of what’s included, as far as As far as I’m concerned, we’re on the right track. our cost and timing plan from our projections from more than a decade ago,” Govan said.