LA County Museum of Art - Los Angeles, CA
Posted by: 
DougK
N 34° 03.766 W 118° 21.467
11S E 374699 N 3769947
The LA County Museum of Art is a complex of museum buildings along Wilshire Boulevard.
Waymark Code: WMD4MV
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 11/18/2011
Views: 11
Excerpted from
Wikipedia:
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. In 1965, the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art.
The museum was built in a style similar to Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Music Center and consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and the Lytton Gallery (renamed the Frances and Armand Hammer Building in 1968).
To house its growing collections of modern and contemporary art, and to provide more space for exhibitions, the museum hired the architectural firm of Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer Associates to design its Robert O. Anderson Building, which opened in 1986 (renamed the Art of the Americas Building in 2007).
The museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, as did the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. In 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent May Department Stores building, an impressive example of streamline moderne architecture designed by Albert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998.
In 2004, LACMA's Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano. The transformation consists of three phases.
Phase I was completed in February 2008. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling, often confusing layout of buildings. The BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) comprise the $191 million (originally $150 million) first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign.
Phase II will turn the May building into new offices and galleries. Specifics about phase III, which involves renovations to older buildings, have not yet been disclosed.