The building project entails the construction of one modern and efficient building that replaced four buildings (Ahmanson, Art of the Americas, Bing, Hammer), as well as the construction of a parking structure on Ogden Drive to replace the spaces on the previous Spaulding Avenue parking lot.
The old buildings had many serious structural issues and problems with plumbing, sewage, lack of seismic isolation and methane mitigation, defunct waterproofing, and leaks, compromising their ability to host our visitors and staff and hold our collections.
To retrofit the old buildings would have been extremely costly while still failing to provide the ideal setting for the collections and visitors. Almost 20 years ago, and again in 2014, the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors and LACMA’s Board of Trustees considered repairing the structures, and in both cases they found the retrofitting cost prohibitive. In 2014, the minimum estimated cost to retrofit just the visible deterioration was $246 million. New construction allows the museum to create both a safer building and new galleries designed to be more accessible, more functional, and more enjoyable.
The horizontal design offers an egalitarian experience of LACMA’s diverse collections. Displaying all art on a single level avoids giving more prominence to any specific culture, tradition, or era, offering visitors a multitude of perspectives on art and art history in a more accessible, inclusive way. The single-level gallery floor will also be more intuitive to navigate and easier to access, especially for wheelchairs and strollers, and its perimeter of transparent glass will provide energizing natural light and views to the park and urban environment, with views from outside into the galleries.
The new building spans Wilshire in order to provide 3.5 acres of new park and outdoor space for visitors in Hancock Park and the Natural History Museum’s ongoing and future research. This public outdoor space will be home to even more public sculptures and is an invaluable resource in our dense urban community.
The new building totals 347,500 square feet, replacing approximately 393,000 square feet of existing buildings. There will be approximately 110,000 square feet of gallery space, replacing approximately 120,000 square feet of gallery space. The building also includes a new theater, education spaces, three restaurant/cafes, a museum shop, and covered multipurpose event spaces. Much-improved ancillary and back-of-house facilities will support LACMA’s public programs, including two loading docks and enhanced security, facilities operations, visitor services, transit art handling, and more.
The reduction in total size from that of the existing buildings is made possible by moving functions not needed within the building itself: the museum has moved offices across the street, expanding our existing office space at 5900 Wilshire, and moved art storage out of Hancock Park.
By the time the new building opens, we will have expanded our total gallery space from approximately 130,000 in 2007 to 220,000 square feet.
LACMA’s Board of Trustees and the County Board of Supervisors believe that after doubling our exhibition space over the last decade, this is the appropriate size for our campus on Wilshire.
Of the $750 million campaign goal, the total building cost is $715 million, which includes construction costs, soft costs, and contingencies. A rigorous cost estimating and cost management process was followed throughout the preconstruction phase to be within budget and a guaranteed maximum price contract was signed with our general contractor, Clark Construction, in mid-2020, in line with our budget.
This building cost is funded through an unprecedented public-private partnership by which the new County-owned building will be 80% paid for by private donations. The County of Los Angeles has contributed $125 million and the rest came from private donations. The County will receive a nearly 5:1 match for its contribution.
As of October 2024, LACMA has raised $793 million, exceeding the $750 million campaign goal, and continues to successfully fundraise.
Yes. Private donations are generally paid over a period of time. Therefore, as part of the plan of finance approved by LACMA’s Board of Trustees and the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, $300 million of debt was issued by the County of Los Angeles in November 2020 to be fully paid for by LACMA from private donations.
No. LACMA will never sell art to fund construction, operating, or other costs.
No. The new building gives us the flexibility to display collection areas for longer periods or to present permanent collections as temporary exhibitions, giving visitors opportunities to see more art from the permanent collection in greater variety. Additionally, LACMA has always displayed works from the permanent collection in special exhibitions in BCAM and the Resnick Pavilion, and will continue to do so. BCAM, Level 1 also exhibits some of our most treasured permanent collection works, such as Richard Serra’s Band and Robert Irwin’s Miracle Mile.
Thousands of works in our collection (sculpture, tiles, ceramics, and more) can be safely displayed in natural light, and are in fact wonderful to view in that setting. The new building will have a range of exhibition spaces, from galleries with natural light to galleries with controlled artificial lighting. The majority of galleries in the new building are designed to be able to display light-sensitive works. Natural light and views to the park along the perimeter of the building also will reduce fatigue in our visitors.
Concrete was chosen to give the building a sublime aesthetic character and beautiful sense of gravitas. Concrete walls have been utilized successfully in other museums like the Kimbell, the Guggenheim, and Kunsthaus Bregenz. Not one artist whose work was displayed at Bregenz has ever covered that museum's walls with sheetrock. Additionally, many objects and antiquities in our collection originated in buildings or other settings built from stone, so it is particularly fitting to display them in concrete-walled galleries.
LACMA is committed to achieving as high a level of sustainable design, construction, and operating principles as possible. The project will incorporate LEED features achieving Gold certification. Excavated earth and demolished materials will be recycled to the fullest extent possible, and landscaping will require minimum water and conform to the natural flora of the area. Water conservation measures in addition to drought-tolerant planting may include a variety of features such as the installation of dual plumbing in order to use reclaimed water for toilet flushing, self-closing faucets, and storm water retention through cisterns in which water would be filtered, treated, and recycled for use in toilets, urinals, irrigation, and cooling towers. The new building will replace older, much less efficient buildings that did not meet current sustainability standards, and wasted scarce resources.
Urban Light will stay in place and visitors will continue to be able to enjoy the artwork.
LACMA is pursuing the next phase of its expansion through additional museum spaces across L.A. County, enhancing the accessibility of our collections and bringing art and art education to communities throughout our vast county. We already have ongoing exhibition, education, and public programming at Charles White Elementary School in MacArthur Park, collaborations with the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, and an additional museum currently being planned in South L.A. LACMA is also planning to participate in the SELA Cultural Center, designed by Frank Gehry, in Southeast L.A.
Construction began in 2020. Major construction of the building will be completed by the end of 2024.