Michael Govan, photographed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles on Nov. 14.
When Michael Govan joined the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as director in 2006, he had a vision: to create an arts and culture town square, in sprawling and diffuse Los Angeles, along museum-heavy Miracle Mile. He had a 340-ton boulder hauled from a Riverside-area quarry to the Wilshire Boulevard museum in 2012 for a monumental sculpture, by Michael Heizer, to mark his LACMA campus. The artwork, āLevitated Mass,ā is a beacon of sorts, visible from the street.
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A specialized ātransporter,ā nearly three freeway lanes wide, carried the two-story-high boulder, which was shrink-wrapped and illuminated with string lights, very slowly over 11 nights ā it traveled 5 miles per hour, through four counties and 22 cities, not unlike an evolving, mobile performance art piece. It drew crowds into the hundreds, with spectators wandering onto their porches or front lawns, in their pajamas in the middle of the night, as the spectacle inched toward the museum.
It was equally a feat of transportation engineering and a logistical nightmare (traffic lights and power lines were reconfigured). But the project drew global marketing for the museum, with international TV crews covering it. And it was a harbinger of things to come: Change was on the horizon at LACMA. And, like Govanās monolith, it was going to be big.
āMichael has been tenacious in reaching the goal he set of reimagining what LACMA will be.ā
ā Christine Anagnos, executive director of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors
Govan ā famously camera-ready, with a slender frame and seemingly elastic smile ā has since cemented himself as one of the cityās most influential, if not divisive, arts leaders. LACMAās $750-million new building ā now about 80% complete and targeting a late 2024 completion ā is one of the highest-profile new museum projects globally. And itās rising amid a Los Angeles museum boom and commercial gallery expansion; the city now hosts one of the most active art scenes in the world. And LACMA is at the center of that activity.
But Govanās new museum building has also been a lightning rod for controversy. The cost ā $125 million of which is coming from Los Angeles County taxpayers ā has been an especially heated issue. Govan insists the projectās price tag has not risen despite breaking ground during the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with subsequent labor challenges and supply-chain issues, problems that slowed other museum construction projects such as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Not to mention inflation.
LACMA holds that construction costs were contractually ālocked inā as of August 2020 and that additional costs are being covered by a contingency budget, explaining why, the museum said, the overall cost hasnāt risen.
A project of this magnitude is āvery rare because of its scope and its ambition,ā said Christine Anagnos, executive director of the New York-based Assn. of Art Museum Directors. āYou donāt see a lot of museum buildings come up from scratch ā it shows real dedication to the city. Michael has been tenacious in reaching the goal he set of reimagining what LACMA will be.ā
To say that there are varying opinions about Govanās vision for what LACMA āwill be,ā however, is an understatement.
Architectural preservationists still mourn that Govan razed four longtime LACMA buildings to make way for the Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries: William L. Pereiraās 1965 Leo S. Bing Center, his 1960 Hammer and Ahmanson buildings and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associatesā 1980s Art of the Americas building. And the new buildingās design ā an amorphous-looking, raised, single-story exhibition hall straddling Wilshire ā has been hotly debated. Some see the modernist building as innovative from a design front while others liken it to a freeway overpass. But at the heart of the controversy lies the fact that the new building will be smaller, featuring a total of 110,000 square feet of gallery space instead of the combined, roughly 120,000 square feet of the four demolished buildings. Times critic Christopher Knight dubbed it āThe Incredible Shrinking Museum.ā
āTo say that there are varying opinions about Govanās vision for what LACMA āwill beā … is an understatement.ā
Govanās vision for the new LACMA ā a nonhierarchical, decentralized ā21st century museumā that is flexible and accessible to everyone ā is an honorable one. Some art world insiders have called him āvisionaryā and āahead of his time.ā But others fear the new building will be the downfall of the largest art museum in the West. LACMAās encyclopedic collection has, for more than 60 years, presented global art history across thousands of years that schoolchildren, say, could find easily and visit regularly; the new LACMA will feature art from the museumās permanent collections in rotating, cross-departmental special exhibitions.
The Ahmanson Foundation, LACMAās largest donor of European Old Master paintings and sculptures, so disagreed with Govanās reformatting plans, which donāt include permanent displays of signature works, that it ended its five-decade partnership with the museum in 2020.
āWe all know the ramifications of this,ā said architecture writer and longtime LACMA critic Greg Goldin. āWeāre never gonna see the great majority of art in the museumās encyclopedic collection. Which has meaning. It has meaning because itās a repository of every aspect of global culture. And how you approach that, curatorially, is profoundly impacted by what the building is capable of and if the building is large enough to dig into those collections. But the new building, itās a museum in storage, and will remain permanently in storage ā and with enormous debt.ā
āItās hard, if not impossible, to see this new project as a win,ā Rob Hollman, executive director of the advocacy group Save LACMA, adds, referring to the museumās $619 million in debt and about $128 million in other liabilities ā a total of about $747 million, according to its most recent 990 tax filing.
Others vehemently disagree.
Stephan Jost, director of the Art Gallery of Ontario ā which broke ground in May on a new, $73-million modern and contemporary art wing ā calls Govanās approach to the new LACMA building āgenius.ā
āHeās hired an architect whose buildings exude permanence. Theyāre elemental, huge solid blocks of granite. They feel like theyāll be around in 1,000 years ā in a city thatās known for tearing things down,ā Jost said. āAnd the nonhierarchical structure ā that nothing is fixed, itās all flexible ā means L.A. County will be the most responsive to art. Thereās no bias, no white supremacy built in. L.A. County will be in sync with the people of today. No oneās going to remember the budget in 10 years!ā
Govan has spoken of satellite locations to feature additional art from the collections and to widen the museumās geographic reach, including in South Los Angeles. And LACMA has forged community partnerships throughout L.A. County to display art from its collections, such as at Charles White Elementary School. But no dedicated satellite locations have materialized yet. The museum said that one, at South L.A.ās Magic Johnson Park, in collaboration with L.A. County, is in the āearly stages of planning.ā
Govan, 60, came to LACMA from New Yorkās Dia Art Foundation, where he served as director from 1994 to 2006; before that he spent six years as deputy director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. But the new LACMA building will be his legacy ā in Los Angeles and in the art world. As such, Govan has ensured that LACMA has grown, in many ways, under his leadership.
Govanās vision for the new LACMA ā a nonhierarchical, decentralized ā21st century museumā that is flexible and accessible to everyone ā is an honorable one.
Even as LACMAās overall exhibition space shrinks with the new Zumthor building, the museumās campus has expanded ā and its visitorship has risen ā during Govanās tenure. He debuted the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008 (planned before his arrival) and spearheaded the debut of the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion for temporary exhibitions in 2010. In addition to āLevitated Mass,ā Govan commissioned several large-scale works for the museumās campus, including Chris Burdenās now-iconic āUrban Lightā (2008), Barbara Krugerās āUntitled (Shafted)ā (2008) and Robert Irwinās āPrimal Palm Gardenā (2010).
During Govanās tenure, LACMA has grown its permanent collection too, through donations and purchases, by more than 44,000 works. And annual attendance has nearly doubled from about 600,000 to an average of more than 1 million.
Govan is also a savvy, charismatic fundraiser. In August 2023, the museum announced that it had surpassed its $750-million capital campaign goal for the new building ā a chunk of those funds acquired during the uncertain times of the pandemic. The campaign now stands at more than $779 million. Govan has also expanded the museum board by 14 members since 2020, bringing in $353 million in board contributions to date.
āHeās going to get this done,ā said art world observer Paul Schimmel, formerly chief curator of L.A.ās Museum of Contemporary Art. āAnd it will put not just him, but Los Angeles on the map. Whether some people like the building or not.ā
Govanās new museum, a county museum, will belong to the public. It will change the face of Los Angeles. For better or worse? That remains to be seen. By the end of this year, we might have a clearer idea.