Dear fellow LACMA Lover,
Thank you for joining more than 1300 concerned citizens who have signed the petition urging the Los Angeles County Supervisors to reconsider their approval of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for LACMA's Wilshire-straddling redevelopment plan.
Our fight to save L.A.’s encyclopedic public art museum has reached an international audience with a recent feature story in the respected French newspaper Le Monde, culminating in our observation about the smaller, deeply unpopular Zumthor building project: “Ce n’est pas sérieux.” (“This isn’t serious.”) Here's the Google translate version, if your French is funky.
Another interesting report comes from last week’s victory lap event at USC School of Architecture, in which LACMA director Michael Govan seeks to convince critics of the Zumthor project's necessity. Pereira campus fan John Southern reluctantly surrenders, and writes "I believe that we have entered L.A.'s post-rational period, where cultural institutions are governed by bean counters, lawyers, and social media marketeers."
Meanwhile, in the L.A. Times, Mary McNamara laments the expensive, depressing experience of taking out-of-town friends to visit the ghost town of an almost empty museum, still among the most expensive in the country. LACMA's contempt for its audience (“[we'll] work to improve our messaging”) is remarkable.
And finally, we’d like to introduce you to a new blog project we’ve launched with Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak, R.I.P. Los Angeles, which tells the story of our local preservation crisis, one demolition permit at a time. Read it and weep.
We will continue to advocate for an open conversation with the Los Angeles County Supervisors about the LACMA plan, and to gather supporters of this conversation under the umbrella of the LACMA Lovers League.
Please keep sharing the petition link with your friends who love LACMA and want it to remain at the heart of our city's culture and community. And stay tuned for updates as we have them.
The LACMA Lovers League is also on Facebook (though the page has been acting up and not accepting new posts): https://www.facebook.com/lacmaloversleague
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim Cooper & Richard Schave
The LACMA Lovers League