The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA

Six years in the making, The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA, is a preliminary design for LACMA's extensive, $650 million campus transformation by the 2009 Pritzker Laureate and 2013 Royal Gold Medal recipient, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

Best known for his functional, site specific atmospheric spaces, choice of material, and mastery of light, Zumthor's model is a 360 degrees, glass wall transparent museum.

The glass structure enables art to be viewed into the museum from the street level and out. Galleries will overlook some of Los Angeles' key landmarks including Hollywood Hills, Hancock Park, the La Brea Tar Pits, Chris Burden’s Urban Lights and Renzo Piano’s buildings, namely BCAM and Resnick Pavilion. A panoramic view of one of Los Angeles’ most spectacular icons of Howard Ball’s woolly mammoth cement sculpture situated in the black tar lake on the campus would also be visible.

The exhibit's centerpiece, nicknamed the Black Flower for its resemblance to a floating water lily, is a unique, curvilinear, raised structure with a 30-foot, 6 ton concrete design model, fabricated on site. Powered by a solar panel roof, this efficient structure is designed to generate more power than it uses. There will be sunken rooms, 30-35 feet tall ceilings, and roughly 200,000 square feet of exhibition space, an increase by 70,000 square feet, while retaining its original footprint.

As his first structure outside of central Europe, Zumthor re-invents the encyclopedic museum notion while instilling insight, meaning and function to the project. Its multiple entrances and absence of a grand staircase places all art pods on the same plane, therefore eliminating traditional art hierarchies.

The new building will allow direct pedestrian access to LACMA’s park grounds, to Hancock Park and to the nearby future Purple Line stop, providing a cultural and social place as well as a sense of community.

Commissioned by LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, Michael Govan, Zumthor's over 700 feet long conceptual structure will replace the 1965 William Pereira campus (the Ahmanson, Hammer and Bing wings), as well as the 1986 addition of the Art of the Americas by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates.

Govan, noted that the current building agglomeration is difficult to navigate, and will soon need considerable upgrades and restoration which would cost just as much to renovate, without the addition of exhibit space.

Fundraising and the demolition of the Pereira buildings famously depicted in Ed Ruscha’s the Los Angeles County Museum on Fire (1965-1968), are among the challenges presented by this new project, pending approval by LACMA’s Board of Trustees and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

LACMA's more recent remaining structures such as the two Renzo Piano designs of Resnick Pavilion (2010), and Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) (2008), as well as Bruce Goff’s Pavilion for Japanese Art (1988) and the former May Co building will remain.

Presence of the Past contains approximately 116 items on view, such as late Pleistocene ice age fossils, film, photographs, drawings, architectural models and plans, some of which have not been on public view in several decades, if ever. Debuting is scientific illustrator John L. Ridgway's evocative watercolors of paleontological specimens which have only been illustrated in books to date. Also included is scientific illustrator Charles R Knight's renown fifty-foot mural of the La Brea Tar Pits that has been in storage for several years at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Through its historical, financial, and political evolution, this thought-provoking and revealing exhibit well links LACMA to its past and future.

Co-curated by LACMA 's director Michael Govan, the exhibit is part of the Getty sponsored initiative Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA museum exhibits and events currently held in Los Angeles.

The exhibit runs through September 15, 2013, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036. For more information call (323) 857-6000 or visit www.lacma.org