If you’ve traveled along Wilshire Blvd. in Mid-City over the last few years, you've probably seen changes and construction happening beneath and above the ground. That’s all for LACMA’s forthcoming David Geffen Galleries, which will be housed in a 350,00-square-foot building. The space showcasing artwork will be about 110,000 square feet, equal to three football fields.
The entire gallery space is made out of concrete, allowing sounds to bounce around different rooms.
And so, for three nights, June 26-28, before any art goes up, KCRW DJ Novena Carmel will do a live DJ set, and Kamasi Washington will lead an ensemble of over 100 musicians in a performance called “Harmony of Difference.”
“It uses music as a metaphor to celebrate the idea that humanity’s beauty, our wondrous amazing abilities, all of that, is made because of our differences,” Washington tells KCRW.
He describes the new space as “an acoustic marvel, and it creates these really amazing reflections.” And so, visitors will be able to curate their own concerts and experience an “almost unpredictable meeting of sounds,” Washington adds.
Kamasi Washington will perform inside the David Geffen Galleries space at LACMA. Photo by Vincent Haycock.
As for the mission of LACMA, the museum’s CEO, Michael Govan, says, “Art is our soul. I mean, art is at the basis of our creative being. It's human beings expressing their identity, their being, their ritual, their hopes, their dreams, and also often making it in a form that is lasting, so it can be passed to next generations. So we all have our ancestors, and in these ancient works are the diversity of LA's ancestries, and then we bring them together.”
Michael Govan, CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, stands outside the building. Photo by Tohar Zamir