Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Infobox Museum
name = Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

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established = 1910 [ [http://www.lacma.org/info/AboutLACMA.aspx About LACMA] ] [ [http://www.artinfo.com/galleryguide/20183/6719/about/los-angeles-county-museum-of-art-los-angeles/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art: About] ]
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location = 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California
type = Encyclopedic, Art museum
visitors =
director = Michael Govan
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website = http://www.lacma.org/The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also known as "LACMA", is an art museum in Los Angeles County, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits.

LACMA is the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago.Fact|date=September 2008 Its holdings include more than 100,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series throughout the year.

History

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, founded in 1910 in Exposition Park near the University of Southern California. In 1965, the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art.

The museum was built in a style similar to Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Music Center and consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and the Lytton Gallery (renamed the Frances and Armand Hammer Building in 1968). The board selected LA architect William Pereira over the directors' recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings.cite book | last = Hackman | first = William | authorlink = William Hackman | title = Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Art Spaces | publisher = Scala Publishers Limited | date = 2008 | isbn = 978-1-85759-481-2] The LA Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles.

To house its growing collections of modern and contemporary art, and to provide more space for exhibitions, the museum hired the architectural firm of Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer Associates to design its Robert O. Anderson Building, which opened in 1986 (renamed the Art of the Americas Building in 2007).

The museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, as did the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. In 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent May Department Stores building, an impressive example of streamline moderne architecture designed by Albert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998.

In 2004, LACMA’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano. The transformation consists of three phases. Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008. Phase III is scheduled to be completed toward the end of 2010.

On March 6, 2007, BP announced a $25 million donation to name the entry pavilion under construction as part of LACMA's renovation campaign the "BP Grand Entrance." Solar panels atop the pavilion attempt to cast BP as an environmental innovator. The $25 million gift matches Walt Disney Co.'s 1997 gift for Disney Hall as the biggest corporate donation to the arts in Southern California. Previously, in 2006, LACMA had announced that the new entrance would be called the "Lynda and Stewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion," in honor of their $25 million gift.

The glass-encased entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings. The BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) comprise the $191 million (originally $150 million) first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign. BCAM is named for (An earlier plan for LACMA's transformation by architect Rem Koolhaas proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new museum. [Citation | last=Singely | first=Paulette | author-link=Paulette Singely | title=the curator against the city | year=2005 | date = April 2005 | url=http://www.laforum.org/the_curator_against_the_city_by_paulette_singley
title = LACMA on fire | publisher = Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design] ) Phase I of the Renzo Piano renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. [cite book | last = Chang | first = Jade | authorlink = Jade Chang | title = Art/Shop/Eat Los Angeles | publisher = Somerset Books | date = 2005 | pages = 90-98 | isbn = 1905131062 ]

On February 2, 2007, LACMA's director, Michael Govan, with artist Jeff Koons, revealed plans for a massive 161-foot-tall sculpture featuring an operational 1940s locomotive suspended from a crane. The sculpture would be located at the entrance on Wilshire Boulevard, between the Ahmanson Building and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. [cite web | title = Transforming LACMA > Progress Report | url=http://www.lacma.org/info/TransformingProgress.aspx | accessdate = 2007-03-07 ] [Citation | last=Christie | first=Tom | author-link=Tom Christie | title=This Is Not a Very Large Train Engine Hanging From a Crane at LACMA: Not yet, anyway. | newspaper=LA Weekly | year=2007 | date=February 2, 2007
url=http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/art/this-is-not-a-very-large-train-engine-hanging-from-a-crane-at-lacma/15561/ ]

Directors

*Dr. Richard (Ric) F. Brown - 1961 - 1966
*Kenneth Donahue 1966 - 1979
*Earl A. Powell III - 1980 - 1992
*Michael E. Shapiro - 1992 - 1993
*Graham W. J. Beal - 1996 - 1999
*Andrea L. Rich - 1999 - 2005
*Michael Govan - 2006 - present

Acquisitions and Donors

On January 8, 2008 Eli Broad revealed plans to retain permanent control of his roughly 2,000 works of modern and contemporary art in the independent Broad Art Foundation, which loans works to museums, rather than giving the art away. Mr. Broad, as recently as a year prior, had said that he planned to give most of his holdings to one or several museums, one of which was assumed to be LACMA.Citation | last = Reynolds| first = Christopher | author-link = Christopher Reynolds | title = Finding the silver lining Moving on to Plan B | newspaper = Los Angeles Times | year = 2008 | date = January 15, 2008 | url = http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-govan15jan15,1,5071836.story?coll=la-entnews-arts&ctrack=2&cset=true]

Broad, previously vice chairman of LACMA's board of directors, financed the $56-million Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) building at LACMA; he also provided an additional $10 million to buy two works of art to be displayed in it. BCAM displayed 220 pieces borrowed from Broad and his Broad Art Foundation when it opened in February 2008. In 2001, LACMA was criticized for hosting a major exhibition of Mr. Broad’s collection without having secured a promised gift of the works, an act that is prohibited at many prominent art institutions because it can increase the market value of the collection.Citation | last = Wyatt | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Wyatt | title = An Art Donor Opts to Hold On to His Collection | newspaper = New York Times | year = 2008 | date = January 8, 2008 | url = http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/arts/design/08muse.html?scp=1&sq=broad+lacma]

In December 2007, Janice and Henri Lazarof gave LACMA 130 mostly modernist works estimated to be worth more than $100 million. The collection includes 20 works by Picasso, watercolors and paintings by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky and a considerable number of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore. William de Kooning, Joan Miró, Louise Nevelson, Archipenko and Arp.Citation | last = Wyatt | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Wyatt | title = For Los Angeles Museum, a 'Transformative' Gift of Modernists | newspaper = New York Times | year = 2007 | date = December 13, 2007 | url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E7D71339F930A25751C1A9619C8B63&scp=1&sq=lazarof+lacma] Citation | last = Muchnic | first = Suzanne | author-link = Suzanne Muchnic | title = Huge gift helps LACMA enter the modern age | newspaper = Los Angeles Times | year = 2007 | date = December 12, 2007 | url = http://www.calendarlive.com/la-et-lacma12dec12,0,3227885.story]

In 2001 the museum lost out on the collection of Nathan Smooke, a former museum trustee and industrial real-estate developer whose heirs sold much of his collection rather than donating it.

LACMA boasts one of the largest collections of Latin American art due to the generous donation of more than 2,000 works of art by Bernard Lewin and his wife Edith Lewin in 1996.

In the early 1970s Norton Simon, the Hunt's food magnate, donated his collection the Pasadena Art Museum, forming the Norton Simon Museum, after making some indication of donating the work to LACMA.

Armand Hammer was a LACMA board member for nearly seventeen years, beginning in 1968, and during this time continued to announce the museum would inherit his whole collection. Hammer's collection included works from Van Gogh, Sargent, Eakins, Gustave Moreau and Chardin. When LACMA was offered a collection of works by Honore Daumier, Hammer bought the works on the promise that he would give them to the museum. To LACMA's surprise, Hammer instead founded the Hammer Museum, built adjacent to Occidental's headquarters in Los Angeles.Citation | last = Hughes | first = Robert | author-link = Robert Hughes | title = America's Vainest Museum | newspaper = Time Magazine | year = 1991 | date = January 28, 1991 | url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972206,00.html]

From 1946 to his death in 1951, William Randolph Hearst was LACMA's largest benefactor. He remains the largest donor to the museum in number of objects. His donations formed the museum's collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval and early Renaissance sculptures, and much of the collection of European decorative arts.

References

External links

* [http://www.lacma.org/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Official Website]
* [http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/ LACMA's online collection] : Access to more than 60,000 artworks from the museum's permanent collection. You can also view numerous special exhibitions here that are only available online.