Peter Zumthor’s controversial LACMA wing is flawed and thrilling
Christopher Hawthorne | Punch List | 20th June 2025
Los Angeles’ new LACMA building has opened for preview. It’s a better building that what it replaces (phew!) though with a slightly smaller area to display art. It is designed so that visitors can “curate their own journey” and allow a more diverse, less “Eurocentric” display of art. But did these objectives require a “curvilinear behemoth” that one long-time critic calls “absurd”? A final verdict will await the art to be installed but, for $800m, LACMA must have been hoping for a more rapturous reception.