“Joining Bacon’s startling work inside those giant window lined curvy galleries are everything from an ancient frieze, Round-Topped Stella c. (1391–1353 BCE) to Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1830–31); Diego Rivera’s Día de Flores (1925), and Henri Matisse’s La Gerbe, a cut paper collage created late in the French master’s life (1953).”

“The art is displayed in non-hierarchical areas designated as “oceans,” as in Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Mediterranean — even though the latter is technically a sea.”

“The new outdoor space off Wilshire Boulevard, not yet fully completed, houses the 75,000-square-foot W.M. Keck Plaza, where new commissions by Mariana Castillo Deball and local artist Sarah Rosalena join LACMA’s Rodin collection, Tony Smith’s Smoke, and Alexander Calder’s reworked 1965 mobile, Three Quintains.”

“The star of the new acquisitions is Jeff Koons’s Split-Rocker (2000) — a monumental, utterly charming sculpture adorned with thousands of living plants.”

“A second restaurant and a wine bar will open later this year, along with the Steve Tisch Theater, named for the Forest Gump producer, former New York Giants president and LACMA trustee, most recently in the news for a flurry of emails he exchanged with pedophile financier Jeffery Epstein.”

“LACMA tore down the site’s original 1965 William L. Pereira-designed buildings to make room.”

“According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, major donator the Ahmanson Foundation ended a fifty year partnership with LACMA in 2020 over what the LA Times reported as “disagreements with the Zumthor plan.””

“One of the laborers, James Anderson, a journeyman in the glaziers union, Local 636, called the building a “beast” — one he wrestled with for over a year, he told The Post.”