concrete wall

Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries are alive with sound and activity. Voices echo through the vast, concrete space and a cacophony of drills and electric lifts beep, buzz and blare. A unique colored glaze is being applied to gallery walls, and paintings and photos are being installed throughout.

That gritty whir? It’s the Hilti TE 4-22 cordless rotary hammer drill. “A very fine product,” says senior art preparator Michael Price with a sly smile. He’s been drilling holes in the concrete walls with the large red contraption, which comes with a small attached vacuum that sucks up concrete dust as it penetrates the wall. The work is simple and done in a matter of seconds.

Senior art preparator Michael Price drills into concrete walls to hang art in LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries. He jokingly calls the Hilti TE 4-22 cordless rotary hammer drill “a very fine product.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Some of the first holes were drilled a little more than a week ago for the installation of a photo sculpture LACMA commissioned for its entrance by Los Angeles-born artist Todd Gray, titled “Octavia Butler’s Gaze.” Last Wednesday, Gray, along with LACMA director and Chief Executive Michael Govan and curator Britt Salvesen, watched the final panel of the 27-foot-long assemblage being hoisted onto the wall and put in place using wooden cleats that fit together much like a jigsaw puzzle.

“This is another thing that concrete makes possible,” says Salvesen, the head of the photography, and prints and drawings, departments, noting with satisfaction how flush the photographs sit against the wall. “The traditional sheetrock drywall used in many museums have been painted and repainted so many times, they’re not exactly pristine when it comes to leveling.”

Gray steps back and looks at the finished product, nodding with quiet pride. The L.A. native attended Hamilton High School and CalArts and felt deeply honored to have been tapped for a permanent commission. He was therefore among the first people to take a hard-hat tour of the building when it was under construction so he could familiarize himself with the space. The new building opens in April 2026.

“I was kind of overwhelmed,” Gray says. “I had never been in an architectural space like this so I was just really curious. But I must admit, I was much more concerned about this wall.”

The wall is big — a blank, concrete slate — and Gray’s piece will be the first work of art guests see when they walk up the broad staircase leading to the new galleries. In Butler’s portrait, which Gray took in the 1990s, the influential writer looks contemplatively off into the distance — whether near or far, one can’t be sure. Her expression is unreadable, at once thoughtful, curious, interested and detached.

A portrait of Octavia Butler, taken by Todd Gray in the 1990s, anchors the 27-foot-long photo sculpture commissioned by LACMA for the entrance of its new David Geffen Galleries.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Her face is in a gold, oval frame and the viewer’s eyes follow hers to other aspects of the piece — an assemblage of large and small photos taken by Gray in places around the world, including Versailles, Norway and Ghana. It includes an image of an idyllic-looking path through bright green foliage that leads to a slave castle in Cape Coast, Ghana. There is also a striking image of stars in the cosmos, a lovely fresco from a church in Rome, a picture of traditional sculpture housed at the AfricaMuseum in Belgium and a series of stoic Greek columns.

“A lot of my work is contesting art history, or talking about art history, or photography’s place in history, my history, various histories culturally,” said Gray, explaining why he likes that LACMA’s collection will not be exhibited chronologically, or by medium or region, but rather in a series of interwoven exhibits that connect vastly different art in dialogue. “So it was really a commission made in heaven.”

The new galleries, explained Govan, will focus on “migration and intersection, rather than American art over on one side of the museum and European art in a different wing.”

Gray’s photo sculpture, for example, will be adjacent to a gallery featuring African art and near another with Latin American art.

It will also be directly across from a floor-to-ceiling window. These giant windows are a key part of Zumthor’s design — and a flash point for controversy, with critics arguing that too much sunlight could harm fragile art.

Translucent curtains are being designed for some of the windows, but won’t be used throughout, and not in the entrance across from “Octavia’s Gaze.” For that reason, Gray said he employed a relatively new technique called UV direct printing that was developed for outdoor signage. The process involves intense ultraviolet lights that cure and harden the ink, ultimately searing it into the printing material. These prints won’t fade, Gray said.

Todd Gray, left, oversees the installation of his photo sculpture “Octavia Butler’s Gaze.” The piece used a new UV printing technology to ensure it won’t fade in the sunlight coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows across from it.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Delicate and old art will not be put at risk by light, Govan said. The interior of Zumthor’s building is dotted with boxy, windowless galleries that Govan and Zumthor call “houses.” And like houses, the interior of galleries are being treated to color — not in the form of paint, however.

Zumthor conceived of three colors that he wanted used in the galleries, explained Diana Magaloni, senior deputy director for conservation, curatorial and exhibitions, who has been mixing the glazes and working with a team of four trained artists to apply them. The colors are a reddish black, a Renaissance ultramarine blue and a blackish burgundy that Zumthor hoped would conjure a cave-like dimness. Overall, Magaloni said, Zumthor wanted the color to look as if it were emerging from darkness.

There are 27 galleries and the colors will be divided by section: Nine on the south side are red, nine on the north side are black and the nine in the middle are blue.

The glazing technique was conceived by a friend of Zumthor’s who lives in Switzerland, and LACMA is currently the only organization to employ it, Magaloni said.

Pigments made of minerals including hematite and rocks like lapis lazuli are ground into nanoparticles and suspended in silica, resembling “melted glass,” as Magaloni describes. The glaze is then applied to the walls, a process that must be done at once in order to prevent any impression of brushstrokes, and also because the glaze hardens quickly. Once it’s dry, the team applies a second coat of glaze pigment infused with black carbon nanoparticles. The effect is dark and mottled — it looks as if the concrete has swallowed the color.

“The concrete has all this life in and of itself,” said Magaloni. “You can walk through the building and you can see that those surfaces are not really homogeneous. The material expresses itself with no artifice, and we wanted to preserve that.”

Painting the concrete would erase that life, she added.

A gallery blushing in a deep wine color, with the theme of “Leisure and Labor in the American Metropolis,” is almost ready. Work by George Bellows, James Van Der Zee, Mary Cassatt and Robert Henri adorn the walls, and there is a table ready to receive a Tiffany lamp. Govan points out that such paintings would not have been originally displayed on white walls but rather on walls of richly colored fabric.

“She’s asking you something,” Todd Gray said of his portrait of Octavia Butler.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Gray’s piece will also be in dialogue with this room, calling to it from another time and place — asking viewers to turn their gaze to history, slavery, transcendence, salvation, power and so much more.

At this moment in time, when arts institutions are grappling with the implications of the Trump administration’s claim that the Smithsonian Institution presents “divisive, race-centered ideology” and vow to monitor what other museums around the country are putting on display, Gray’s piece feels like a small bit of resistance.

“She’s asking you something,” Gray says of Butler.

The answer is yours to declare.

What would a baseball team in Los Angeles want from a retired artist and designer in New York?

Janet Bennett wasn’t sure.

Generations of Angelenos are familiar with her signature project. You probably have walked right past it. Those colorful tile mosaics that decorate the long corridors toward baggage claim in five terminals at Los Angeles International Airport? She designed them.

You might have seen them in the movies or on television: “Airplane!,” “Mad Men” and “The Graduate,” just for starters.

You might have memorized the trivia: When you passed the red tiles, you were halfway down the corridor. “Red means halfway” was shorthand for locals in the know, just like “E Ticket” or “the #19 sandwich.”

“It just says L.A. in so many ways,” said Janet Marie Smith, the Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development.

For the clubhouse walkway, Dodgers executive vice president of planning and development Janet Marie Smith and architect Brenda Levin opted for multiple shades of blue tiles.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers wanted to get in touch with Bennett because they were about to install a similar tile wall at Dodger Stadium. Smith could not find Bennett, but she reached out to someone who had liked an article about Bennett that had been posted on LinkedIn. Same last name, same spelling. Smith crossed her fingers.

Turned out to be a relative of Bennett. The Dodgers sent some sketches of their project and asked Bennett for her thoughts.

“I was a little disappointed I didn’t work the project,” Bennett said over the telephone, chuckling, “but I don’t think I could have done it at this stage.”

“Once we got tile in our head, how could you not think of the LAX walls?” said Janet Marie Smith, the Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Bennett is 96, happily living one block from Central Park. The LAX project was completed in 1961 — the year before Dodger Stadium opened.

What the Dodgers really were offering was the recognition denied to Bennett six decades ago.

“I realized they just wanted my blessing,” Bennett said. “They wanted the connection. And that was very satisfying.”

And, yes, she had some thoughts for the Dodgers. She wrote them a letter by hand, the old-fashioned way. The letter got lost in the old-fashioned mail, but Bennett’s daughter had thought to take a picture of the letter, and she sent it to the Dodgers via email.

Bennett’s advice for the colors of the tiles?

“Don’t limit it,” she wrote, “to the Dodger blue.”

On game days, Dodgers players take an elevator to the lowest level of Dodger Stadium. As they exit, they look to their right to see the Dodgers’ World Series championship trophies and most valuable player awards, to their left to see the Gold Glove awards.

When they turn toward the clubhouse, they see Cy Young and Silver Slugger and manager of the year awards on the right, rookie of the year awards and then the Dodgers’ retired numbers on the left.

“It’s meant to be uplifting and motivating, and a reminder to everyone — our players included, who take that path — of what a storied franchise this is,” Smith said.

The fans in the fanciest seats, the ones you see on television right behind home plate, can take that path too — but only until they reach the double doors, the ones with “DODGERS CLUBHOUSE” painted above them.

Pass through those doors, and you used to see a gray wall decorated with signage pulled from storage — signs from events held at Dodger Stadium long ago, and others commemorating milestone seasons. As part of the clubhouse renovations last winter, Smith and her team imagined how to freshen up that walkway.

“We wanted to try to get it out of its funk of just being a concrete wall,” she said. “And, once we got tile in our head, how could you not think of the LAX walls?”

Tile mosaic wall designs line departure halls in various LAX terminals.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers’ clubhouse features a tile wall “in the hydrotherapy area,” Smith said. The tiles there are all Dodger blue.

For the clubhouse walkway, Smith and architect Brenda Levin opted for multiple shades of blue tiles, interspersed with white tiles — a decision reinforced when they received Bennett’s suggestion to go beyond Dodger blue. The wall includes more than 714,000 individual tiles, Smith said.

“I think they did an excellent job,” Bennett said. “They got the rhythm of vertical stripes, which has a very athletic look.”

To Smith, a fierce advocate of sports venues reflecting their host cities, the tile wall reflects home.

“In many ways, that is a symbol: not just of L.A., but of ‘Welcome to L.A.’ ” she said. “That felt right to us.

“It’s not screaming at you. But, if you know, you know. We’ve always wanted that area to feel like a ‘Welcome to L.A.’ to our players.”

If you know, you know, but the players may not know. Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, said he did not know the story behind the wall until Smith explained it to him.

“It’s a great little touch,” Roberts said.

Smith said players and team executives have asked about the wall. Many of them did not know about the LAX walls, but she understood why.

“They don’t fly commercial,” she said.

If you merit an obituary in the newspaper, the first sentence generally includes your claim to fame. In 2007, The Times published an obituary with this first sentence: “Charles D. Kratka, an interior designer and graphic artist whose Modernist projects included the mosaic walls in tunnels at Los Angeles International Airport, has died.”

Said Bennett: “I just about freaked out.”

After Bennett had finished the LAX mosaics, she left town. By the time the airport unveiled them, she said, she was in Latin America. Until she saw that Times obituary, it had not occurred to her that anyone else might have gotten the credit for the LAX project.

In the obituary, the airport historian credited Kratka with the design, and so did the director of volunteers at the airport museum. In 2017, so did an official LAX document: “Completed in 1961, Charles Kratka’s mosaic murals have become iconic symbols of Los Angeles International Airport.”

At the start of the Jet Age, when airplane travel was a glamorous affair and even passengers in the cheaper seats enjoyed in-flight meals served with silverware, Bennett said the murals were designed to evoke the wonder of a cross-country trip: blue for the ocean at each end of the corridor, and in between green for the forests, and yellows, oranges and browns for farmland, prairies and deserts.

Tile mosaic wall designs line departure halls in various LAX terminals.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Bennett freely admits that Kratka was involved in the project. The city hired Pereira and Luckman as architects for the LAX expansion, and Kratka was the firm’s head of interior design.

“He was my boss,” Bennett said.

Bennett said the mosaic design was hers, although she said she did not recall whether she had chosen to use glass for the tiles.

“Everything from that point on was mine,” she said.

Bennett and her family have pushed for LAX to recognize her as the designer. Airport officials acknowledge Bennett’s participation in the project but, amid a search for records from six decades ago and without Kratka to provide his version of events, they believe a conclusive determination would be difficult. And, back in the day, credit was more commonly attributed to a firm rather than to an individual designer.

When I asked for a statement saying whom LAX currently credits with the design, an airport spokeswoman said, “LAX has no official comment.”

In 2017, Design Observer investigated and ultimately supported Bennett’s claims, citing two primary findings: one, an acclaimed designer of the same era “vividly recalls Bennett doing the murals,” and, two, Bennett installed similar tile murals for two Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations in San Francisco.

That was good enough for Smith and the Dodgers.

At LAX, there is no sign crediting anyone — not Bennett, not Kratka, not Pereira and Luckman, not anyone else — for the murals. However, the Dodgers have given Bennett her due at Dodger Stadium, on a sign directly across from their tile wall.

“This mosaic wall draws inspiration from architect Janet Bennett’s iconic mosaic murals at Los Angeles International Airport,” the text begins, “that transformed a transit space into a work of art.”

The concrete walls of the David Geffen Galleries were still bare Thursday evening. The landscaping outside was still settling in, and pockets of construction were still visible. But the minute the music poured out of the upstairs entryway, it finally hit: The new LACMA was actually here.

After five years of construction, so much debate about its scale, design and ambitions, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held its first event Thursday night inside the Peter Zumthor-designed building. A sprawling, immersive concert by composer and SoCal jazz hero Kamasi Washington called for multiple bands, each with about a dozen musicians, to play site-specific arrangements throughout the empty galleries before art has been installed. A woodwind ensemble overlooked Park La Brea through floor-to-ceiling glass; a choir stacked harmonies that floated over the span of the structure as it crossed Wilshire Boulevard.

Hundreds of VIPs and members of the media took it all in. The project has its skeptics, including how the museum’s permanent collection will function in it. But for now, museum members could slink about the echoing halls of L.A.’s newest landmark and ponder the possibilities.

Guests at the sneak peek inside the new building Thursday cross a glass-lined expanse that crosses over Wilshire Boulevard.

LACMA Director Michael Govan addresses members of the media assembled for the first public peek inside the empty building, which still needs to complete some construction details and install the art before opening, targeted for April 2026.

The design of the museum has morphed over the years, from a dark, curvaceous amoeba-like form that echoed the nearby La Brea Tar Pits to a design that retains the curves up top but shifts to rectilinear glass on the galleries level below.

The preview event Thursday featured musicians staged throughout the building.

Preview events give museum members a chance to view Zumthor’s design before art is installed. One of the lingering questions is how the concrete walls will fare given the museum’s new plan to shift from permanent collection displays to ever-rotating exhibitions — and all the rehanging of artworks that will be required.

The setting sun casts long shadows from visitors looking out toward the rooftop of Renzo Piano’s Resnick Pavilion and, off in the distance on the left, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ domed terrace.

Artist Tony Smith’s installation “Smoke” has a new home outside the David Geffen Galleries. The museum recently announced the addition of a forthcoming Jeff Koons’ sculpture, “Split-Rocker.”

When the new building opens in April 2026, LACMA has said, the ticketing process will be handled at kiosks on the ground level.

Inside another one of the galleries. Some of the architecture-circle speculation about the building has centered on the finish of the building’s concrete, inside and out.

The view from the David Geffen Galleries as it crosses Wilshire Boulevard.

Times art critic Christopher Knight, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his early analysis of the LACMA building plan, and Times music critic Mark Swed attended the preview concert event Thursday. Check back for their first impressions of the new space.