Sandow Birk

 LACMA Works 2022 - “The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire”

A series of drawings and paintings inspired by Ed Ruscha’s iconic painting “The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire” from 1966.

I had seen this painting at the Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, during my months as Artist in Residence there in 2007. I have always loved Ruscha’s work for being simple, insightful, thought-provoking, and very “Los Angeles”, and that painting in particular has always struck me as being a poignant commentary on the state of LACMA and the L.A. art scene itself. Now, the buildings in Ruscha’s painting - the original campus designed by William Pereira - have been razed to make way for the new, $600 million dollar redesign by Peter Zumthor (working in collaboration with architectural firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill). With all the controversy surrounding the process and the architecture and the funding, the new Metro station being built, and general discussions about who and what are represented in major museums and institutions, it seems a good time to revisit both the original painting and the state of LACMA itself.