LACMA Opens Peter Zumthor’s David Geffen Galleries in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has gained a bold new landmark for art. On 19 April 2026, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opened the David Geffen Galleries, a striking new home for its permanent collection designed by the celebrated Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The opening, marked by a ribbon-cutting and weeks of public programming, caps two decades of transformation at what LACMA calls the largest and most comprehensive art museum in the western United States.

The building itself is a statement. An elevated, roughly 900-foot-long concrete structure spans Wilshire Boulevard, lifting the galleries above street level and opening some 3.5 acres of new outdoor space integrated with the surrounding Hancock Park. Inside, Zumthor's design presents the entire permanent collection on a single continuous level, deliberately doing away with the usual hierarchies, prescribed routes, and divisions by department or period that shape most museums.

“On 19 April 2026, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opened the David Geffen Galleries, a striking new home for its permanent collection designed by the celebrated Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.”

That radical openness extends to how the art is arranged. Rather than marching visitors through a fixed chronology, the inaugural installation uses the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea as organizing themes, drawing connections across time and place so that works from different cultures and eras can speak to one another. The aim is to let visitors wander freely and make their own discoveries, encountering the art of all peoples on equal footing.

LACMA paired the opening with a strong commitment to access. The museum offered free days and embraced its NexGenLA program, which provides free youth membership to Los Angeles County residents aged 17 and younger, ensuring the next generation can grow up with the collection at their fingertips. As one of a cluster of major museum openings reshaping Los Angeles in 2026, the David Geffen Galleries signal a city investing confidently in culture, betting that an open, welcoming, and architecturally daring home for art will draw new audiences and inspire them for decades to come.