I’ve never been more confused as to how I felt about a museum than the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA. Housed in an undulating glass-and-concrete structure that straddles Wilshire Boulevard, it’s a snazzy and slick addition to the jumbled collection of buildings that make up this popular museum complex. But as I walked its halls of floor-to-ceiling windows and dark gray concrete, I was reminded of that now-legendary Wall Street Journal interview with Aretha Franklin.
It’s sort of a standard series of questions one might ask a giant of one generation about the next. The interviewer throws out some names—Adele, Alicia Keys, Whitney Houston—and Aretha has positive things to say. When asked about Taylor Swift, though, Aretha replies: “Okaaaaay … Great gowns, beautiful gowns.” And nothing else. In just five theoretically complimentary words, the Queen of Soul rendered Swift to mere superficiality.
Walking the Geffen Galleries, many parts of it are undeniably beautiful. The contrast of religious paintings from viceroyal Mexico or Impressionist landscapes on the raw concrete is fetching. There’s a reason that art hung on concrete has yet to go out of style in the homes of the uber-wealthy. Indeed, the building feels like a Malibu compound was dropped in the middle of Los Angeles.
But as photo-ready as many of the spaces were, the experience felt lightweight. It did not, to keep with the Aretha metaphor, sing. That a museum must have something to say is probably a reductive requirement, but the Gallery did not seem to try to say anything other than that it was pretty and expensive.
Much like a gown.
Why I’m merely confused, though, and not downright hostile, is that this was intentional. “A revolutionary curatorial approach” is how LACMA itself describes the layout in this Peter Zumthor-designed edifice. Across one floor, works from antiquity on through the 20th century are found interspersed. Not only does there appear to be little traditional rhyme or reason to how things are laid out, but there’s no obvious way to explore it. “No hierarchical layout,” is how the museum talks about it, and instead expects visitors to just wander through the various spaces. We often found ourselves turned around, doubling back, querying each other with “Wait, didn’t we just see this room? Let’s go left this time!”
Why do this? The aim was to create something contemplative, something that allowed visitors to draw connections between works of art without the heavy guiding hand of curators.
In some ways, it was successful. We did flit from work to work, meandering for an hour or so. And it was a museum experience that was very different from most other major museums. I have spent the two weeks since going struggling to assess it. That struggle may prove their very point.
The problem is that despite its lofty ambitions of transcending categorization and traditional didactic methods, it ended up coming across as arbitrary and superficial. As if, confronted with a world of growing illiteracy, shortened attention spans, and a proclivity for things that will look aesthetic in a feed, the museum chose vibes. Like it buys into the worst (and untrue) stereotypes about LA.
I will, however, undoubtedly be back.
A few final notes:
The Bacon studies of Lucien Freud are unviewable because of the light reflecting from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Remarkable for a $750 million project
The outer halls with the glass cabinets came across as if somebody forgot them out there
Walking up the outer stairs into the entrance is strange. It’s empty, and not in a *gasp* empty kind of way. Just odd negative space.
Somebody much smarter and more eloquent than me should use this museum to write a thought-provoking piece about what the purpose of a museum is in the 21st century
I worry that this gallery will prove to be a forgettable iteration of the last decade’s architectural tendencies and thus be wastefully torn down like the building it replaced
Maybe I should come up with a tagline under which to file the constant stream of stories of airlines cutting benefits we’ve all gotten used to. The latest? KLM is cutting free wine, beer, and cheese sandwiches on its European flights in economy. It’s also limiting its shortest flights to just water and a stroopwafel–no tea or coffee.
Ha, ha, ha. While the EU won’t admit the rollout of the EES has been a disaster (despite more reporting showing that wait times have doubled at certain major airports), the launch date for the next step, the ETIAS travel permit, has been removed from the official page.
Apparently the New York Times keeps turning to the same TikTok high-end concierge for its stories about rich travelers, and folks are awfully skeptical she’s the real deal.
Aman has given its side of the story in that kerfuffle over an influencer being locked out of the new Mexico property, and I’ll be honest, nobody is looking great.
Aidan McLaughlin@aidan_mclau
he’s right
roon @tszzl
whenever i visit paris I have whatever the opposite of Paris syndrome is. it was shocking to me that such a place could exist and not be the most important city in the world and not incessantly talked about
2:30 PM · Aug 11, 2026 · 676K Views
39 Replies · 208 Reposts · 5.87K Likes
The day I become blasé about visiting Paris is the day I should have my passport taken from me and be forced to pay a tithe into a fund for people who have never gotten to travel. A Paris trip is always special. That said, I have little desire to move back there!
Bourbon Steak in the Four Seasons DC is reopening as Bourbon Lounge, which wouldn’t be international news except it’s the spot Ina Garten said had the best hamburger she’s ever had and that I subsequently checked out and was very disappointed by.
Another strike against the cult of Delta. The airline is now sixth—yes, sixth!—in rankings nationally for canceled flights so far this year, falling behind even Frontier.
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Air France closed the sauna in its CDG lounge because people were misbehaving in there.
A lot of noteworthy details in the Wall Street Journal interview with the CEO of Booking.com. What stood out to me, though, is how Pollyanna so many execs sound about AI. Take, for instance, his claim that the company has internal data showing people prefer AI agents over human ones. That would be unique in the survey data on the subject, as what studies show is that people like AI for quick, simple tasks, but anything complicated they consistently want to talk to a human. Then there are the ways in which he says AI is changing the game. His example? Helping his family figure out him and his wife in business class and his kids in economy for an international flight. Not exactly groundbreaking … Almost certainly not worth the investment going into it. Not to mention the studies showing AI agents direct consumers to booking options that get the website higher referral fees.
Remember all the crowing about FIFA having been a success? Well, the numbers are in and international tourism for July to the U.S. was down 3% from the year prior.
Are we really doing a story in a major newspaper in the era of overtourism promoting Versailles, Pena Palace, and Neuschwanstein?! (You can guess the author.)
I kind of hate-love this purple crystal sauna on a lake in Sweden!
When I visited Greece for the first time more than a decade ago, my boyfriend insisted that I wouldn’t get seasick because the Med there doesn’t get rough. Since he’d been many times before, I didn’t fight it even though it didn’t make sense to me. Fast forward to our trip and he’s holding a barf bag on a ferry during an island crossing. Now the Wall Street Journal is out with a story about the harsh realities of those island ferries in which I learned that some people call them the “Vomit Comet.”
Why are there so many jellyfish?! Everything you might want to know!
I used to travel alone a lot for work. For a while I loved a lot of things about it–the freedom, the ability to set my own schedule, the bed to myself, etc. I didn’t mind dining alone as I love reading a book at dinner. What eventually got to me was looking at or doing incredible things and wishing I had somebody to turn to, to hit on the shoulder, and say, “Isn’t this incredible?!” Props to Fodors and Ken Budd for capturing the downsides of solo travel.
Sweetgreen is opening its first drive-thru location on the East Coast
Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party has returned to the Phllips
Seoul just became the world’s busiest international airport
Blade flights are now bookable using BILT cash
Derek Jeter is investing in a hotel-condo company focused on college towns
Delta adds a Paris route from Austin
Mexico doubles its cruise fee, with more increases planned for the next couple of years
Visitors are being asked to avoid the Big Sur area altogether due to wildfires
United has been cleared to install privacy doors in Polaris
Heatherwick Studios unveiled a scaled-down new plan for Louisville waterfront
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