Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Encyclopedia
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum in Los Angeles, 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
and attracts nearly one million visitors annually. 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.
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.
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
bronze
s. 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.
. An earlier plan for LACMA's transformation by architect Rem Koolhaas
proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new museum, estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million. The transformation consists of three phases.
Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008. The renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen
and Barry McGee
. The 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 Eli and Edythe Broad
, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign; Eli Broad also serves on LACMA's Board of Directors. BCAM opened on February 16, 2008, adding 58000 square feet (5,388.4 m²) of exhibition space to the museum. In 2010, the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.
The second phase will turn the May building into new offices and galleries. The building will house flexible gallery space, education space, administrative offices, a new restaurant, a gift shop and a bookstore, as well as study centers for the museum's departments of costume and textiles, photography and prints and drawings. It will also include a roof sculpture garden with two works by James Turrell
.
Specifics about the third phase, which involves renovations to older buildings, have not yet been disclosed. In November 2009, plans were made public that LACMA's director Michael Govan was working with Swiss architect and Pritzker Prize
laureate Peter Zumthor
on plans for rebuilding the eastern section of the campus from the two new Renzo Piano buildings to the tar pits.
, offering its staff, expertise, and fundraising assistance.
. Filling the atrium at the base of the staircase is Tony Smith's massive sculpture Smoke (1967). The modern collection on the plaza level displays works from 1900 to the 1970s, largely populated by the Janice and Henry Lazaroff collection. The plaza level galleries also house African art and a gallery highlighting the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. The second floor of the Ahmanson Building has Greek and Roman Art galleries.
The Contemporary Art collection is displayed in the 60000 square feet (5,574.2 m²) Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), opened on February 16, 2008. BCAM's inaugural exhibition featured 176 works by 28 artists of postwar Modern art from the late 1950s to the present. All but 30 of the works initially displayed came from the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad .
In December 2007, the Modern Art holdings were greatly expanded by the gift of the 130-item Janice and Henri Lazarof Collection. The collection features significant works from: Constantin Brâncuşi
, Edgar Degas
, Alberto Giacometti
, Wassily Kandinsky
, Paul Klee
, Pablo Picasso
, and Camille Pissarro
.
"Back Seat Dodge ’38 (1964) by Edward Kienholz
, is a sculpture portraying a couple engaged in sexual activity in the back seat of a truncated 1938 Dodge automobile chassis. The piece won Kienholz instant celebrity in 1966 when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
tried to ban the sculpture as pornographic and threatened to withhold financing from LACMA if it included the work in a Kienholz retrospective. A compromise was reached under which the sculpture's car door would remain closed and guarded, to be opened only on the request of a museum patron who was over 18, and only if no children were present in the gallery. The uproar led to more than 200 people lining up to see the work the day the show opened. Ever since, Back Seat Dodge ’38 has drawn crowds.
LACMA's Latin American Art galleries reopened in July 2008 after several years renovation. The Latin American collection includes pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, Modern and contemporary works. Many recent additions to the collection were financed by sales of works from an 1,800-piece holding of 20th century Mexican art compiled by dealer-collectors Bernard and Edith Lewin
and given to the museum in 1997.
The pre-Columbian
galleries were redesigned by Jorge Pardo, a Los Angeles artist who works in sculpture, design and architecture. Pardo's display cases are built from thick, stacked sheets of medium-density fiberboard (MDF), with spacing of equal thickness in between the 70-plus layers. The laser-cut organic forms undulate and swell out from the walls, sharply contrasting to the rectangular display cases found in most art museums.
The museum's pre-Columbian collection began in the 1980s with the first installment of a 570-piece gift from Southern California collector Constance McCormick Fearing and the purchase of about 200 pieces from L.A. businessman Proctor Stafford. The holdings recently jumped from about 1,800 to 2,500 objects with a gift of Colombian ceramics from Camilla Chandler Frost, a LACMA trustee and the sister of Otis Chandler
, former LA Times
publisher, and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer of Atlanta, whose family built the collection. A sizable portion of LACMA's pre-Columbian collection was excavated from burial chambers in Colima, Nayarit
and other regions around Jalisco in modern-day Mexico. 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.
The Spanish Colonial collection includes work from 17th and 18th century Mexican artists Miguel Cabrera
, José de Ibarra
, José de Páez and Nicolás Rodriguez Juárez. The collection has galleries for Diego Rivera
and Rufino Tamayo
. The Latin American contemporary gallery highlights works Francis Alÿs
.
created the towering, bronze Retrospective Column (1981, cast in 1986) for the entrance of the Art of the Americas Building. The Ahmanson Building's atrium was remodeled to hold Tony Smith
's Smoke, which had not been displayed since its original 1967 presentation at Washington, D.C.
's Corcoran Gallery of Art
. The massive black painted aluminum artwork is made up of 43 piers, and is 45 ft (13.7 m). long, 33 ft (10.1 m). wide and 22 ft (6.7 m). high. The newly fabricated work was initially on loan from the artist's estate, but in 2010 after several months of intense fundraising efforts, "the museum acquired the work for an undisclosed amount reported to exceed $3 million and [with an insurance valuation of] 'over $5 million.'" The purchase was "made possible by The Belldegrun Family's gift to LACMA in honor of Rebecka Belldegrun's birthday," per the museum.
Eli and Edythe Broad contributed $10 million to fund the purchase of Richard Serra
's Band sculpture, on display on the first floor of BCAM when the building opened.
Surrounding the BCAM building and LACMA's courtyard is a 100 palm tree garden, designed by artist Robert Irwin
and landscape architect Paul Comstock. Some of the 30 varieties of palms are in the ground, but most are in large wooden boxes above ground. Directly in front of the new entrance to LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard is Chris Burden
's Urban Light (2008), an orderly, multi-tiered installation of 202 antique cast-iron street lights from various cities in and around the Los Angeles area. The street lights are functional, turn on in the evening, and are powered by solar panels on the roof of the BP Grand Entrance.
Originally Jeff Koons
' Tulips (1995-2004) sculpture was inside the Grand Entrance building and Charles Ray
's Fire Truck (1993) was outside in the courtyard, both lent by the Broad Art Foundation,. Both sculptures were removed after being on display for 3 months due to unexpected damage from patrons and wear.
On February 2, 2007, Michael Govan, with Koons, revealed plans for a 161 feet (49.1 m)-tall Koons 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. By 2011, after "the fundraising climate soured and Koons’ California fabricator, Carlson & Co, went out of business after completing a $2.3-million feasibility study" and a $25 million estimated cost, Govan said "We don't have a final method of construction, and I don't have a final fundraising plan." Koons said they are now working with the German fabricator Arnold, outside of Frankfurt, to do an additional engineering study, and Govan says he has committed to spending half a million dollars for that study. The museum has J.B. Turner Engine (1986), a small Koons piece which was shown in the 2006–2007 “Magritte
and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" exhibition.
and Stewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion", in honor of their $25 million gift.
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. However, LACMA remains the "preferred" museum to receive works from the Foundation.
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 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.
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 Brâncuşi
, Henry Moore
. Willem de Kooning
, Joan Miró
, Louise Nevelson, Archipenko and Arp
.
In 2002, the Annenberg Foundation
gave the museum $10 million to establish a special endowment fund to support exhibitions, art acquisitions and educational programs at the discretion of its director. In recognition of the gift, LACMA named its leadership position the Wallis Annenberg directorship. In 2001, Wallis Annenberg endowed a curatorial fellowship program with a $1-million gift. In 1991, the foundation contributed $10 million to LACMA's endowment and in 1999 it donated $100,000 to provide arts education training for Los Angeles elementary school teachers.
In 2001, the museum lost out on the modern art collection of Nathan Smooke, a former museum trustee and industrial real-estate developer whose heirs sold much of his collection rather than donating it.
In 1996 the museum suffered yet another serious blow when the Gilbert Collection
of Italian mosaics and other decorative objects, promised as an eventual bequest, and parts of which had been on display for decades, was withdrawn. The would-be donor claimed that the Museum had reneged on a written agreement to provide more exhibit space for it. The collection is considered one of the finest in the world of its kind. Moreover, unlike the Hammer and Simon collections, it did not remain in the Los Angeles area but was removed to the United Kingdom.
Long-time trustee Robert Halff donated 53 works of contemporary art in 1994. Components of that gift included Joan Miró
, Jasper Johns
, Sam Francis
, Frank Stella
, John Chamberlain
, Matthew Barney
, and Jeff Koons
. It also provided LACMA with its first drawings by Claes Oldenburg
and Cy Twombly
.
In 1990, Max Palevsky
gave 32 pieces of Arts and Crafts
furniture to LACMA ; three years later, he added an additional 42 pieces to his gift. In 2000, he donated $2 million to LACMA for Arts and Crafts works. He supplied about a third of the 300 objects displayed in a 2004-05 LACMA exhibit, "The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: 1880-1920" and in 2009, the museum presented "The Arts and Crafts Movement: Masterworks From the Max Palevsky and Jodie Evans Collection."
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, John Singer Sargent
, Thomas Eakins
, Gustave Moreau
, Edgar Degas
, and Paul Cézanne
. When LACMA was offered a collection of works by Honoré 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.
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.
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.
and to help that museum raise new money from donors.
Although attendance has grown in recent years, it still remained at 914,356 visitors in 2010. The museum's endowment grew from $99.6 million to $106.8 million that year. The Los Angeles County covers more than a third of the museum's operating expenses.
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard
Wilshire Boulevard
Wilshire Boulevard is one of the principal east-west arterial roads in Los Angeles, California, United States. It was named for Henry Gaylord Wilshire , an Ohio native who made and lost fortunes in real estate, farming, and gold mining. Henry Wilshire initiated what was to become Wilshire...
along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile
Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California
The Miracle Mile in Los Angeles, California, is an area in the Mid-Wilshire region consisting of an almost two-mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax and Western Avenues...
vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits
The La Brea Tar Pits are a cluster of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed, in the urban heart of Los Angeles. Asphaltum or tar has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with water...
.
LACMA is the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and attracts nearly one million visitors annually. 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.
Early years
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, USA in 1913 as the Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and...
, founded in 1910 in Exposition Park
Exposition Park (Los Angeles)
Exposition Park is located in University Park, Los Angeles, California, across the street from the University of Southern California. Exposition Park houses the following:* Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum* Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena...
near the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. 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
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
.
The museum was built in a style similar to Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Music Center
Los Angeles Music Center
The Music Center is one of the three largest performing arts centers in the nation. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the Music Center is home to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theater, Mark Taper Forum and Walt Disney Concert Hall...
and consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and the Lytton
Bart Lytton
Bart Lytton was a "brash, colorful and controversial" Los Angeles financier, Democratic Party fund-raiser and philanthropist who called himself "the most successful businessman in this decade in the U.S.", declaring "The only ism for me is narcissism".-Early life, writing career, communist...
Gallery (renamed the Frances and Armand Hammer
Armand Hammer
Armand Hammer was an American business tycoon most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran for decades, though he was known as well as for his art collection, his philanthropy, and for his close ties to the Soviet Union.Thanks to business interests around the world and his...
Building in 1968). The board selected LA architect William Pereira
William Pereira
William Leonard Pereira was an American architect from Chicago, Illinois, of Portuguese ancestry who was noted for his futuristic designs of landmark buildings such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco...
over the directors' recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
for the buildings.
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
Robert O. Anderson
Robert Orville Anderson was an American business leader, legendary wildcatter and philanthropist who founded Atlantic Richfield Oil Co. through the 1966 merger of the Atlantic and Richfield oil companies and was Arco's chairman for two decades...
Building, which opened in 1986 (renamed the Art of the Americas Building in 2007).
The museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art
Pavilion for Japanese Art
The Pavilion for Japanese Art is a part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art containing the museum's collection of Japanese works that date from approximately 3000 B.C. through the 20th century...
, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff
Bruce Goff
Bruce Alonzo Goff was an American architect distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma and elsewhere.-Early years:...
, opened in 1988, as did the B. Gerald Cantor
B. Gerald Cantor
Bernard Gerald Cantor was the founder and chairman of securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald and an important philanthropist supporting visual arts institutions in the United States...
Sculpture Garden of Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
s. In 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent May Department Stores
May Department Stores
The May Department Stores Company was a national department store chain in the United States, founded in 1877 by David May. The company ceased to exist in 2005 when it was merged with Federated Department Stores, Inc . Prior to the merger it was headquartered in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri...
building, an impressive example of streamline moderne
Streamline Moderne
Streamline Moderne, sometimes referred to by either name alone or as Art Moderne, was a late type of the Art Deco design style which emerged during the 1930s...
architecture designed by Albert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998.
Transformation
In 2004, LACMA's Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by world-renowned architect Renzo PianoRenzo Piano
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...
. An earlier plan for LACMA's transformation by architect Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an entirely new museum, estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million. The transformation consists of three phases.
Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008. The renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Leisha Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement....
and Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...
. The 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 Eli and Edythe Broad
Eli Broad
Eli Broad is an American businessman from Detroit, Michigan who resides in Los Angeles, California.-Life and career:An only child, Broad was born in the Bronx to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents. His father was a housepainter, his mother was a dressmaker. His family moved to Detroit when he...
, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign; Eli Broad also serves on LACMA's Board of Directors. BCAM opened on February 16, 2008, adding 58000 square feet (5,388.4 m²) of exhibition space to the museum. In 2010, the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.
The second phase will turn the May building into new offices and galleries. The building will house flexible gallery space, education space, administrative offices, a new restaurant, a gift shop and a bookstore, as well as study centers for the museum's departments of costume and textiles, photography and prints and drawings. It will also include a roof sculpture garden with two works by James Turrell
James Turrell
James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
.
Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...
laureate Peter Zumthor
Peter Zumthor
Peter Zumthor is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.-Early life:Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker...
on plans for rebuilding the eastern section of the campus from the two new Renzo Piano buildings to the tar pits.
Preserving the Watts Towers
In 2010, LACMA partnered with Los Angeles's Department of Cultural Affairs in an effort to ensure the preservation of the Watts TowersWatts Towers
The Watts Towers or Towers of Simon Rodia in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California, is a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which reach heights of over 99 feet . The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato Rodia in his spare time over a period of...
, offering its staff, expertise, and fundraising assistance.
Exhibitions
The museum's best-attended show ever was "[Exhibitions of artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun|Treasures of Tutankhamun]]", which drew 1.2 million over four months in 1978. The 2005 "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" drew 937,613 during its 137-day run. A show of Van Gogh masterpieces from the artist's eponymous Amsterdam museum is the third most successful show, and a 1984 exhibition of French Impressionist works is fourth.Collections
LACMA's more than 100,000 objects are divided among its numerous departments by region, media, and time period and are spread amongst the various museum buildings.Modern and Contemporary Art
The Modern Art collection is displayed in the Ahmanson Building which was renovated in 2008 to have a new entrance featuring a large staircase, conceived as a gathering place similar to Rome's Spanish StepsSpanish Steps
The Spanish Steps are a set of steps in Rome, Italy, climbing a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church at the top. The Scalinata is the widest staircase in Europe...
. Filling the atrium at the base of the staircase is Tony Smith's massive sculpture Smoke (1967). The modern collection on the plaza level displays works from 1900 to the 1970s, largely populated by the Janice and Henry Lazaroff collection. The plaza level galleries also house African art and a gallery highlighting the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. The second floor of the Ahmanson Building has Greek and Roman Art galleries.
The Contemporary Art collection is displayed in the 60000 square feet (5,574.2 m²) Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), opened on February 16, 2008. BCAM's inaugural exhibition featured 176 works by 28 artists of postwar Modern art from the late 1950s to the present. All but 30 of the works initially displayed came from the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad .
In December 2007, the Modern Art holdings were greatly expanded by the gift of the 130-item Janice and Henri Lazarof Collection. The collection features significant works from: Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
, Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, and Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
.
"Back Seat Dodge ’38 (1964) by Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz was an American installation artist whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz...
, is a sculpture portraying a couple engaged in sexual activity in the back seat of a truncated 1938 Dodge automobile chassis. The piece won Kienholz instant celebrity in 1966 when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the five-member nonpartisan governing board of Los Angeles County, California. Members of the board of supervisors are elected by district. They were as of December 2, 2008:*District 1: Gloria Molina...
tried to ban the sculpture as pornographic and threatened to withhold financing from LACMA if it included the work in a Kienholz retrospective. A compromise was reached under which the sculpture's car door would remain closed and guarded, to be opened only on the request of a museum patron who was over 18, and only if no children were present in the gallery. The uproar led to more than 200 people lining up to see the work the day the show opened. Ever since, Back Seat Dodge ’38 has drawn crowds.
American and Latin American Art
The Art of the Americas Building has American, Latin American and pre-Columbian collections displayed on the second floor and temporary exhibition space on the first floor.LACMA's Latin American Art galleries reopened in July 2008 after several years renovation. The Latin American collection includes pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, Modern and contemporary works. Many recent additions to the collection were financed by sales of works from an 1,800-piece holding of 20th century Mexican art compiled by dealer-collectors Bernard and Edith Lewin
Bernard Lewin
Bernard Lewin was a German-born American citizen who amassed the largest private collection of modern Mexican art in the world. Prior to his death in 2003, Lewin and his wife Edith donated more than 2,000 works of art to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lewin was a personal friend of Rufino...
and given to the museum in 1997.
The pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
galleries were redesigned by Jorge Pardo, a Los Angeles artist who works in sculpture, design and architecture. Pardo's display cases are built from thick, stacked sheets of medium-density fiberboard (MDF), with spacing of equal thickness in between the 70-plus layers. The laser-cut organic forms undulate and swell out from the walls, sharply contrasting to the rectangular display cases found in most art museums.
The museum's pre-Columbian collection began in the 1980s with the first installment of a 570-piece gift from Southern California collector Constance McCormick Fearing and the purchase of about 200 pieces from L.A. businessman Proctor Stafford. The holdings recently jumped from about 1,800 to 2,500 objects with a gift of Colombian ceramics from Camilla Chandler Frost, a LACMA trustee and the sister of Otis Chandler
Otis Chandler
Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions...
, former LA Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
publisher, and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer of Atlanta, whose family built the collection. A sizable portion of LACMA's pre-Columbian collection was excavated from burial chambers in Colima, Nayarit
Nayarit
Nayarit officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 20 municipalities and its capital city is Tepic.It is located in Western Mexico...
and other regions around Jalisco in modern-day Mexico. LACMA boasts one of the largest collections of Latin American art
Latin American art
Latin American art is the combined artistic expressions of South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, as well as Latin American living in other regions....
due to the generous donation of more than 2,000 works of art by Bernard Lewin
Bernard Lewin
Bernard Lewin was a German-born American citizen who amassed the largest private collection of modern Mexican art in the world. Prior to his death in 2003, Lewin and his wife Edith donated more than 2,000 works of art to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lewin was a personal friend of Rufino...
and his wife Edith Lewin in 1996.
The Spanish Colonial collection includes work from 17th and 18th century Mexican artists Miguel Cabrera
Miguel Cabrera (painter)
Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera was an indigenous Zapotec painter during the Viceroyalty of New Spain, today's Mexico. During his lifetime, he was recognized as the greatest painter in all of New Spain....
, José de Ibarra
José de Ibarra
José de Ibarra was a Mexican painter. He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and died 21 Nov 1756 in Mexico City. He was a student of painter Juan Correa. Many of his pieces are preserved in Mexican museums and the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. He was one of the most prolific painters of...
, José de Páez and Nicolás Rodriguez Juárez. The collection has galleries for Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
and Rufino Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences....
. The Latin American contemporary gallery highlights works Francis Alÿs
Francis Alÿs
Francis Alÿs is a Belgian artist. His work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice. After leaving behind his formal training as an architect and relocated to Mexico City, he has created a diverse body of artwork that explores urbanity, spatial justice, and...
.
Asian Art
The Hammer Building houses the Chinese and Korean collections. The Korean art collection began with the donation of a group of Korean ceramics in 1966 by Bak Jeonghui, then president of the Republic of Korea, after a visit to the museum. LACMA today claims to have the most comprehensive holding outside of Korea and Japan. The Pavilion for Japanese Art displays the Shin'enkan collection donated by Joe D. Price.Permanent art installations
Los Angeles sculptor Robert GrahamRobert Graham (sculptor)
Robert Graham was a sculptor based in the state of California in the United States. His monumental bronzes commemorate the human figure and are featured in public places across America.-Biography:...
created the towering, bronze Retrospective Column (1981, cast in 1986) for the entrance of the Art of the Americas Building. The Ahmanson Building's atrium was remodeled to hold Tony Smith
Tony Smith (sculptor)
Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.-Education:...
's Smoke, which had not been displayed since its original 1967 presentation at Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
's Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
. The massive black painted aluminum artwork is made up of 43 piers, and is 45 ft (13.7 m). long, 33 ft (10.1 m). wide and 22 ft (6.7 m). high. The newly fabricated work was initially on loan from the artist's estate, but in 2010 after several months of intense fundraising efforts, "the museum acquired the work for an undisclosed amount reported to exceed $3 million and [with an insurance valuation of] 'over $5 million.'" The purchase was "made possible by The Belldegrun Family's gift to LACMA in honor of Rebecka Belldegrun's birthday," per the museum.
Eli and Edythe Broad contributed $10 million to fund the purchase of Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
's Band sculpture, on display on the first floor of BCAM when the building opened.
Surrounding the BCAM building and LACMA's courtyard is a 100 palm tree garden, designed by artist Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin (artist)
Robert Irwin is an American Installation artist. He lives and works in San Diego, California.-Beginnings:Robert Irwin was born in 1928 in Long Beach, California to Robert Irwin and Goldie Anderberg Irwin...
and landscape architect Paul Comstock. Some of the 30 varieties of palms are in the ground, but most are in large wooden boxes above ground. Directly in front of the new entrance to LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard is Chris Burden
Chris Burden
Christopher "Chris" Burden is an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.-Education:Burden studied for his B.A...
's Urban Light (2008), an orderly, multi-tiered installation of 202 antique cast-iron street lights from various cities in and around the Los Angeles area. The street lights are functional, turn on in the evening, and are powered by solar panels on the roof of the BP Grand Entrance.
Originally Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
' Tulips (1995-2004) sculpture was inside the Grand Entrance building and Charles Ray
Charles Ray
Charles Ray was a silent film star. Extremely popular in a series of films casting him in juvenile roles, primarily rural young men, Ray's career faded as he lost his youthful looks- he also had a reputation of being demanding and having an outsized ego...
's Fire Truck (1993) was outside in the courtyard, both lent by the Broad Art Foundation,. Both sculptures were removed after being on display for 3 months due to unexpected damage from patrons and wear.
On February 2, 2007, Michael Govan, with Koons, revealed plans for a 161 feet (49.1 m)-tall Koons sculpture featuring an operational 1940s locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
suspended from a crane
Crane (machine)
A crane is a type of machine, generally equipped with a hoist, wire ropes or chains, and sheaves, that can be used both to lift and lower materials and to move them horizontally. It uses one or more simple machines to create mechanical advantage and thus move loads beyond the normal capability of...
. The sculpture would be located at the entrance on Wilshire Boulevard, between the Ahmanson Building and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. By 2011, after "the fundraising climate soured and Koons’ California fabricator, Carlson & Co, went out of business after completing a $2.3-million feasibility study" and a $25 million estimated cost, Govan said "We don't have a final method of construction, and I don't have a final fundraising plan." Koons said they are now working with the German fabricator Arnold, outside of Frankfurt, to do an additional engineering study, and Govan says he has committed to spending half a million dollars for that study. The museum has J.B. Turner Engine (1986), a small Koons piece which was shown in the 2006–2007 “Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" exhibition.
Individual Donors
The $54 million Resnick pavillon was made possible by a $45 million gift from the philanthropists for whom it is named. 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." 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 "LyndaLynda Resnick
Lynda Rae Resnick is an American entrepreneur and businesswoman. Resnick is married to Stewart A. Resnick, who is also her business partner. Through their holding company they own the POM Wonderful and FIJI Water brands, the Teleflora floral wire service company, large industrial citrus and nut...
and Stewart Resnick Grand Entrance Pavilion", in honor of their $25 million gift.
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 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.
In December 2007, Janice and Henri Lazarof
Henri Lazarof
Henri Lazarof is a Bulgarian composer.Born in Sofia, Bulgaria his formal musical training began in Israel under Paul Ben-Haim. After a short stint in Rome, Lazarof settled in the United States, studying with Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger at Brandeis University...
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
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
and Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
and a considerable number of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
, Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, Henry Moore
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
. Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Louise Nevelson, Archipenko and Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
.
In 2002, the Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Foundation
The Annenberg Foundation is a private foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world...
gave the museum $10 million to establish a special endowment fund to support exhibitions, art acquisitions and educational programs at the discretion of its director. In recognition of the gift, LACMA named its leadership position the Wallis Annenberg directorship. In 2001, Wallis Annenberg endowed a curatorial fellowship program with a $1-million gift. In 1991, the foundation contributed $10 million to LACMA's endowment and in 1999 it donated $100,000 to provide arts education training for Los Angeles elementary school teachers.
In 2001, the museum lost out on the modern art collection of Nathan Smooke, a former museum trustee and industrial real-estate developer whose heirs sold much of his collection rather than donating it.
In 1996 the museum suffered yet another serious blow when the Gilbert Collection
Gilbert Collection
The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection is a collection of objets d'art formed by the English-born businessman Sir Arthur Gilbert, who made most of his fortune in the property business in California. After initially becoming interested in silver, he assembled a large collection of decorative...
of Italian mosaics and other decorative objects, promised as an eventual bequest, and parts of which had been on display for decades, was withdrawn. The would-be donor claimed that the Museum had reneged on a written agreement to provide more exhibit space for it. The collection is considered one of the finest in the world of its kind. Moreover, unlike the Hammer and Simon collections, it did not remain in the Los Angeles area but was removed to the United Kingdom.
Long-time trustee Robert Halff donated 53 works of contemporary art in 1994. Components of that gift included Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, Sam Francis
Sam Francis
Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker.-Early life:...
, Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
, John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain
John Angus Chamberlain is an American sculptor.Born in Rochester, Indiana, John Chamberlain spent much of his youth in Chicago. After serving in the navy from 1943 to 1946, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College...
, Matthew Barney
Matthew Barney
Matthew Barney is an American artist who works in sculpture, photography, drawing and film. His early works were sculptural installations combined with performance and video...
, and Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
. It also provided LACMA with its first drawings by Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
and Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors...
.
In 1990, Max Palevsky
Max Palevsky
Max Palevsky was an American art collector, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and computer technology pioneer.-Early life:...
gave 32 pieces of Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
furniture to LACMA ; three years later, he added an additional 42 pieces to his gift. In 2000, he donated $2 million to LACMA for Arts and Crafts works. He supplied about a third of the 300 objects displayed in a 2004-05 LACMA exhibit, "The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: 1880-1920" and in 2009, the museum presented "The Arts and Crafts Movement: Masterworks From the Max Palevsky and Jodie Evans Collection."
Armand Hammer
Armand Hammer
Armand Hammer was an American business tycoon most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran for decades, though he was known as well as for his art collection, his philanthropy, and for his close ties to the Soviet Union.Thanks to business interests around the world and his...
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, John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
, Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
, Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.- Biography :Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie...
, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, and Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
. When LACMA was offered a collection of works by Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
, 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
Hammer Museum
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, or the Hammer Museum as it is more commonly known, is an art museum in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California...
, built adjacent to Occidental
Occidental Petroleum
Occidental Petroleum Corporation is a California-based oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and South America...
's headquarters in Los Angeles.
In the early 1970s Norton Simon
Norton Simon
Norton Winfred Simon , in the United States was a millionaire industrialist and philanthropist based in California. A significant art collector, he is the namesake of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.-Early life:...
, the Hunt's
Hunt's
Hunt's is the name of a brand of preserved tomato products owned by ConAgra Foods, Inc. The company was founded in 1888, in Sebastopol, California, as the Hunt Bros. Fruit Packing Co. by Joseph and William Hunt. The brothers relocated to nearby Santa Rosa in 1890, and then to Hayward in 1895...
food magnate, donated his collection the Pasadena Art Museum, forming the Norton Simon Museum
Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known by the names: the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum.-Overview:...
, after making some indication of donating the work to LACMA.
From 1946 to his death in 1951, William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
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.
Art Councils
Over the course of the LACMA's history, ten art councils — each supporting a specific area of the collection — have acquired or helped acquire nearly 5,000 works of art for the museum. Founded in 1952, the Art Museum Council is LACMA’s first volunteer support council and supports the whole of the museum's endeavors. The Modern and Contemporary Art Council, founded in 1961, is the longest-running support group for contemporary art at any museum in the country. In 1986, the Annual Collectors Committee weekends were started and have raised a total of $16 million for the purchase of 157 works, valued at $75 million.Management
Andrea Rich won praise for doubling the museum's endowment, to more than $100 million, and for increasing attendance and pursuing programs and acquisitions that might appeal to the varied segments of the city's diverse population, like Islamic, Latin American and Korean art. Rich resigned in part because of disputes with Eli Broad, including one over hiring a curator for the new Broad contemporary art center. In 2008, LACMA made a formal offer to merge with MOCAMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
and to help that museum raise new money from donors.
Although attendance has grown in recent years, it still remained at 914,356 visitors in 2010. The museum's endowment grew from $99.6 million to $106.8 million that year. The Los Angeles County covers more than a third of the museum's operating expenses.
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
External links
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) official website
- 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.