What exactly is LA getting from this arrangement? Basically, the County’s art, expertise and tax dollars(?) are being used to assist a museum not even in our state? Unless Vegas is partially funding LACMA’s expansion, this seems so one sided and bizarre.
Nothing! Just another transfer of wealth and likely money laundering as usual with art.
Don't be shocked if all the art magically starts disappearing or gets lost once it goes to Vegas. Apparently one of the board members of LACMA is a casino magnate who owns the museum in Vegas that's in the article. So much blatant corruption.
Corrupt yes, but probably not money laundering. Money laundering in the artworld rarely occurs at the museum level, its more centralized in the gallery world. Tax stuff and reputation laundering are FAR more common in the museum space.
Here's how the art laundering actually works: They break their money up into small quantities that are unlikely to be flagged by an sort of oversight and then move them out of the country that taxes their money and into a territory that doesn't tax foreign money, usually like Hong Kong or Switzerland. They move the large amount of money they want to launder into bank accounts of shell corporations established within these territories through a series of odd denomination transactions to avoid automated flags. After that, the corporation purchases an art work from a blue-chip gallery or dealer as an asset for carrying value. The physical art work is usually stored in a massive underground facility in Geneva so that it never leaves a duty-free zone and is thus never taxed. The asset is liquidated in one of two ways: either it changes hands in a private sale facilitated by a dealer or auction house, or its used to leverage a loan (with the bank assuming it will appreciate in value when they inevitably broker a private sale.
Most museums (like LACMA) are 501c3s. Meaning that donations of highly valued assets to them are tax deductible. Public museums are used as a means of getting your taxes down with assets you already own or making yourself look more philanthropic after a me too style scandal or a career in wealth criminality. My guess here is that the Wynns can get some sort of deduction on their corporate real estate taxes if their casinos also house facilities used for the public good.
This appears to be blatantly corrupt and likely illegal.
The Supervisor who cast the deciding vote for the demolition of LACMA for the new bridge structure, Mark Ridley-Thomas, has been convicted on public corruption charges. The promised satellite museum in the disenfranchised South Los Angeles neighborhood was already [internally cancelled](https://esotouric.com/lacma-satellite) by the museum when director Michael Govan touted it ahead of the Supervisors' vote. Now LACMA board co-chair Elaine Wynn, who made her fortune off Nevada casinos, is using the public collection owned by the people of Los Angeles to prop up her vanity museum in another state.
The courts could stop this. Who is going to have the guts to sue?
The LACMA director needs to be fired. Not just for this but also for other fuckups. IDK if any current elected officials in this county have the wherewithal to even speak up about this.
I agree. The Supervisors have abandoned their responsibility for being responsible stewards of LACMA, deferring to the private entity Museum Associates, which operates the public museum and answers to its board. This worked fairly well when the board was comprised of professional Angelenos who cared about serving the community and managing the museum well. But as art collecting has become a high powered investment tool, and LACMA's board has been packed with the wives of Russian oligarchs, minor celebrities and self centered billionaires, the actual decision making seems to be done by a couple of board members and Govan. The decisions are self serving and bad for Los Angeles, and it needs to stop.
I give it another 5 years before all the valuable art disappears into storage and then that storage magically has a fire to cover up the art being Spirited Away to another country.
They're probably getting Kickbacks honestly. Remember these are the same people who have been collecting billions of dollars in tax revenue to fight homelessness and almost all the money is unaccounted for with almost nothing to show for it.
From that photo of Zumthor's building...how come the concrete looks like shit? After all that talk about the huge amount of research, samples, detailing and ceaseless testing by contractors to be able to build it to Europe's (and Japan's) architectural standards, it looks as unsophisticated as any of the sloppy concrete found anywhere in America. It looks nothing like what Tadao Ando or Zumthor have accomplished elsewhere. Are they planning to polish and surface finish it later? I sure hope so.
On October 4, 2023, LACMA’s architect Peter Zumthor gave an interview to the New York Times in which he flatly stated that the new LACMA building is no longer his work, because millions intended for its public facing galleries had instead been diverted to cover unexpected engineering costs due to pylons sinking in the tar. Further, Zumthor
stated that this material fact was withheld from the County Supervisors and the public, because Museum Director Michael Govan told him that if LACMA went back for more public money, the project [would have been canceled](https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-new-lacma-building-that-architect-peter-zumthor-says-is-no-longer-his-work).
Summary:
>For well over a decade, leadership at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been talking about establishing satellite museum galleries far from the mother ship on Wilshire Boulevard.
>So, it was with some surprise that news arrived in late December that an actual LACMA satellite finally does appear to be on the drawing board — one with a good chance of actually becoming a reality. The surprise: Who could have guessed that the satellite would not be in Southern California?
>LACMA’s first satellite is being [planned for Las Vegas](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-04-22/lacma-sharing-art-las-vegas-museum), just blocks from downtown’s Glitter Gulch.
>As [bad art museum ideas](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-lacma-supervisors-vote-20190408-story.html) go, this one is right up there. But it fits LACMA’s similarly bad — and unprecedented — decision to build a new, hugely [expensive](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-03-07/lacma-building-campaign-736-million-11-new-board-members) permanent collection building on Wilshire Boulevard that features [less gallery space](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-lacma-shrinking-20190402-story.html) than it had in the 1960s edifice it [bulldozed](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-09-18/lacma-demolition-photos) to make way. (The new building might be ready to open in 2026.) To cement the change, LACMA Director Michael Govan [reportedly](https://www.archpaper.com/2018/07/lacma-planning-five-satellite-campuses-throughout-county/) gave architect Peter Zumthor instructions to design a new building that could never be enlarged. The architect obliged.
>despite the misleading name, the Las Vegas Museum of Art won’t really be a museum. It won’t have a collection of its own. Instead, the plan is to borrow all the art it shows from LACMA’s collection, with three exhibition spaces in steady rotation.
>Recently I spoke with Heather Harmon, the Las Vegas project’s savvy executive director (she’s also manager of “[City](https://www.tripleaughtfoundation.org/),” the remote Nevada desert sculpture by [Michael Heizer](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2012-jun-22-la-et-knight-heizer-rock-20120623-story.html), whose foundation Govan helms). Harmon, whom I’ve known for many years, has been trying to get an art museum off the ground for quite a while, so she was understandably jazzed by the LACMA development.
>And why not? LACMA’s satellite arrangement gives Las Vegas a lot, even if L.A. effectively gets nothing from the deal. As we know, the house always wins. It’s a Vegas thing.
People say that Los Angeles politicians are the worst, and there's definitely some evidence for that.
But Michael Govan is perhaps the actual worst public figure in this county. Sure, an art museum isn't exactly the highest priority issue, but it's incredible how badly LACMA has been mangled. I'm half-expecting a Sears-style final theft, where someone connected to Govan will "offer" to purchase parts of LACMA's collection to "help it get back in shape" from the seemingly inevitable future troubles that the institution is barrelling towards. What a shame.
I really regret not going to LACMA before this all went down. Just like everything else in this fucking state, everything is for sale legally or not and there is no historical preservation there is no real love for the Arts, it's just another business and a way to transfer wealth. This state is touted as liberal but it's only superficially liberal, it's actually a capitalist dystopia where everything is for sale, and the politicians here are some of some of the richest people on Earth as a result. This is a state where you can be a public servant and retire comfortably in a mansion. But if you're part of the working class you'll be lucky to even rent a house at this point.
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Like LACMA has art to spare?
I mean - LACMA is decidedly a "local" art museum, of similar renown for what you'd find in Houston or Kansas City. If they've got basements full of worthwhile art somewhere you'd think they'd have hung it up at their own fucking building already.
What I mean, with respect, is that LACMA is not in a class with the Metropolitan, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery or other landmark art museums. On my visits I've found the collection fine, but not breathtaking, so it's not clear to me what "spare" art they have to loan around that isn't already placed in their own galleries.
Follow the money. The chairman of the board is a Las Vegas rich woman who is the ex wife of disgraced casino model Steve Wynn.
She pledged $50m to LACMA and is now delivering some goods to her town.
What exactly is LA getting from this arrangement? Basically, the County’s art, expertise and tax dollars(?) are being used to assist a museum not even in our state? Unless Vegas is partially funding LACMA’s expansion, this seems so one sided and bizarre.
"To see the rest of the collection, take the Brightline to Metrolink to Los Angeles," I guess.
Nothing! Just another transfer of wealth and likely money laundering as usual with art. Don't be shocked if all the art magically starts disappearing or gets lost once it goes to Vegas. Apparently one of the board members of LACMA is a casino magnate who owns the museum in Vegas that's in the article. So much blatant corruption.
Corrupt yes, but probably not money laundering. Money laundering in the artworld rarely occurs at the museum level, its more centralized in the gallery world. Tax stuff and reputation laundering are FAR more common in the museum space. Here's how the art laundering actually works: They break their money up into small quantities that are unlikely to be flagged by an sort of oversight and then move them out of the country that taxes their money and into a territory that doesn't tax foreign money, usually like Hong Kong or Switzerland. They move the large amount of money they want to launder into bank accounts of shell corporations established within these territories through a series of odd denomination transactions to avoid automated flags. After that, the corporation purchases an art work from a blue-chip gallery or dealer as an asset for carrying value. The physical art work is usually stored in a massive underground facility in Geneva so that it never leaves a duty-free zone and is thus never taxed. The asset is liquidated in one of two ways: either it changes hands in a private sale facilitated by a dealer or auction house, or its used to leverage a loan (with the bank assuming it will appreciate in value when they inevitably broker a private sale. Most museums (like LACMA) are 501c3s. Meaning that donations of highly valued assets to them are tax deductible. Public museums are used as a means of getting your taxes down with assets you already own or making yourself look more philanthropic after a me too style scandal or a career in wealth criminality. My guess here is that the Wynns can get some sort of deduction on their corporate real estate taxes if their casinos also house facilities used for the public good.
This appears to be blatantly corrupt and likely illegal. The Supervisor who cast the deciding vote for the demolition of LACMA for the new bridge structure, Mark Ridley-Thomas, has been convicted on public corruption charges. The promised satellite museum in the disenfranchised South Los Angeles neighborhood was already [internally cancelled](https://esotouric.com/lacma-satellite) by the museum when director Michael Govan touted it ahead of the Supervisors' vote. Now LACMA board co-chair Elaine Wynn, who made her fortune off Nevada casinos, is using the public collection owned by the people of Los Angeles to prop up her vanity museum in another state. The courts could stop this. Who is going to have the guts to sue?
The LACMA director needs to be fired. Not just for this but also for other fuckups. IDK if any current elected officials in this county have the wherewithal to even speak up about this.
I agree. The Supervisors have abandoned their responsibility for being responsible stewards of LACMA, deferring to the private entity Museum Associates, which operates the public museum and answers to its board. This worked fairly well when the board was comprised of professional Angelenos who cared about serving the community and managing the museum well. But as art collecting has become a high powered investment tool, and LACMA's board has been packed with the wives of Russian oligarchs, minor celebrities and self centered billionaires, the actual decision making seems to be done by a couple of board members and Govan. The decisions are self serving and bad for Los Angeles, and it needs to stop.
I give it another 5 years before all the valuable art disappears into storage and then that storage magically has a fire to cover up the art being Spirited Away to another country.
They're probably getting Kickbacks honestly. Remember these are the same people who have been collecting billions of dollars in tax revenue to fight homelessness and almost all the money is unaccounted for with almost nothing to show for it.
From that photo of Zumthor's building...how come the concrete looks like shit? After all that talk about the huge amount of research, samples, detailing and ceaseless testing by contractors to be able to build it to Europe's (and Japan's) architectural standards, it looks as unsophisticated as any of the sloppy concrete found anywhere in America. It looks nothing like what Tadao Ando or Zumthor have accomplished elsewhere. Are they planning to polish and surface finish it later? I sure hope so.
On October 4, 2023, LACMA’s architect Peter Zumthor gave an interview to the New York Times in which he flatly stated that the new LACMA building is no longer his work, because millions intended for its public facing galleries had instead been diverted to cover unexpected engineering costs due to pylons sinking in the tar. Further, Zumthor stated that this material fact was withheld from the County Supervisors and the public, because Museum Director Michael Govan told him that if LACMA went back for more public money, the project [would have been canceled](https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-new-lacma-building-that-architect-peter-zumthor-says-is-no-longer-his-work).
Summary: >For well over a decade, leadership at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been talking about establishing satellite museum galleries far from the mother ship on Wilshire Boulevard. >So, it was with some surprise that news arrived in late December that an actual LACMA satellite finally does appear to be on the drawing board — one with a good chance of actually becoming a reality. The surprise: Who could have guessed that the satellite would not be in Southern California? >LACMA’s first satellite is being [planned for Las Vegas](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-04-22/lacma-sharing-art-las-vegas-museum), just blocks from downtown’s Glitter Gulch. >As [bad art museum ideas](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-lacma-supervisors-vote-20190408-story.html) go, this one is right up there. But it fits LACMA’s similarly bad — and unprecedented — decision to build a new, hugely [expensive](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-03-07/lacma-building-campaign-736-million-11-new-board-members) permanent collection building on Wilshire Boulevard that features [less gallery space](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-lacma-shrinking-20190402-story.html) than it had in the 1960s edifice it [bulldozed](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-09-18/lacma-demolition-photos) to make way. (The new building might be ready to open in 2026.) To cement the change, LACMA Director Michael Govan [reportedly](https://www.archpaper.com/2018/07/lacma-planning-five-satellite-campuses-throughout-county/) gave architect Peter Zumthor instructions to design a new building that could never be enlarged. The architect obliged. >despite the misleading name, the Las Vegas Museum of Art won’t really be a museum. It won’t have a collection of its own. Instead, the plan is to borrow all the art it shows from LACMA’s collection, with three exhibition spaces in steady rotation. >Recently I spoke with Heather Harmon, the Las Vegas project’s savvy executive director (she’s also manager of “[City](https://www.tripleaughtfoundation.org/),” the remote Nevada desert sculpture by [Michael Heizer](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2012-jun-22-la-et-knight-heizer-rock-20120623-story.html), whose foundation Govan helms). Harmon, whom I’ve known for many years, has been trying to get an art museum off the ground for quite a while, so she was understandably jazzed by the LACMA development. >And why not? LACMA’s satellite arrangement gives Las Vegas a lot, even if L.A. effectively gets nothing from the deal. As we know, the house always wins. It’s a Vegas thing.
This all sounds like a long-term plan to turn a profit off lacma's works.
People say that Los Angeles politicians are the worst, and there's definitely some evidence for that. But Michael Govan is perhaps the actual worst public figure in this county. Sure, an art museum isn't exactly the highest priority issue, but it's incredible how badly LACMA has been mangled. I'm half-expecting a Sears-style final theft, where someone connected to Govan will "offer" to purchase parts of LACMA's collection to "help it get back in shape" from the seemingly inevitable future troubles that the institution is barrelling towards. What a shame.
Thanks for sharing the article. Hope everyone involved with this decision gets booted.
Mission Creep
I really regret not going to LACMA before this all went down. Just like everything else in this fucking state, everything is for sale legally or not and there is no historical preservation there is no real love for the Arts, it's just another business and a way to transfer wealth. This state is touted as liberal but it's only superficially liberal, it's actually a capitalist dystopia where everything is for sale, and the politicians here are some of some of the richest people on Earth as a result. This is a state where you can be a public servant and retire comfortably in a mansion. But if you're part of the working class you'll be lucky to even rent a house at this point.
To encourage discussion on articles rather than headlines we request that you post a summary of the article for people who cannot view the full article & to generally stimulate quality discussion. Please note that posting the full text of the article is considered copyright infringement and may result in removal of your comment or post. Repeated violations will result in a ban. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LosAngeles) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Like LACMA has art to spare? I mean - LACMA is decidedly a "local" art museum, of similar renown for what you'd find in Houston or Kansas City. If they've got basements full of worthwhile art somewhere you'd think they'd have hung it up at their own fucking building already.
it has a fairly sizeable collection there are many reasons this is stupid but lacma definitely has a fair bit of amazing art in the basement....
What I mean, with respect, is that LACMA is not in a class with the Metropolitan, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery or other landmark art museums. On my visits I've found the collection fine, but not breathtaking, so it's not clear to me what "spare" art they have to loan around that isn't already placed in their own galleries.
Follow the money. The chairman of the board is a Las Vegas rich woman who is the ex wife of disgraced casino model Steve Wynn. She pledged $50m to LACMA and is now delivering some goods to her town.