new building

We whine and purr and howl, a collective release.

About 20 of us are huddled in a patch of shade, beneath a cluster of palm trees, in a sleepy Culver City garden. Paired up, we face our partners, cup our hands behind our ears and let out loud, primal noises. And we laugh.

We’re participating in a “tuning exercise” led by the performing arts group Cantilever Collective. It’s part of a movement workshop meant to facilitate connection between individuals and help regulate our central nervous systems so as to release stress and promote a sense of overall well-being.

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Where are we, exactly? At one of Los Angeles’ newest and most robust wellness hubs — held, perhaps counterintuitively, inside the Wende Museum of the Cold War. The Culver City museum, which opened its doors in 2017, debuted its Glorya Kaufman Community Center last weekend, a 7,500-square-foot space for cultural programming and wellness activities. The three-story, modernist concrete building, which sits across the sculpture garden from the museum’s exhibition hall, was made possible with funding from the late philanthropist Glorya Kaufman, who passed away in August. Her foundation provided the lead gift toward the $17-million new building and committed $6 million toward programming.

The new community center includes a 150-seat theater inside a refurbished, century-old A-frame structure, an old MGM prop house. It will host all the expected cultural programming such as screenings, live talks and dance performances, among other events. But it will also offer yoga classes, guided meditations, sound baths, dance and movement classe, and healing writing workshops for L.A. wildfire victims, as well as herb and incense-making workshops and matcha tea-making classes.

Most notably? All of these wellness activities are free to the public. The center will also offer about 100 hours of free therapy a year, with licensed psychologists, as well as life-coaching sessions.

The modernist concrete building evokes Cold War–era architecture.

The Wende is quickly becoming “the living room of Culver City,” as visitor Lisette Palley, 74, describes it. She attends meditations at the community center, which soft-launched in January, weekly. “This place, it has an ease about it, an openness, a generosity that you don’t find everywhere you go,” Palley says.

Increasingly, museums and art galleries have been adding wellness activities to event calendars. The Hammer Museum has long held weekly mindfulness meditations on its campus, the Huntington regularly holds forest bathing and tai chi workshops and the J. Paul Getty Museum’s education department offers a “Wellness Day for Educators” at the Getty Center that includes yoga, a sound bath and guided mindfulness — to name a few. But typically, such wellness events are the programming exception at museums, and often they’re in conversation with an exhibition on view. The Glorya Kaufman Community Center at the Wende will host wellness activities nearly every day of the week, with “Wellness Wednesdays” being especially robust.

“There’s an affordability crisis in this country right now, and the things we’re providing are human rights,” says Wende founder and executive director Justin Jampol. “This museum — art — has always been sustenance for your soul. Now it’s sustenance for your mind and body. We realize we can’t inspire people if they’re hungry or sick. We have to tend to the whole person.”

Earlier in the day, about 50 visitors enjoyed a mindfulness meditation in the A-frame theater led by Christiane Wolf, a former physician turned meditation teacher. Wolfe encouraged the crowd to “just be … lean on the strength of community.”

Light bites are served in the courtyard. Soon, the center will debut its new Konsum Cafe.

Afterward, guests mingled in the courtyard over borscht and Russian tea made from fermented fireweed, honey and pine bud, among other offerings. A soon-to-debut Konsum Cafe will serve freshly baked bread from Clark Street, specialty coffees and teas, and a rotating menu of homemade soups from regions around the world that relate to its exhibition programming (first up: borscht, Hungarian goulash and Vietnamese pho). All of the food and drink in the cafe will also be free.

“We’re hardwired to come together as communities, and if we’re sharing food, it’s very regulating for our nervous systems,” Wolf says. “It creates a sense of safety.”

Early on, there were some concerns that people would balk at a Cold War history museum entering the wellness space. But Jampol says it actually makes sense paired with the collection.

“This place, it’s become this subversive museum,” he says. “First, because of the collections — they’re so much about dissonant movements and revolutions — and because it documents and celebrates the human spirit. Even in the face of totalitarian authority and oppression and restrictions, the human spirit has a way of fighting back; the human spirit always finds a way.”

Considering the federal government’s slashing of funding for the arts and public health programs in U.S., the community center is even more relevant now, Jampol says.

A portrait of the late Glorya Kaufman by artist Boris Vansier hangs inside the center.

“The things that get cut first are the things people need most: self-care, eating right, having opportunities for art and culture, going to the theater — those are stress relievers,” he says. “So the idea is to try and address that here in our own small way.”

Kaufman, who died at 95, was a transformative dance world philanthropist in L.A. She established the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, as well as the Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center. At the Wende, she did more than just fund the new center — it was her idea in the first place. She regularly attended music programs and dance events at the Wende, starting not long after its opening. Back then, museum staffers would move chairs and art around to make space for public events. One day in 2019, Kaufman told Jampol, “This is ridiculous. You can’t have heads poking around a statue; this is super weird,” he recalls. They began hatching plans to create a new space for events.

Kaufman and Jampol felt the COVID pandemic only heightened the need for health and wellness programming. The new building broke ground in 2022, designed by AUX Architecture (which designed the Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center at Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services). Other lead donors include the Ahmanson Foundation, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Rose Hills Foundation. Culver City donated the plot of land. Wellness activities debuted in the nearby sculpture garden even as construction was underway.

Visitors weren’t deterred by the construction cacophony. Event attendance has more than doubled since last year, Jampol says: about 15,000 program attendees in 2024 compared with about 32,000 so far in 2025.

The theater, with its restored slow-growth Douglas fir, is the crown jewel of the new building. It has a retractable seating system so it can morph into a space with room for a dance floor or sound baths. Practitioners can select the type of event they’ll be leading on a digital keypad and the room will automatically reconfigure itself. Hit “screening” and the lights dim in the audience and a screen drops down, for example. Select “dance hall” and disco lights swirl around the room.

A concrete fountain in the sculpture garden.

On a recent Wellness Wednesday, free snacks included borscht and bread.

Guests mingle in the Wende’s sculpture garden, a space for community connection.

The Wende’s wellness vision also includes a 4,000-square-foot Zen-inspired mediation garden, created by designer Michael Boyd, a scholar of postwar gardens and Midcentury Modern architecture. It features a decomposed granite ground surface studded with river stones and succulents, and is filled with the sounds of crickets and a rushing stream, digitally piped in. The museum is also turning about 200 feet of a median strip along Culver Boulevard into an “herb and incense garden” that will serve the cafe and upcoming incense-making workshops.

Much of the programming will be internally curated and the museum will pay its practitioners (those events will still be free to the public). Other programming will be “community curated.” Meaning, the Wende will make its center available, for free, to any wellness practitioner in L.A. who wants to hold an event there. The only caveat? Their event must be free to the public.

Kaufman may not be able to attend any of these events, but her presence is deeply felt. A portrait of the late philanthropist, by Russian-born, Swiss artist Boris Vansier, hangs by the entrance to the theater.

Participants enjoy a movement workshop with Cantilever Collective at the new Glorya Kaufman Community Center.

Surveying the new building, as Wellness Wednesday attendees stream in and out of it, Jampol appears certain of the museum’s mission and role in the city.

“It’s about these moments of joy and happiness and togetherness amidst awfulness,” he says. “Having these kinds of oases in our lives is so important. There’s a certain tranquility in being in beautiful spaces and being present and being in community with one another. In a way, that is the ultimate purpose of museums.”

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.

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.