The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) recently welcomed its first visitors to its new flagship building, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

New Museum Building Opens

A decades-in-the-making project, the spacious exterior of the building, which features lots of glass windows to filter in natural light, leads from stairs and elevators into the concrete-and-glass David Geffen Galleries. The many windows around the building also provide beautiful views of the L.A. landscape, including the newly installed outdoor sculptures, such as Jeff Koons‘s flower-bedecked colossus, Split-Rocker (2000).

The art installed around the Geffen building’s corridors is bathed in the bright light of the California sun, softened by tinted windows and signature curtains. The central axis of the long space is broken up by a series of galleries of varying sizes. The transition from the light hallway areas into the gallery spaces plunges visitors into darkness, creating an immersive effect for specific exhibits.

CEO and director of LACMA, Michael Govan, used the new architecture to refresh the museum’s presentation of history, presenting works of contemporary art mixed with classical sculpture. While there is a loose geographical organization, the museum is curated so that visitors never feel stuck in one place or time.

LACMA held a black-tie opening gala to celebrate the museum’s opening, featuring 800 donors, board members, LA gallerists, celebrities, and musicians. The final cost of the renovation was approximately $720 million.

“We think of this building not as an end of anything, but as a beginning, a platform for experimentation, for new idealism,” Govan stated at the museum building’s opening event. “History is always changing. We’re always looking at it in a different way, and we hopefully have built an instrument to capture our continued thoughts. I want to thank all of you for making this possible.”