Los Angeles has a new landmark. Go see it.

A building that floats 30 feet above Wilshire Boulevard, crosses a six-lane road, and holds 6,000 years of art on a single, unhierarchical floor. This is not a renovation. It is a declaration.

On April 19, 2026, Los Angeles got the cultural landmark it has been anticipating for nearly two decades. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the David Geffen Galleries replace four aging structures with one 900-foot arc of concrete and glass, hovering above the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and the La Brea Tar Pits.

What Zumthor Built

The building is a single elevated exhibition floor supported by seven ground-level pavilions housing dining, retail, a theater, and education. Between them, open public plazas invite the city in on any day. All 155,000 objects in LACMA's permanent collection are displayed on one level, in a deliberately non-hierarchical layout that refuses to rank cultures, traditions, or eras against one another.

Inside, perimeter galleries flood with natural light through floor-to-ceiling glass, filtered by custom metallic curtains by Tokyo-based designer Reiko Sudo. Interior rooms offer shadow and shelter. There is no prescribed path. The building gives you the city back: from almost any vantage point, the La Brea Tar Pits, Wilshire Boulevard, and the surrounding cultural corridor remain visible.

Unlike the encyclopedic museums of Paris, London, or New York, where it is easy to forget where you are, Zumthor's building keeps Los Angeles visible from nearly every room.

Why It Matters Right Now

The Geffen Galleries open between the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (2021) and the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (2026), anchoring one of the most concentrated corridors of cultural architecture in the American West. Named for David Geffen's $150 million gift, and supported by $125 million from Los Angeles County, the project more than doubled LACMA's gallery footprint from 130,000 to 220,000 square feet. In a city still rebuilding after January's wildfires, the timing carries weight beyond architecture.

Plan Your Visit

Public opening: May 4, 2026. A new Metro station opens across the street the same week. Address: 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles. Outdoor highlights include Jeff Koons's 37-foot Split-Rocker, Pedro Reyes's stone carving Tlalli, and Alexander Calder's Three Quintains in a new Zumthor-designed pool. Allow two to three hours and plan to linger in the ground-level plazas before ascending to the galleries.

From the South Bay, this is a 20 to 30 minute drive, and one of the most architecturally significant openings in Los Angeles in a generation. For anyone working in design, real estate, or the built environment, a visit this spring is not optional.

Los Angeles has a new landmark. Go see it.

David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, open to the public May 4, 2026. 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036.