I think it’s safe to say that LACMA is on something of ‘a roll,’ lately.  The sheer critical mass of masterpiece art on view this summer, especially on the west side of the campus, seems almost enough to shift the center of gravity of metropolitan Los Angeles – or at least its art world’s.  Between LACMA and the Hammer’s Made in L.A. biennial, one could easily anchor a day’s (or week’s) art viewing just around Wilshire Boulevard.  In the meantime, with the Mike Kelley retrospective closing, MOCA is, by comparison, almost bereft – a by-product of the transition between the Deitch and Vergne administrations. 

And I wouldn’t have particularly recommended the Vezzoli show (which just closed).  I mean, for chrissakes why wouldn’t you just go straight to the source and ‘embroider’ your own stroll down the “Walk of Fame”?  Though it’s getting tougher to find a good movie or the kind of star that made those pictures so durable.  (Scarlett Johansson just might have the stuff, though.)  Parker Tyler wasn’t all wrong about the ‘pantheon,’ notwithstanding Gore Vidal’s satirical evisceration of his hagiology. 

But back to Wilshire Boulevard.  Though LACMA’s own stellar curatorial staff, including Timothy Benson, Carol Eliel, Stephanie Barron (I’m breathless just mentioning their names). Stephen Little, and some of the exhibition/installation designers (e.g., Gehry Partners) deserve the lion’s share of credit for these gorgeous shows, it has hardly gone unnoticed that this starry alignment has alighted on Wilshire under the stewardship of Michael Govan. 

You have to give the guy credit.  These are good times for LACMA and, setting aside a couple of hiccups over the last decade or so (e.g., the bollixing of the Film Department and serious film programming at the museum:  one imagines Govan welcomed the Motion Picture Academy to the west campus for the simple reason he has no interest in theatrical motion pictures beyond the most self-conscious ‘art’ products and experimental work that would never be seen on commercial screens), LACMA has thrived and even soared over the L.A. (at moments even national) cultural landscape.  He is that rare thing – a great explainer and at his best, a charming one.  The Trustees love him and he’s had no difficulty attracting more of them and raising money apace.  When he wanted a 120-ton boulder hauled from the Riverside desert to a specially cleared and excavated space behind the Resnick Pavilion, he found the deep pockets and somehow made it happen. 

In Hollywood terms of course, that’s nothing.  James Cameron’s (with Fox and Paramount) Titanic cost more than $200 million.  More than one person has whispered to me that Govan’s real ambition was to be a studio head, but I don’t buy it.  No—he was brought here specifically because he’s a builder; and studios are not what they are building these days in L.A.  What they are building are galleries and museums.  Eli Broad knows a few things about galleries and museums and building and development both, having been one of the people who turned the San Fernando Valley from ranches and citrus orchards to a water- and gas-guzzling suburban wasteland.  At the time Govan came on board, Broad was fretting over BCAM’s completion and its escalating pricetag.  Govan successfully shepherded the project to completion; and the rest is….  Well, it’s still happening isn’t it?

No one would blame him for BCAM’s shortcomings; and Eli’s bauble-pulling stunt is beginning to look like not such a smart bet.  Govan still has the Serras; and don’t you think LACMA can wait a bit for a shiny balloon dog?  There are bound to be a few floating around by century’s end (maybe literally); and there will be plenty of smaller versions at Target in a couple of months.  But the Resnick Pavilion went up under his watch – not necessarily his project uniquely, and of course the Resnicks wrote the checks.  (Again, lots less than Titanic – so what gives?)  The first time I walked in, I thought, ‘Oh—I knew they were bringing the subway line to this block of Wilshire; I didn’t realize they were bringing it up right under LACMA.’  At the time, I thought (and still do) it had all the charm of a Greyhound bus terminal.

But with a little work, you can make art at home almost anywhere.  It’s a perfectly serviceable space; and since its inaugural, it’s proven more or less as flexible as intended.  Good exhibition design has helped; and over the last few months we’ve seen what amounts to a miracle.  The notional trains and buses disappeared.  We only saw that amazing art.  So maybe we can make this work after all. 

In the meantime, the Wallis Annenberg Developer of LACMA has had his eyes on bigger prizes and starrier starchitects.  I mean, why stop with a ‘Titanic’ when you can have a Cunard fleet?  I actually rather like the Peter Zumthor design, with a few qualifiers (e.g., the replacement for the Bing Theatre; Govan wants a sprawling edifice, but can’t seem to find room in it for a theatre or auditorium of comparable size; and I have several other concerns).  It would certainly look amazing spreading over Wilshire Boulevard – although I wonder about the tunnel effect it will create over the block where it crosses Wilshire. 

I’m also dubious about the somewhat oblique explanations and rationalizations behind the plan:  the notion of creating an effect of transparency, connecting passers-by directly and immediately with art they might glimpse from some distance walking or driving by; and still less, the idea of a transparent museum.  Zumthor’s and Govan’s insistence upon limiting the building to a single level (above the glazed oval cylindrical storage/passageways that will help raise the structure above the street level) seems to lack a certain flexibility crucial to the way museums grow—or even function at the most basic level.  And although some of the galleries would naturally be more spacious than others, some given over to spotlighting one treasure, even the overall plot of the galleries seemed cramped—a warren of cubicles shoehorned into the swooshing, vaguely mid-20^th century, boomerang curves and bulges of the structure—a bit ironic, considering its curvilinear sprawl. 

Govan made much of the low-lying, single-level plan at its introduction in June of last year, making a pitch for its aggressive horizontality as appropriate to the site overall and the “horizontal” city beyond it.  This fell a bit, uh, ‘flat’ in the face of the ecological catastrophe ‘horizontal’ development has inflicted on the Los Angeles basin and beyond.  As if acknowledging that inherent flaw, Govan emphasized the environmentally-friendly aspect of what amounts to a rooftop solar farm, that would effectively return energy to the city.  A big plus—but you wonder why it couldn’t be adapted to a multi-level structure. 

As if to further undercut that one-note/one-level pitch, Govan has more recently announced an interest in teaming with the L.A. Metropolitan Transportation Authority and others to develop a Frank Gehry tower across the street, including office and gallery space for the museum (including architecture and design galleries—that may have sounded an intimidating note to the directors of the neighboring A&D Museum). (So the subway just might come up under the museum after all.)  Although it seems inevitable that some tower fitting the overall mixed-use development parameters (hotel/apartments; office/retail; gallery space) will rise on that location, Govan’s remark struck another dubious note: “I’m jealous that New York has a Gehry tower and we don’t.”  They also have water; and infrastructure we’re not likely to see in this century.  

And just how transparent can a museum be?  Even if the entire structure is glazed, that glass will have to be specially treated, protectively coated, and effectively double-glazed to protect the art from the sunlight. 

Also, how exactly would this ‘transparency’ connect with the would-be museum-goer on street or sidewalk?  If anything, it appears that direct access would be further restricted.  Anyone who has stood on line in front of I. M. Pei’s crystal pyramid waiting to get into the Louvre could tell you as much.  But at least there’s a system in place there (moreover connecting to another entire level of the museum).  How many of us would be interested in perusing storage racks on the way in to an exhibition?  (And how exactly would that be arranged?)   

On the flip side of that issue—just how much art are any of us looking to see in any museum visit?  We’ve all been in the position of spending entire mornings or afternoons at major museums; or, as tourists, even entire days.  There’s never a question as to whether we’ll be able to take in everything exhibited at the Louvre, the Met, etc. – even over several days’ visits (another reason we always want to go back).  Is there any real point to installing all of the art in the galleries (or even accessible storage spaces)?  Certainly spreading all those galleries on a single level is not going to speed the process of accessing it (and I wonder just how easy it will be to navigate that warren of galleries in the first place).  If Govan is seriously interested in advancing Zumthor’s plan, a digital virtual ‘tour’ of the space might be worth considering. 

Govan’s remark about the mooted Gehry tower amounts to an acknowledgment of something beyond mere ‘jealousy’ and more fundamental to his character—his ambition, and more specifically his ambition as a builder.  But this raises the question of his larger ambitions for the institution as a whole.  If the Resnick Pavilion’s (and LACMA’s) ‘golden’ moment this past year has reminded us of one thing, it’s that it’s all about the art.  The edifice built over it fades to insignificance in the face of its power to absorb the viewer’s attention and spark his or her imagination.  That must always be its primary mission.  Govan’s institutional leadership is not in question; he has been spectacularly successful.  The question is more about what he chooses to leave behind (since, by the time such a museum building as is proposed under the Zumthor plan is finally executed, Govan and likely many of the rest of us, will have long since moved on).  Will we see a proportionate expansion and enrichment of the museum’s collections?  I have no idea what LACMA’s acquisitions have amounted to over the last eight years; but I’m guessing it’s a very small fraction of the mooted cost of the Zumthor project.  (A $650 million estimate was given; but let’s face it—we’re looking at a billion dollar pricetag here.)  And what about those costs?  As Deborah Solomon pointed out in her Arts & Leisure feature for The New York Times this past Sunday, building programs of almost any scope can have unintended consequences (“In some ways, the situation in Delaware can be seen as a cautionary tale about the perils of overexpansion.”)—exacerbated as we approach times of increasing uncertainty (and probable scarcity). 

L.A., like any other great city, needs its monuments; and as far as museum-monuments go, we have nothing to compare with, say, the National Gallery, the Louvre, the Prado, or the Guggenheim Bilbao.  But it would be nice to see this ambition matched by ambition for LACMA’s collections.  The question we’re left with ultimately is whether the monuments we build and leave behind over the coming decade will be for this civilization or the next.