OCTOBER 26, 2007

Sequence Arrives

Sequence, one of two monumental Richard Serra sculptures that will occupy the first floor of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) when it opens on February 16, has arrived at LACMA.

The sculpture, on loan from the artist, will reside in the western gallery of the new building's first floor. Band, the second Serra work bound for BCAM and one of comparable size and sweep, belongs to LACMA and will be in the eastern gallery. Band is expected to arrive in mid-November.

The transportation of these works is no small feat. Sequence in its assembled form is sixty-seven feet long, forty-two feet wide, and twelve-feet-nine-inches tall. Composed of segments of contoured weathered steel, it weighs two-hundred-thirteen metric tons.

Twelve semi-trailer trucks, each carrying one segment of the work, travelled eight days cross-country to bring Sequence from the Museum of Modern Art in New York—where, along with Band, it had been part of the museum's recent Serra retrospective. The trucking company is J.F. Lomma of South Kearny, N.J., which specializes in the transport of heavy freight.

The caravan of trucks arrived at LACMA around nine o'clock on Wednesday night, and the pieces were lifted down by crane the next day, beginning at nine in the morning. Expected to take two days, the unloading was complete by five-thirty.

"It was smooth, very smooth," said Julie Wietecha, project engineer with Matt Construction, as she walked the corridors formed by the curving, rust-red segments on Friday. "We saw them out on the trucks and we thought, 'Oh my god, how are we going to get these in?' first of all. But they're beautiful. This is nice work."

The unassembled pieces of Sequence currently reside on a concrete slab between the nearing-completion BCAM and Sixth Street; they can be seen from the terrace on the west side of the Ahmanson Building, or by viewing lacma.org's twenty-four hour Transformation webcam (viewers may have to wait momentarily for the moving webcam to swing toward the northwest corner of the site).

OCTOBER 12, 2007

BCAM sunshade and roof detail, October 2007.

Phase I on the Homestretch

Phase I of Transformation enters the homestretch—with only months to go before the February 2008 unveiling of a boldly re-imagined LACMA campus, featuring the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, BP Grand Entrance, and more.

Broad Contemporary Art Museum
Designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and made possible by a $50 million gift from philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad to LACMA's campaign plus an additional gift creating a fund for contemporary art acquisitions, LACMA's spectacular new building for contemporary art is about eighty-five percent complete. Exterior panels of Italian travertine marble are in place, as is an innovative glass roof that will infuse the upper galleries with natural light. Vivid red structural steel has risen to frame the exterior escalator, which (along with an interior glass-fronted elevator) will deliver visitors to the building’s third-floor main entrance. In addition, the framing system is complete for a series of large-scale, specially commissioned artworks that will adorn BCAM’s Wilshire Boulevard facade. The new building, the centerpiece of Transformation’s Phase I, will provide sixty thousand square feet of exhibition space on three floors and will be one of the largest column-free art spaces in the United States, featuring the works of contemporary artists Richard Serra, Barbara Kruger, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Chris Burden, and many more.

BP Grand Entrance construction with BCAM at left, October 2007.

BP Grand Entrance
The roof is now in place atop the sixteen red pillars of the BP Grand Entrance, an open-air pavilion that will serve as main entrance, orientation space, and public art plaza for visitors to LACMA. Named for the world energy firm BP, which concluded the museum’s Phase I fundraising with a $25-million gift in March 2007, the BP Grand Entrance will be accessed via landscaped piazzas along Wilshire Boulevard on the south and Hancock Park on the north. Still to be added to the structure are rooftop solar panels that will generate power to reduce the museum’s energy costs.

Ahmanson Atrium
In order to unify the LACMA campus, the Ahmanson Atrium is undergoing conversion from a self-enclosed space into a soaring gateway that will allow visitor traffic to flow from LACMA West, BCAM and the BP Grand Entrance on the west, to the existing Ahmanson, Art of the Americas, Hammer, Bing Center, and Pavilion for Japanese Art buildings on the east. A large entranceway has been framed into the western facade of the Ahmanson, and a grand interior staircase is nearly complete that will bring visitors to the plaza level of LACMA East. Concrete has been poured for the floor of the atrium, which will also serve as a naturally lit space for art and special events.

Parking Structure
A new two-level underground parking structure is essentially complete but for detail work such as the painting of way-finding signs on the columns. The structure is designed to accommodate over seven hundred vehicles.

  
Left to right, detail of salvaged streetlamps that will be part of Chris Burden's Urban Light installation, © 2007 Chris Burden; Robert Irwin drawing of concept for palm garden, © 2007 Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Train rendering, ©.Jeff Koons Studio/LACMA.

Outdoor Artworks
Transformation plans have grown to include a number of large-scale outdoor works by contemporary artists. Urban Light is a sculpture by Chris Burden which will incorporate more than two hundred restored cast-iron lampposts from Los Angeles County; Robert Irwin's palm garden will explore the ever-changing interplay of L.A. light and shadow. Jeff Koons's Train—a working replica of a 1940s locomotive dangling from a 161-foot-tall crane—is the current subject of a feasibility study underwritten by the Annenberg Foundation; the realization of this monumental work would come in a later phase of the Transformation.

Image at top:
Photo © Rpbw, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Italy.

MORE INFO

See a map of the existing LACMA campus with Phase I additions included.

View the Transformation on our live, 24-hour webcam.

Learn more about the Transformation Project by emailing or calling Michael Ruff at 323 932-5882.