A first look at the $720 million overhaul of LACMA, LA.’s buzziest museum

Outdoors at the new David Geffen Galleries, featuring views of Tony Smith’s ‘Smoke’ in the background and Mariana Castillo Deball’s ‘Feathered Changes’ set into the paving.

The expanded Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the unrivaled U.S. museum relaunch of the year. The sprawling, glass-and-concrete David Geffen Galleries, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, cost $720 million and took six years to open April 19. Roughly 2,500 pieces of ancient and newer art will be installed in the new 110,000-square-foot space stretching across Wilshire Boulevard and overlooking the nearby La Brea Tar Pits.

Rather than divide its permanent collection into historical categories like European painting or contemporary art, longtime director Michael Govan said his curators commingled LACMA’s art into the meandering galleries—named after the world’s oceans—to encourage audiences to wander and be surprised by pieces, including masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Winslow Homer and Craig Kauffman. “We want to look at the interconnection rather than the separation of art and people, so everything here plays into that idea,” Govan said.

To keep you from getting overwhelmed, The Wall Street Journal asked Govan for a guide to 10 must-see pieces, including a few recent additions.

1. Jeff Koons, “Split-Rocker” (2000)

This monumental garden installation (made of around 50,000 plants) combines the heads of a dinosaur toy and a child’s rocking horse.

Find it outside the museum’s northern entrance.

2. Artist Unknown, “Old Dog” (c. 200 B.C.–500 A.D.)

The Mexican hairless dog was believed to guide people on the journey from life to death, but Govan said LACMA’s 2,000 year-old earthenware example feels “friendly and relatable.”

Find it in the Pacific Ocean gallery.

3. Duke Kahanamoku’s Surfboard (1920s)

Pioneering Olympic surfer Duke Kahanamoku enlisted his own brother Samuel Alapa‘i Kahanamoku and others to carve this 11-foot-long redwood surfboard. Govan said curators will display it near pieces from Polynesia.

Find it in the Pacific Ocean gallery.

4. Do Ho Suh, “Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace” (2026)

Rendered in translucent fabric instead of wood, this re-created section of the tiled roof of Seoul’s Gyeongbok Palace is “like a ghost image,” Govan said.

Find it in the Indian Ocean gallery.

5. Manjunath Kamath, “Vikatonarva” (2024)

This 12.5 foot-tall terracotta figure embodies various kinds of religious iconography all at once, from a Vishnu-like chest to a Christ-like beard.

Find it in the Indian Ocean gallery.

6. Damascus Courtyard Home (c. 1766)

Visitors can see both the interior wood paneling and the exterior framework of a Syrian winter reception room—and peer through the window cutouts at Vera Lutter’s 2005 gelatin silver prints of Venice on a wall beyond.

Find it in the Mediterranean gallery.

7. Maqsud Kashani, “Ardabil Carpet” (c. 1539)

This Safavid-era carpet created for an ancestral shrine in northwest Iran was gifted by J. Paul Getty and is prized for its ornately knotted design featuring lamps and central medallions.

Find it in the Indian Ocean gallery.

8. Todd Gray, “Octavia’s Gaze” (2025)

A L.A. artist, who also works in Ghana, created this multipanel reimagining of people’s journeys from Africa to the U.S., inspired in part by famed Afrofuturistic science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler.

Find it in the Atlantic Ocean gallery.

9. Mariana Castillo Deball, “Feathered Changes” (2026)

The trove of fossils found during the museum’s expansion gets a fitting tribute in a 75,000 square-meter swath of concrete on the plaza scored with ropelike patterns, paw prints and serpent-like shapes.

Find it on the museum plaza floor.

10. Sarah Rosalena, “Threading the Boundless: Omnidirectional Terrain” (2025)

Part of the museum’s expansive textile collection, Rosalena’s 27-foot-long tapestry is woven with hand-weaving patterns using satellite images the artist distorted from planetary terrains from Mars and Earth.

Find it in the museum’s restaurant.