LACMA Master Plan & Exhibition Design

Director Michael Govan challenged us to develop a master plan and exhibition armature within the open 45,000 square foot space that would be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of installations, yet would not require costly reconstruction for each changeover.

FF&P began working in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Resnick Pavilion soon after its completion in 2010.
We developed and implemented the master plan over five years, building new sections of the armature during consecutive exhibits. In addition to accommodating temporary exhibitions, the Resnick Pavilion will be home to some of LACMA’s permanent collections during the upcoming campus renovation.
Between 2012 and 2017, we designed six exhibitions in the Resnick Pavilion: “Bodies and Shadows – Caravaggio and His Legacy”; “Hans Richter: Encounters”; “See the Light – Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection”; “Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky”; “Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959-1971”; and “Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915-1985”. Within our armature’s agile architectural framework, each installation featured different media, didactics, casework, seating, and both artificial and natural light.
As exhibition designers we like to collaborate with the exhibit space itself, striking a harmonious balance between changing artworks and their architectural surroundings, which are both permanent and adaptable. Our master plan employs a central spine, or avenue, to divide the main gallery in two rectangular spaces. At the end of the avenue, land artist Michael Heizer’s monumental outdoor “Levitated Mass” fills the large back window. These elements remain constant, while individual exhibitions change form.
Every exhibition design we undertake evolves from a partnership with museum directors and curators—we reimagine each gallery’s shape, look and feel to reflect the curatorial vision.
“Bodies and Shadows – Caravaggio and His Legacy” consisted of a series of connected rooms. A large projection of the Baroque artist’s face greeted visitors as they entered, and colorist Scot Flax worked with us to develop white and yellow wall colors that emphasized the artist’s brooding palette.
The design for German avant-gardist Hans Richter’s exhibition of films, photographs and drawings employed floating walls to form small viewing areas and combined projections with stationary displays. Visitors can meander organically from one area to another, gazing up at large-scale projections or down into more intimately scaled displays. Experiences shift and evolve in real time, allowing viewers to develop a personal relationship with the art.