Thinking Out Of the Box

Govan has brought in new corporate sponsors and expanded the board to include such trustees as Barbra Streisand; Broad says trustee giving has tripled during Govan's tenure. Museum guards wore Magritte-style bowler hats for that exhibition and donned sunglasses for this summer's retrospective of neon artist Dan Flavin, which co-curator Govan brought to LACMA at the end of a world tour. "The Flavin exhibition was beautifully selected, installed and almost choreographed," observes artist Alexis Smith. "Its level of visual sophistication was doubly interesting because it was done not by a museum curator but by a museum director."

Change is everywhere. In the museum's ancient Greek and Roman gallery, for instance, the floor-to-ceiling windows had been walled up for 20 years. Comparing the light of Los Angeles to the light of Rome, Govan took down the wall. He also weighed in on the placement of key sculptures and, when it came to the gallery floor, encouraged curator Mary Levkoff to look at the ebony stain on the wood floor the director was having refurbished in his own home.

While he expresses particular interest in Latin America and Asia, given LACMA'S West Coast location, the museum has also recently made important acquisitions of work by such masters as 17th century painter Pietro da Cortona, early 20th century artist George Bellows and contemporary sculptor Richard Serra. Govan's notion of collecting iconic houses by such architects as R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra and Frank Gehry remains under discussion, but Govan concedes it may not be realistic to expect such big-ticket donations. He seeks to preserve them, he says, but indicates as much interest in initiating the idea as in doing it at LACMA.

Better to concentrate on the LACMA campus, a place Govan envisions as the city's town square. "If you're going to rethink the encyclopedic museum for the 21st century, Los Angeles is the place to do so," says Govan. "This is a city that speaks a hundred languages and which everybody says lacks a center. The encyclopedic museum holds something for everyone, no matter where you come from."

The Annenberg Foundation has given the museum funding to study engineering and begin design of Koons' dangling Train, according to Govan, who is already calling the artwork his town square's campanile. "What a metaphor," says LACMA trustee Lynda Resnick, "for the way the West is chugging forth into the new millennium."