In reaching for a comparison, I thought back to the hoopla tied to the completion of Crystal Bridges, the nonprofit art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, founded by Alice Walton, or the debut of Glenstone, the astounding museum started by collectors Mitchell Rales and Emily Wei Rales in Potomac, Maryland. Neither was close to this. A better comparison would be the opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new building, designed by Renzo Piano, in the Meatpacking District—I was there for that bash; Rufus Wainwright sang Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” in front of the Hudson River, and the crowd went nuts.
But LACMA’s new building, with its massive institutional footprint and giant budget to match—the museum placed the final cost at $720 million—puts it in another stratosphere.
“Really, this might be the most important museum in the country built in, oh, I don’t know, decades?” Bob Iger, the former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, told me. He was there with his wife, Willow Bay, who has been a board member for years and chaired the big party Thursday night. She also, with Iger, has funded the replacement of bulbs in Chris Burden’s Urban Light, the marvelous arrangement of old streetlamps in front of the museum that’s become the most photographed object in Los Angeles.
“I’m just the husband here,” Iger said.
Willow Bay and Bob Iger
Getty Images.
He added that it was heartening to see that the artists present at the gala loved the new building. The David Geffen Galleries doesn’t primarily exist to show work by living artists; the contemporary shows and collection will still mainly be housed in the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion. But the artists in attendance last night did love the new building, in the way that artists in New York love going to The Met. I spoke with Lauren Halsey (who does have work in the new building, actually), Jonas Wood, Mark Grotjahn, Julie Mehretu, and Jordan Wolfson. Discerning voices, all of them, not ones to bite their tongue—but all seemed totally won over by the daring nature of the single-floor schematic, the old-new audacity of the patina-worn concrete walls. Alex Israel walked up the stairs at the start of the evening, taking it in with the collector Joel Lubin, marveling at the wonder of it, looking at the ocean of bow-tie-wearing men and sequin-clad women entering the sculpture garden below. Catherine Opie snapped selfies with patrons, and Ed Ruscha walked through the atrium, where Tino Sehgal debuted a new performance, to find three of his photographs from the ’60s installed just off the room with Renaissance paintings. Francesco Vezzoli said it was “the dream of America” to have a building like this for art in Los Angeles.
