How to see the new LACMA up close: Museum sets opening for plaza around new building

This summer, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open parts of the plaza around its David Geffen Galleries, giving the public its closest glimpse yet of the new Peter Zumthor-designed building spanning Wilshire Boulevard.

LACMA will give tours of the raw, empty building for donors and members in June, the museum said Tuesday. Musical performances by Kamasi Washington will take place inside the new building June 26-28, the museum said. Additional details about the events were not released.

The museum restaurant Ray’s + Stark Bar and the LACMA store will open to the public in new locations later this year ahead of the David Geffen Galleries’ official grand opening, which remains slated for April 2026.

Earlier this week The Times reported that LACMA’s 3.5 acres of park space will include a plaza that will be home to Mariana Castillo Deball’s 75,000-square-foot textured concrete artwork “Feathered Changes,” which acts as the ground below the building and suggests various routes around the campus.

Additional outdoor works joining Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” installation of city streetlamps and Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” include a 12-foot-tall interactive sculpture of a flying saucer by Shio Kusaka plus other works by Liz Glynn, Thomas Houseago, Pedro Reyes and Diana Thater. LACMA’s collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin will occupy a new 8,000-square-foot garden on the north side of Wilshire.

Major construction on the new building was completed in late last year, at which point scaffolding came down and the city got its first real view of the 900-foot-long concrete structure.

LACMA announced on Tuesday that the north wing of the museum will be called the Elaine Wynn Wing in honor of the trustee and board co-chair who donated $50 million toward the project. The south wing has yet to be named.

LACMA will give tours of the raw, empty building for donors and members in June, the museum said Tuesday.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

A second restaurant will open on the south side of Wilshire, where a parking lot had been. The south end of the new building will be anchored by the new Steve Tisch Theater for film screenings, lectures, musical performances and other programs.