The Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a five-day grand opening weekend in June to celebrate the David Geffen Galleries, the museum’s new home for its permanent collection.
Held in mid-June, the grand opening weekend also marked the culmination of a two-decade campus transformation that has fundamentally reshaped one of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions. The museum first signaled it was nearing the finish line last fall, when it reported in a September construction update that major work on the $720 million building was complete, with crews finishing ground-level interiors on the east side of the project and grading and paving new outdoor spaces around the site.
“Being so close to opening our new galleries and to having so much more art on view is incredibly exciting,” Michael Govan, LACMA chief executive and Wallis Annenberg director, said at the time. “L.A. will finally see 360 degrees of Peter Zumthor’s amazing architectural achievement and begin to sense how wonderful this building is going to be inside. We can’t wait to open to the public in April 2026.”
That opening arrived on schedule, with the galleries welcoming members in mid-April and the general public on May 4.
The June 18-22 festivities included a free campus-wide block party, an art parade along Wilshire Boulevard, talks with photographer Annie Leibovitz and Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma Golden, and a “Jazz at LACMA” evening.
Yet the celebration was less a ribbon-cutting than a reckoning with just how long and ambitious a journey it took to get to this point.
“We felt the occasion called for a celebratory summer block party,” Govan said in a statement announcing the grand opening weekend. “We look forward to welcoming everyone.”
Two decades in the making
Govan has overseen the renovation since taking the museum’s helm in 2006, which included replacing four aging, structurally compromised buildings with a single, elevated structure spanning Wilshire Boulevard. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor – his first completed building in the U.S. – the 110,000-square-foot gallery space brought LACMA’s total exhibition footprint to 220,000 square feet and was built to hold roughly 2,500 to 3,000 objects from the museum’s permanent collection at any given time.
With the new design, the entire permanent collection is now housed on a single level, a decision made to avoid imposing hierarchies between cultures, geographies or time periods. Glass facades and elevated walkways allow visitors on Wilshire Boulevard to glimpse into the galleries themselves, while new plazas and landscaping tie the building into the surrounding Miracle Mile corridor.
Financing for the building came together through a mix of public and private funding support. Music and film executive David Geffen, for whom the galleries are named, contributed $150 million, while L.A. County invested $125 million. Trustee and board co-chair Elaine Wynn gave an additional $50 million, in recognition of which the museum’s north wing bears her name. Altogether, LACMA’s broader Building LACMA campaign – which also funded the earlier Broad Contemporary Art Museum and Resnick Pavilion – drew more than $840 million in contributions, surpassing its $750 million goal.
A cultural and economic anchor
The scale of that investment reflects what LACMA represents to Los Angeles beyond its walls. The museum has long served as a cornerstone of the Miracle Mile corridor, and the David Geffen Galleries are expected to deepen that role considerably, drawing both local visitors and international tourists.
The timing for the opening came at a pivotal moment for the region. The FIFA World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium kicked off on June 12, and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games are on the horizon. Cultural institutions like LACMA are expected to play a central role in defining the city’s identity during that stretch, and museum leadership has made clear it intends to position the new galleries as a landmark destination for visitors arriving from around the world.
Infrastructure improvements have reinforced that vision.
The first phase of the Metro D Line extension opened in May. Costing up to $3.7 billion, the 3.9-mile subway extension under Wilshire Boulevard – stretching from Western Avenue to La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills – has three new stations. That includes Wilshire/La Brea Avenue, Wilshire/Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire/La Cienega.
The Wilshire/Fairfax provides easy access to LACMA, which planners hope will boost foot traffic to the campus, broaden LACMA’s reach beyond the audiences who have historically driven to the museum, and open it to a wider cross-section of the city.
The station is also steps away from the Academy Museum and the Petersen Automotive Museum.
Govan has framed the expanded campus not just as a building project but as a civic one.
“With the completion of the David Geffen Galleries and the expansion of our campus, LACMA has added acres of street-level space where we can install public artworks and engage the entire community,” he said in a statement.
