AILSA CHANG, HOST:
So one of my regular workouts here in Los Angeles is doing interval sprints. I blast up and down Wilshire Boulevard, past the La Brea Tar Pits, past this colossal construction site where I've been watching this huge building slowly take shape - a $724 million project, many years in the making, that is now finally complete.
MICHAEL GOVAN: Well, hopefully, we've also improved the sidewalk, so your sprinting is better, right?
CHANG: Oh, yeah. No, there's so much surface area for me to zigzag around.
I'm standing in front of the LA County Museum of Art, or LACMA, with its CEO, Michael Govan. We're taking in the new sprawling David Geffen Galleries, this wavy mass of concrete and glass that looks sort of like a flat spaceship hovering over Wilshire Boulevard with 360-degree views of LA.
GOVAN: You see the mountains. You see the park. You see the neighborhood. You see skyscrapers. You see the sun.
CHANG: Yes. And why was that important to you to have museum visitors be able to constantly be reminded that they are in Los Angeles as they are moving inside a museum looking at art?
GOVAN: Well, you just stated the answer. All those artworks represent people from different places and different times. And so the idea of opening the windows is just simply a way to connect all that artwork to us as a living culture.
CHANG: I love that.
Govan says he wanted these new galleries to look very different, to challenge people's perceptions of what a museum should look like, maybe even make people a little uncomfortable.
GOVAN: Los Angeles is always an innovator. Art museums need to change. Art has been around for tens of thousands of years, museums for a few hundred. It's just a frame, and we need to keep evolving that frame to be better, more interesting, more accessible, more beautiful. And so change is part of that, and LA is the place for new ideas.
CHANG: Well, let's go inside and see how the architecture feels with the art.
GOVAN: Let's do that. We should go this way.
CHANG: OK.
Govan leads me to a long, floating staircase that leads up to the galleries.
Oh, I love this. It's like a midair zigzag (laughter).
GOVAN: I don't exercise other than at the museum. So this is where I get my exercise, personally...
CHANG: Oh, good. That's good exercise, a good workout.
GOVAN: ...Is up the stairs and wandering. You see there are...
CHANG: And so we wander up the stairs, through two giant glass doors. And right when you enter this place, you realize you're not exactly sure where to go next.
I have to tell you, for someone like me who has a disastrous sense of direction, a building like this usually is my worst nightmare. But I feel like, no matter which way I turn, I get a new experience because the art's coming at me in different sequences, depending on which fork I choose, you know?
GOVAN: Yes, that was very intentional. I know a lot of people like to be told a simple, long story that's linear.
CHANG: Yeah.
GOVAN: It's true. But art history isn't that. It's around the world. There's so many stories, and there's so many different disconnected as well as interconnected stories. And so you can't really properly represent the history of world culture in a line or a simple path.
CHANG: Yeah.
GOVAN: Which path do you want to take?
CHANG: Why don't we just - OK, my...
GOVAN: Here's...
CHANG: My terrible sense of direction says we should turn left (laughter).
GOVAN: If you're on this side, your first - one of your first images is this old dog made of terracotta.
CHANG: Yes.
GOVAN: Ceramic. It's 1,500 years old.
CHANG: Ancient Mexico. Like, maybe one of those hairless dogs or...
GOVAN: Yes.
CHANG: Yeah.
GOVAN: Correct.
CHANG: And just a few paces away, we duck into a room with a surfboard that's twice as tall as I am.
GOVAN: When I got to LACMA, I complained that we had clocks on furniture and blankets and spoons and forks, but no cars and no surfboards. So now we have two surfboards, two cars.
CHANG: Hey, you got to represent California.
GOVAN: The two surfboards are...
CHANG: You see, what Govan wanted to do was not only upend the traditional way of navigating a museum. He also wanted to upend how pieces of art are categorized and arranged, discarding conventions of chronology, geography and medium. It's an ethos that is on full display in another room around the corner with black, blue and red walls.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GOVAN: You can see on that wall a selection from our collection of Tibetan furniture, which is very powerful. But on this wall you see a photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto, a Japanese artist. And then, if you look on this wall, you hear the sound and images of Lu Yang, who's a young Chinese artist working in Japan, where she's used video game technology to bring to life a Buddhist dance.
CHANG: That's what that was. I was watching that on Saturday.
So we are taking a different route through this museum than I took just a couple days ago when I first visited this building. And I guess that was your intention - that each visit can be a totally new journey for the viewer. But some people, they want guidance. They want structure. They want order as they're moving through a museum because that helps them learn in a more linear way - context, history, knowledge. What do you say to people like that who want to be told what to do when they enter a museum?
GOVAN: If you make a museum that's very linear, you will have people that are just as upset because they don't like to be dragged around...
CHANG: Right. Right.
GOVAN: ...Through one story when they know better.
CHANG: Feeling forced to read every placard.
GOVAN: Exactly. So I think you have to be honest that there's - again, that's the point. There's no one way to make a museum, and because you have to pick ways, it's better if all museums are a little bit different. That way...
CHANG: Are you worried that some people might find this experience a little confusing or chaotic?
GOVAN: So early returns - yeah, some people have said that, but the vast majority of people have not said that. And many comments have been made - getting a little bit lost is fun.
CHANG: It's like a choose your own adventure. That's what this museum is. Choose your own adventure each time.
You know, I can't help but feel as I'm walking through this museum that this museum is very much a loving ode to LA. Do you feel like for a long time, LA has been a bit of an underdog in the art museum world and now is ascending?
GOVAN: Yeah. I mean, the thing is, again, art's been around for tens of thousands of years, museums for a few hundred. So in the few hundred years where most of Europe and the East Coast of the United States evolved this idea of what an encyclopedic art museum would be, of course, there's an advantage to being (laughter) a hundred years older than we are. But now go 500 years forward and think about all the art that will be made. I do think we're in an age of tremendous creativity and innovation here in Los Angeles. And so, hopefully, people will look back on this time, on this collection of art on this building, which is innovative, and think, wow, they were really doing something then.
CHANG: Michael Govan, thank you so much for this gorgeous stroll today.
GOVAN: Thank you. Thank you for being here, and I hope you come back often...
CHANG: Oh, I will.
GOVAN: ...To get in your steps and learn about art history.
CHANG: I have a membership (laughter).
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new David Geffen Galleries open to the public today.
(SOUNDBITE OF APHEX TWIN'S "ALBERTO BALSALM") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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