Inside LACMA’s Newly Unveiled David Geffen Galleries

Much like how I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid added angles of modernism to the Louvre, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is standing on the brink of a defining expansion. With the public debut of the museum’s long-anticipated David Geffen Galleries around the corner, the ambitious new wing designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Peter Zumthor with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is entering its final stretch before officially opening on April 19. Final installation of thousands of works from the museum’s permanent collection in the sprawling facility, which drastically expands overall exhibition space from 130,000 to 220,000 square feet, is complete. 

Named in recognition of David Geffen’s $150 million gift, the glass and concrete building—to which the County of Los Angeles also invested $125 million—creates an arcing, low-slung bridge elevated 30 feet above Wilshire Boulevard and Hancock Park. Rising from seven ground-floor pavilions, two floating staircases and elevators flanking the street will connect to the 110,000 square feet of galleries above. Exhibition spaces vary from terrace galleries snaking around the glazed perimeter, where light streams into the building through floor-to-ceiling glass panels, to sheltered interior galleries. Custom curtains made of sputter-plated chrome textiles by Tokyo designer Reiko Sudo have a metallic sheen but are transparent, adding further dimension to the building’s architecture while providing necessary protection for light-sensitive works. 

Fresh views inside the building reveal galleries now populated with works from the museum’s permanent collection, marking a decisive and satisfying shift from previews that exposed the cavernous architecture in its raw state. Thousands of objects spanning 6,000 years of world history will rotate through the galleries over time, presenting LACMA’s robust holdings on a single level without giving precedence to any culture, tradition, or era. The installation enables curators to make original and revelatory connections unbound by traditional classifications, and visitors are encouraged to let their own curiosity guide the way. No two visits will be the same. The inaugural installation draws on geographic frameworks, with galleries organized around the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans alongside the Mediterranean Sea, allowing artwork to coexist beyond conventional art historical categories.

Visitors will discover everything from ancient ceramics and textiles to contemporary commissions by today’s most illustrious artists. They include Todd Gray’s Octavia’s Gaze (2025), a three-dimensional assemblage of framed photographs of landscapes, people, architectural details, and museum interiors, including a portrait of author Octavia Butler. Doh Ho Suh created the meticulous, ghost-like Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace (2026), comprising an actual-size contemporary re-creation of a section of the primary Joseon royal palace in Seoul. Lauren Halsey lends two works: a ten-foot-long reclining sphinx sculpture and a wall-filling relief. Installed in the Mediterranean galleries is a newly acquired bust by Tavares Strachan. The plaza-level restaurant will feature a 27-foot-long tapestry by Sarah Rosalena with patterns handwoven to depict satellite images she distorted of Martian terrain; just outside will be an 18-foot-high stone carving by Pedro Reyes set against the backdrop of the museum’s facade.  

Outdoors, the campus expanded its public park to 3.5 acres. The plaza now integrates Mariana Castillo Deball’s Feathered Changes, which turns the museum’s entire north plaza into an large-scale concrete artwork referencing the site’s ecological past. Additional institutions continue to arrive, including Jeff Koons’s chimeric Split-Rocker—a 37-foot-tall floral sculpture combining a pony’s head with a dinosaur’s—and a reinstalled presentation of Alexander Calder’s iconic Three Quintains (Hello Girls), which was commissioned by the museum when it moved to Wilshire Boulevard in 1965. A collection of large-scale works by Auguste Rodin will also return in an 8,000-square-foot garden. Landscaped areas planted with drought-tolerant species link the museum more closely to Hancock Park and the La Brea Tar Pits.

Dining and public amenities are also opening in phases in tandem with the unveiling. Erewhon will debut a café in the northeast pavilion on April 19 for members, followed by broader access on May 4, where organic coffee and matcha, fresh pastries, signature smoothies, and organic snacks will be on easy offer through the summer. An additional restaurant and wine bar will arrive later this year. A new Ray’s and Stark Bar and an expanded LACMA Store will debut on the north side of Wilshire. The south wing will also feature the new Steve Tisch Theater, a space for film screenings, performances, lectures, and time-based media exhibitions. The museum will inaugurate the building with a series of events culminating in the ribbon-cutting ceremony, marking the first full public access to a project that has taken over a decade to realize.

As the city continues to bounce back from unprecedented wildfires that decimated entire neighborhoods in early 2025, museum leadership sees the expansion as a key cultural investment for Los Angeles. “The new home for our permanent collection holds millennia of global artistic exchanges, illuminating traditions and innovations from the many cultures that are present in Los Angeles today,” Michael Govan, the museum’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, said in a statement. “We welcome our neighbors and visitors from both near and far with immense gratitude to the civic and philanthropic leaders who championed the public-private partnership that has built the David Geffen Galleries, to the architect who has created this beautiful building, and to the curators and artists whose astonishing work has brought these spaces to life.”