IN THE ROUND

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, director Michael Govan offers an exclusive look inside the new Peter Zumthor building that has the eyes of the art world trained on LA

- MAYER RUS

Art is long, museums are short,” insists Michael Govan, the CEO and Wallis Annenberg director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “They are a frame, and they have to keep changing to embrace multiple points of view, new contexts, new indices.” For nearly two decades, Govan has proselytized his vision for LACMA reborn, a place liberated from 19th-century academic thinking about the proper role and form of a civic arts institution. “A permanent collection shouldn’t be permanent in its presentation,” he contends, rejecting strict narratives based on chronology, geography, and artificial notions of creative progress. “There are no straight lines—it’s all crisscrossing lines and cul-de-sacs.”