At a glance

Type

Encyclopedic public art museum

Period

Established 1961 on current campus; collections originate from earlier Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art (1913)

Style

Multiple buildings from different eras; major Zumthor-designed redevelopment in progress

Location

Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, USA

Overview

LACMA holds exceptional collections of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art; South and Southeast Asian art including one of the largest collections outside Asia; Islamic art; European paintings and decorative arts from the medieval period through the 20th century; and an extensive collection of works by American and Latin American artists. Its contemporary art holdings reflect Los Angeles’s position as a global centre of the art world since the 1960s. The museum operates as a public institution governed by Los Angeles County and serves millions of visitors each year through its collections, exhibitions, and education programmes.

History

LACMA traces its origins to the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, established in Exposition Park in 1913, which gradually developed a significant art collection. In 1961 the art department separated to form an independent museum on a new site in the Miracle Mile neighbourhood, opening its own campus in 1965 with a William Pereira-designed complex of buildings. Subsequent additions by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, Renzo Piano, and others expanded the campus considerably through the 1980s and 2000s. The ongoing Peter Zumthor redesign, announced in 2019, proposes a single sinuous building that will reunify the collection under one roof while dramatically altering the campus.

What you see

The permanent collection is organised across several buildings by geography and period, from the Ahmanson Building’s encyclopedic survey to the Resnick Pavilion’s rotating special exhibitions. Iconic outdoor works include Chris Burden’s Urban Light installation (2008), an assembly of 202 restored cast-iron street lamps from early 20th-century Los Angeles, and Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass (2012), a 340-ton boulder suspended over a concrete trench through which visitors may walk. The Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by Bruce Goff, houses one of the world’s finest collections of netsuke, shoji screens, and woodblock prints outside Japan.

Cultural significance

LACMA is the cultural anchor of the Miracle Mile and the physical embodiment of Los Angeles’s transformation from regional city to global metropolis in matters of art and culture. Its breadth — spanning antiquity to the present, with particular depth in Asian, Islamic, and Latin American art — reflects the demographic and geographic reach of Southern California’s population. The museum has played a formative role in supporting Los Angeles-based artists and in establishing the city’s contemporary art market as one of the most dynamic in the world.

Practical information

Address

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA

Coordinates

34.0639° N, 118.3614° W

Hours

Check official website for current opening times; closed Wednesdays

Admission

Paid entry; free for LA County residents on select days; children under 17 free

Getting there

LACMA is located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district, directly adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits. By Metro, take the D Line (Purple Line) to the Wilshire/Fairfax station, a short walk east. Multiple Metro Bus lines serve Wilshire Boulevard. Paid parking is available in the museum’s underground garage on Spaulding Avenue. The museum is approximately five miles from downtown Los Angeles and two miles from Beverly Hills.

Sources & resources

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art — Wikipedia
• Cultural Heritage Online — Los Angeles cultural guide