When Michael Govan joined the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as director in 2006, he had a vision: to create an arts and culture town square, in sprawling and diffuse Los Angeles, along museum-heavy Miracle Mile. He had a 340-ton boulder hauled from a Riverside-area quarry to the Wilshire Boulevard museum in 2012 for a monumental sculpture, by Michael Heizer, to mark his LACMA campus. The artwork, “Levitated Mass,” is a beacon of sorts, visible from the street.

Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Civic Center, a collection that includes a groundbreaking mayor, a housing advocate, a giver of food and others who are the backbone of Los Angeles. Come back each Sunday for another installment.

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A specialized “transporter,” nearly three freeway lanes wide, carried the two-story-high boulder, which was shrink-wrapped and illuminated with string lights, very slowly over 11 nights — it traveled 5 miles per hour, through four counties and 22 cities, not unlike an evolving, mobile performance art piece. It drew crowds into the hundreds, with spectators wandering onto their porches or front lawns, in their pajamas in the middle of the night, as the spectacle inched toward the museum.

It was equally a feat of transportation engineering and a logistical nightmare (traffic lights and power lines were reconfigured). But the project drew global marketing for the museum, with international TV crews covering it. And it was a harbinger of things to come: Change was on the horizon at LACMA. And, like Govan’s monolith, it was going to be big.

Govan — famously camera-ready, with a slender frame and seemingly elastic smile — has since cemented himself as one of the city’s most influential, if not divisive, arts leaders. LACMA’s $750-million new building — now about 80% complete and targeting a late 2024 completion — is one of the highest-profile new museum projects globally. And it’s rising amid a Los Angeles museum boom and commercial gallery expansion; the city now hosts one of the most active art scenes in the world. And LACMA is at the center of that activity.

But Govan’s new museum building has also been a lightning rod for controversy. The cost — $125 million of which is coming from Los Angeles County taxpayers — has been an especially heated issue. Govan insists the project’s price tag has not risen despite breaking ground during the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with subsequent labor challenges and supply-chain issues, problems that slowed other museum construction projects such as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Not to mention inflation.

LACMA holds that construction costs were contractually “locked in” as of August 2020 and that additional costs are being covered by a contingency budget, explaining why, the museum said, the overall cost hasn’t risen.

A project of this magnitude is “very rare because of its scope and its ambition,” said Christine Anagnos, executive director of the New York-based Assn. of Art Museum Directors. “You don’t see a lot of museum buildings come up from scratch — it shows real dedication to the city. Michael has been tenacious in reaching the goal he set of reimagining what LACMA will be.”

To say that there are varying opinions about Govan’s vision for what LACMA “will be,” however, is an understatement.

Architectural preservationists still mourn that Govan razed four longtime LACMA buildings to make way for the Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries: William L. Pereira’s 1965 Leo S. Bing Center, his 1960 Hammer and Ahmanson buildings and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates’ 1980s Art of the Americas building. And the new building’s design — an amorphous-looking, raised, single-story exhibition hall straddling Wilshire — has been hotly debated. Some see the modernist building as innovative from a design front while others liken it to a freeway overpass. But at the heart of the controversy lies the fact that the new building will be smaller, featuring a total of 110,000 square feet of gallery space instead of the combined, roughly 120,000 square feet of the four demolished buildings. Times critic Christopher Knight dubbed it “The Incredible Shrinking Museum.”

Govan’s vision for the new LACMA — a nonhierarchical, decentralized “21st century museum” that is flexible and accessible to everyone — is an honorable one. Some art world insiders have called him “visionary” and “ahead of his time.” But others fear the new building will be the downfall of the largest art museum in the West. LACMA’s encyclopedic collection has, for more than 60 years, presented global art history across thousands of years that schoolchildren, say, could find easily and visit regularly; the new LACMA will feature art from the museum’s permanent collections in rotating, cross-departmental special exhibitions.

The Ahmanson Foundation, LACMA’s largest donor of European Old Master paintings and sculptures, so disagreed with Govan’s reformatting plans, which don’t include permanent displays of signature works, that it ended its five-decade partnership with the museum in 2020.

“We all know the ramifications of this,” said architecture writer and longtime LACMA critic Greg Goldin. “We’re never gonna see the great majority of art in the museum’s encyclopedic collection. Which has meaning. It has meaning because it’s a repository of every aspect of global culture. And how you approach that, curatorially, is profoundly impacted by what the building is capable of and if the building is large enough to dig into those collections. But the new building, it’s a museum in storage, and will remain permanently in storage — and with enormous debt.”

“It’s hard, if not impossible, to see this new project as a win,” Rob Hollman, executive director of the advocacy group Save LACMA, adds, referring to the museum’s $619 million in debt and about $128 million in other liabilities — a total of about $747 million, according to its most recent 990 tax filing.

Others vehemently disagree.

Stephan Jost, director of the Art Gallery of Ontario — which broke ground in May on a new, $73-million modern and contemporary art wing — calls Govan’s approach to the new LACMA building “genius.”

“He’s hired an architect whose buildings exude permanence. They’re elemental, huge solid blocks of granite. They feel like they’ll be around in 1,000 years — in a city that’s known for tearing things down,” Jost said. “And the nonhierarchical structure — that nothing is fixed, it’s all flexible — means L.A. County will be the most responsive to art. There’s no bias, no white supremacy built in. L.A. County will be in sync with the people of today. No one’s going to remember the budget in 10 years!”

Govan has spoken of satellite locations to feature additional art from the collections and to widen the museum’s geographic reach, including in South Los Angeles. And LACMA has forged community partnerships throughout L.A. County to display art from its collections, such as at Charles White Elementary School. But no dedicated satellite locations have materialized yet. The museum said that one, at South L.A.’s Magic Johnson Park, in collaboration with L.A. County, is in the “early stages of planning.”

Govan, 60, came to LACMA from New York’s Dia Art Foundation, where he served as director from 1994 to 2006; before that he spent six years as deputy director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. But the new LACMA building will be his legacy — in Los Angeles and in the art world. As such, Govan has ensured that LACMA has grown, in many ways, under his leadership.

Even as LACMA’s overall exhibition space shrinks with the new Zumthor building, the museum’s campus has expanded — and its visitorship has risen — during Govan’s tenure. He debuted the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008 (planned before his arrival) and spearheaded the debut of the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion for temporary exhibitions in 2010. In addition to “Levitated Mass,” Govan commissioned several large-scale works for the museum’s campus, including Chris Burden’s now-iconic “Urban Light” (2008), Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Shafted)” (2008) and Robert Irwin’s “Primal Palm Garden” (2010).

During Govan’s tenure, LACMA has grown its permanent collection too, through donations and purchases, by more than 44,000 works. And annual attendance has nearly doubled from about 600,000 to an average of more than 1 million.

Govan is also a savvy, charismatic fundraiser. In August 2023, the museum announced that it had surpassed its $750-million capital campaign goal for the new building — a chunk of those funds acquired during the uncertain times of the pandemic. The campaign now stands at more than $779 million. Govan has also expanded the museum board by 14 members since 2020, bringing in $353 million in board contributions to date.

“He’s going to get this done,” said art world observer Paul Schimmel, formerly chief curator of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “And it will put not just him, but Los Angeles on the map. Whether some people like the building or not.”

Govan’s new museum, a county museum, will belong to the public. It will change the face of Los Angeles. For better or worse? That remains to be seen. By the end of this year, we might have a clearer idea.

Review: ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ follows a year in the life of singer Celine Dion as she deals with Stiff Person Syndrome. This documentary is a heart-wrenching view where we are exposed to the singer’s struggle with the neurological disorder that has taken away her voice, leaving her feeling helpless. By the end of the documentary, viewers can’t help but feel sympathy for the Canadian singer, who has 27 albums to her credit, selling over 250 million records. While the documentary is engaging, it could have benefited from more perspectives. Apart from Celine Dion, the only other voices heard are those of her sons, Eddy and Nelson, and her sports therapist. Including more voices would have added a richer dimension to the film.

The documentary celebrates Celine Dion’s illustrious career but focuses primarily on the aftermath of her diagnosis with Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare neurological condition. When she says, “Music, I miss a lot, but also people,” her sense of helplessness is palpable. Featuring never-before-seen footage of her stage performances, family albums, a tour of her mansion, and intimate moments with family and staff, ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ encapsulates everything a documentary should. The film also captures a poignant moment: her having a seizure and the subsequent treatment. It’s a ten-minute moving sequence that encapsulates what the singer is currently enduring. She speaks passionately about her extensive shoe collection, while the visuals of her various dresses and her children’s vast toy collection are truly eye-popping. Be sure to catch the hilarious moment when she imitates Australian singer Sia during her appearance on The Jimmy Fallon Show.

The documentary successfully highlights the humane side of Celine Dion when she emphasizes the importance of teamwork, saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.” This sentiment is evident in the scene where she and her sons record a get-well-soon message for one of their household staff. Another touching moment shows Celine vacuuming her house, interspersed with a joint performance with Diana King, which is sure to bring tears to viewers’ eyes. The film evokes sadness over the cruel fate she has endured, yet it also showcases her indomitable spirit. She candidly admits that when her voice failed her, she sometimes blamed the microphone during concerts, revealing her vulnerability.

This documentary is a gut-wrenching account of a music superstar who became a shadow of her former self due to a neurological disorder. “My voice was always the conductor of my whole life,” she reflects, adding that she had to rely on multiple Valium pills just to get through her performances. A particularly poignant moment occurs when she visits the recording studio for the first time in three years and sings a song, channelling all her pain and ensuring it sounds perfect, showcasing her resilience. ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ is a moving documentary that will be tough for die-hard fans of the singer superstar to watch without tears. More than that, it tells the story of a woman who lives by the mantra, “If I can’t run, I will walk. If I can’t walk, I will crawl. But I won’t stop.”

The Los Angeles art world is still reeling — eight months after the fact — from the news that Ann Philbin, longtime director of the Hammer Museum at UCLA, is retiring at the end of this year. Philbin — who has steered the museum for 25 years — leaves a transformative legacy.

When Philbin, 72, took the reins in 1999, the Hammer was a regional university museum with fewer than 50 full-time employees and a $6-million annual operating budget. It’s now a globally recognized destination for contemporary art with more than 100 full-time employees, a $30-million annual budget and star-studded annual fundraising galas. It’s known for its strong point of view, a risk-taking and feminist-minded institution committed to supporting underrepresented artists of all stripes.

Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Civic Center, a collection that includes a groundbreaking mayor, a housing advocate, a giver of food and others who are the backbone of Los Angeles. Come back each Sunday for another installment.

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The museum’s “Made in L.A.” biennial, which presented its sixth iteration in October, has become a staple of the West Coast art scene. Along with the Hammer Projects series, it has shined an international spotlight on the city as a leading art hub, illuminating new experimental artists working across painting, sculpture, installation, multimedia, performance and other mediums.

In March 2023, the Hammer debuted a sweeping expansion and renovation project — Philbin’s longtime vision — that had been two decades in the making and cost $90 million. A consummate fundraiser, Philbin successfully realized the $180-million capital campaign for the project, designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture. The Hammer now has 60% more gallery space, an outdoor sculpture terrace and a more visible entrance on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards. That’s after having debuted renovated third-floor galleries in 2017, a new courtyard performance space in 2018, a new restaurant in 2021 and a works-on-paper gallery and study room for its Grunwald Center Collection in 2022 — among other things.

Today, nearly every major museum in the L.A. area is run by a woman. There’s Johanna Burton at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Joanne Heyler at the Broad, Sandra Jackson–Dumont at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Kathleen Fleming at the Getty Foundation, Jacqueline Stewart at the Academy Museum, Heidi Zuckerman at the Orange County Museum of Art, Cameron Shaw at the California African American Museum and Lori Bettison-Varga at the Natural History Museum.

But two decades ago, Philbin ran the Hammer in a male-dominated art world. It’s impossible to overstate Philbin’s influence on the museum — and the city. She and the Hammer are one.