LACMA's David Geffen Galleries: A Radical Rehang Across Six Millennia

Key facts

• The inaugural presentation of LACMA's permanent collection is housed in Peter Zumthor's 110,000-square-foot David Geffen Galleries.
• Works are arranged along a single wending plane and loosely organized around the oceans of the world, without traditional museological categories.
• Diego Rivera's Flower Day (1925) is hung beside the Mesoamerican sculpture Goddess with Temple Headdress (1325–1521 CE).
• Craig Kauffman's Untitled Wall Relief (1967/2008) is shown near Issey Miyake's Plastic Body (Fall/Winter 1980–81) and Raymond Loewy and Studebaker's Avanti (1963).
• The display "The Global Appeal of Blue-and-White Ceramics" spans an Iraqi Abbasid bowl (c. 801–900 CE) to Stephanie Shih's 梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo) (2025–26).
• Miguel Cabrera's casta painting From Spaniard and Morisca, Albino Girl (1763) is installed near rafa esparza's we are the mountain (2019).
• Winslow Homer's The Cotton Pickers (1876) is paired with Betye Saar's I'll Bend But I Will Not Break (1998) in the Atlantic wing.
• The review criticizes the lack of wall text and wayfinding, noting a QR-code virtual guide undermines the embodied experience.