In addition, the Met’s refurbished Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which is set to open this month, now presents Africa, the Ancient Americas and Oceania as three distinct areas, once grouped together under “primitive.” And the design for its new wing for Modern and contemporary art by the Mexican architect Frida Escobeto, unveiled in December, will emphasize the links between contemporary and historical works, and those from different regions, disciplines and civilizations.
At LACMA, Govan asked the curators to free themselves from conventional categories and forge new connections. “There is this whole false idea we’ve grown up with in our museum world that there is an ‘art history’ singular,” Govan said. “That’s why things get left out, because it all has to support a story.
“This,” he added of LACMA’s new building, “was specifically designed to disrupt that possibility.”
Zumthor’s new curvilinear structure will situate the art on one level, conveying the lack of a hierarchy among the disciplines.
As an overarching theme and “kind of muse,” Lehmbeck said, the curators will highlight the idea of oceans, with art related to the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. “It’s sort of loosely geographical,” she added, “where you have inherently baked into it these areas of crossings, connections, diasporas.”
Govan was excited by that notion. “Culture is almost always organized by land masses and by longitudes,” he said. “All of the 19th century was about categorization,” while this concept, he added, “was around the opposite: migration, whether it was forced by slavery or through commerce. It was all about exchange.”
