The Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, a key feature of LACMA’s ongoing Transformation, dramatically expands the museum’s exhibition space and also further unifies the western half of the museum’s twenty-acre campus. The new building, which opens to the public in October 2010, is designed by Renzo Piano, founder, Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
The building is named in honor of long-time patrons Lynda and Stewart Resnick, whose $45 million donation was the lead gift in Phase II of LACMA’s Transformation campaign. The Resnicks’ generosity was further demonstrated by their promise of works of art valued at $10 million. Mrs. Resnick, a LACMA trustee since 1992, is currently chair of the museum’s Acquisitions Committee. She and Mr. Resnick are two of the world’s leading arts philanthropists with wide-ranging charitable interests that span from medical research to education.
The Resnick Pavilion, a single-story, 45,000 square foot structure, is the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world. When it opens, it will house a trio of exhibitions that highlight both the diversity of the museum’s encyclopedic collection and programming, as well as the flexibility of the new building: Eye for the Sensual: Selections from the Resnick Collection; Olmec: Masterworks of Ancient Mexico; and Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915.
LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan states, “Lynda and Stewart Resnick have been true champions of LACMA, demonstrated most visibly by their boundless generosity in supporting the creation of the Renzo Piano-designed exhibition pavilion which will bear their names. The facility is unlike almost any in the world, and improves and expands LACMA’s exhibition galleries, freeing up space to show more of our permanent collection.”
Lynda Resnick adds, “It was a great time to get behind LACMA, which, with its enlightening exhibitions and expanding collections, has truly emerged as a world-class museum. Stewart and I are pleased to make a contribution that builds upon the growing momentum at the institution while also contributing to the cultural vitality of a major twenty-first century art capital.”
The Resnick Pavilion is a naturally lit, glass and stone-enclosed structure sited immediately north of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), which opened in February 2008. The new building, the cornerstone of Phase II of the museum’s Transformation, complements BCAM architecturally—both buildings feature roof and ceiling elements that flood the galleries with natural light. While the northern and southern walls of the building are also glass-clad, creating an indoor/outdoor effect, the eastern and western walls are covered with travertine marble that originates from the same quarry as the marble used on BCAM’s facade. The red motif established in Phase I (e.g., BCAM’s escalator, the BP Grand Entrance, and the Kendall Concourse) is continued via the mechanical systems and technical rooms on the exterior of the Resnick Pavilion. The interior gallery is notable not only for its remarkable volume and quality of light but for its flexibility that allows for the presentation of multiple exhibitions at once as well as large-scale works of art.
Inaugural Exhibitions
Eye for the Sensual: Selections from the Resnick Collection
Eye for the Sensual features approximately 125 European paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from the remarkable collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick. Since the early 1980s, the Resnicks have collected in many areas ranging from European to American to contemporary art. The exhibition will highlight their interest in European painting and sculpture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century along with a selection of Art Deco furniture, sculpture, and decorative arts from their collection. Among the works presented will be Elisabeth-Louise Vigée- Lebrun’s iconic portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette; Jacob Jordaens’s vigorous Revel of Bacchus and Silenus, executed by the artist while still in his twenties; and sculptures by artists such as Clodion and Jean3 Antoine Houdon. The exhibition is curated by J. Patrice Marandel, LACMA’s Robert H. Ahmanson Chief Curator of European Art, and Bernard Jazzar, Curator of the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Collection.
Olmec: Masterworks of Ancient Mexico
Olmec is the first West Coast presentation of colossal works and smallscale sculptures produced by Mexico’s earliest civilization, which began around 1400 BC and was centered in the Gulf Coast states of Veracruz and Tabasco. Olmec architects and artists produced the earliest monumental structures and sculptures on the North American continent, including enormous basalt portrait heads of their rulers, which can weigh up to twenty-four tons. Small-scale jadeite objects, which embody the symbolism of sacred and secular authority among the Olmec, attest to the longdistance exchange of rare resources that existed as early as 1000 BC, and Olmec artists were unsurpassed in their ability to work this extremely hard stone with elementary tools of chert, water, and sand. The opening of Olmec will coincide with Los Angeles celebrations of the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence and the centennial of the Mexican revolution. The exhibition is co-organized by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, LACMA, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and is curated at LACMA by Virginia Fields, senior curator of Arts of the Ancient Americas.
Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915 Celebrating LACMA’s recent acquisition of a major collection of European men’s, women’s, and children’s garments and accessories, Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 will present a large selection to the public for the first time. The exhibition will tell the story of fashion’s aesthetic and technical development from the Age of Enlightenment to World War I. Fashioning Fashion will examine the sweeping changes that occurred in fashionable dress spanning a period of over 200 years, with a fascinating look at the details of luxurious textiles, exacting tailoring techniques, and lush trimmings. Highlights will include an eighteenth-century man’s vest intricately embroidered with powerful symbolic messages relevant to the French Revolution; an evening mantle with silk embroidery, glass beads, and ostrich feathers designed by French couturier Émile Pingat (active 1860-96); and spectacular three-piece suits and gowns worn at the royal courts of Europe. Fashioning Fashion is curated by Sharon S. Takeda, department head and senior curator, and Kaye D. Spilker, curator, Costume and Textiles at LACMA.
Lynda and Stewart Resnick
Mrs. Resnick has served as a member of LACMA’s Board of Trustees since 1992. She is chair of the museum’s Acquisitions Committee. Mrs. Resnick also serves on the Executive Board of the Aspen Institute, for which she chairs the Communications Committee; the Executive Board for the UCLA Medical Sciences; the Prostate Cancer Foundation; and the Milken Family Foundation. She is also a trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mr. Resnick currently serves as a member of the Executive Board of the UCLA Medical Sciences; the Board of Trustees of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; the Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust; and the Board of Conservation International. He is also a trustee of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the Advisory Board of the Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles.
