'It’s showtime': Los Angeles County Museum of Art celebrates major new gallery opening

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Wednesday (April 15) hosted a media preview for the David Geffen Galleries, a new building that will house the museum's permanent collection and mark one of the most significant changes in its history.

The galleries, which open to the public on April 19, feature 110,000 square feet of exhibition space and are surrounded by a 3.5-acre public park with outdoor artworks.

"Yes, it's showtime at LACMA," CEO Michael Govan told Reuters. "We've built many other buildings, but this is the culmination of 20 years of work and thinking about what museums can be."

Govan said the new galleries will help keep art in Los Angeles. "People spend their life collecting art, want their art to go to a place where it will be well cared for, but also a beautiful place," Govan said. "Almost everything here is a gift from someone and they weren't going to give their collections unless there was a facility worthy of their art. So now we have a facility worthy of their art."

-Arafat Barbakh, Matt Silverstein/Reuters