Readers React: What’s inside LACMA matters more than the new building

To the editor: What a splendid tribute you paid to the role that museums play in our community. But surely that role is a lot more than merely providing the brick, mortar, glass and jobs associated with a new $125-million shell for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s treasures and a destination for school kids freed from another day in the classroom. (“Why L.A. taxpayers should pay $125 million toward an edgy new building at LACMA,” Editorial, Nov. 3)

Here’s a shout-out for individual collectors who continue to preserve and protect the artifacts that fill the shelves and line the walls of museums. Without collectors, LACMA’s curators, tourists and visitors could end up admiring a space devoid of the stuff that provides museums with what they are meant to do: display the best examples of products societies produce for the enlightenment and enjoyment of their own and future generations.

Let’s give collectors the credit they deserve for the passion they exhibit.

Godfrey Harris, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Art may be form without function, but that’s not true of architecture. And, while the extravagances of modern structures may satisfy the egos of their sponsors, they don’t enhance the basic functionality of the buildings themselves.

Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown L.A. looks like the aftermath of a 9.0 quake (repeated in Bilbao and Seattle). Peter Zumthor’s ode to the tar pits will put museum patrons in perpetual shade, and LACMA will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, created only temporary construction jobs and added more tourists (and congestion) without adding a single work of art to the collection.

Just as concertgoers arrive at Disney Hall to hear the performers, museum attendees expect to see the art. The buildings they’re in scarcely make the music sweeter or the art more beautiful.

Peter Altschuler, Santa Monica

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To the editor: There’s an aesthetic logjam happening at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

No doubt, Zumthor (LACMA), Renzo Piano (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures) and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (Petersen Automotive Museum) each gave careful consideration to the existing landscape when crafting their individual designs. But should Los Angeles County residents cross our fingers and hope 10 years from now that we’re not stuck with three city blocks’ worth of dramatic buildings competing for attention?

Let’s take a breath and build a cityscape that’s timeless so the next generation isn’t clamoring to tear down buildings “not so historically significant that they should be preserved at all costs.”

Michael Meilan, West Hollywood

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