The Rise and Stall of LACMA's Planned Reinvention

"The environment simply went to hell. I don't know how else to phrase it," said Walter Weisman, chairman of the museum's board, looking back on the grand fund-raising, demolition and construction project that the museum unveiled a year ago, then put on hold indefinitely earlier this month.

But the rise and stall of LACMA's planned reinvention is a story with more plot twists than that.

In interviews, Weisman, LACMA president and director Andrea Rich and other key players sketch a tense 12 months punctuated with recurring financial uncertainties as they tried to advance architect Rem Koolhaas' revolutionary idea for the museum.

"We don't have the money to have Rem go full blast into the next phase," Weisman said. If someone stepped up with $10 million to revive work on the design, he said, "that would be wonderful. But no one has."

Rich and Weisman are quick to say that the project is not exactly dead. But somebody has to head the donor line -- apparently somebody besides L.A. philanthropist Eli Broad, who tops the list of likely donors but prefers not to stand alone.

Another LACMA trustee, requesting anonymity, said, "I think [Rich and Weisman] would have OKd the expenditures for the next step if they had more optimism about the long run."

The run-up to this drama began in mid-2001, when LACMA trustees held a design competition for a museum renovation, then gave the thumbs-up to the only contestant who ignored the rules: Koolhaas of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who proposed leveling LACMA's four awkwardly arrayed buildings. In their place would rise a new museum with a plaza downstairs and the collections reorganized upstairs under a tent-like roof.

The cost estimate didn't come from Koolhaas. Each of the architects in the competition was asked to propose a $200-million renovation. Noting the escalating costs that accompany construction jobs, LACMA's leaders guessed the price might climb another $100 million. To keep operations stable, they wanted to add $100 million to LACMA's endowment (now at $77 million). Which adds up to a capital campaign for $350 million to $400 million.

To raise that, Weisman said, he and Rich first aimed to gather $300 million in pledges on paper in a "quiet phase" of 12 to 18 months. Another two to four years of public campaigning would generate the remaining $50 million to $100 million.