Image: Courtesy Tom Wiscombe Architecture
Discover More
What Defines the 21st Century Museum?
MOCA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth on the Evolution of the Museum
Why is Citizen Science Important?
1 of 13
next
The parallel revitalizations of the Los Angeles art and architecture worlds, and the downtown area in particular, overlap in a great many exciting and controversial ways. This is understandable, given how commercial interests frequently undermine the very presence of the artists and bohemian outposts that make a place attractive in the first place. Now a new cultural institution in the heart of DTLA's historic core, the Main Museum of Los Angeles Art, is poised to bring such diverging interests together.
The completed museum, scheduled to open in 2020, will occupy all or part of three historic buildings on Main and 4th Streets in downtown - the Farmers and Merchants Bank (which will house a gastro-destination restaurant), the Hellman Building (whose street level and lower vaults and engine rooms will be video and exhibition spaces with some rather epic architectural flourishes), and finally the Bankhouse Garage (whose roof will become a sculpture garden, amphitheater, and caf ). What they are calling Beta Main is located in a rather grand shabby chic 100-plus-year-old entrance hall that will later become the Main's front door. In the meantime it will host their first pair of short exhibitions - beginning on Sunday, October 30 with a 10-day performance residency by feminist social practice artists Andrea Bowers and Suzanne Lacy. The Main is another in the trend of boutique art museums - but as its founder, architect, art collector, and real estate developer Tom Gilmore, and its director, curator, public programming veteran, and L.A. history buff Allison Agsten explained in a recent interview with Artbound, the Main truly is like no other museum in town.
Photo: Elon Schoenholz
--
--
First, there's the matter of its almost archeological adaptive reuse architectural approach. Gilmore's development company is known for its commitment to preserving the history of the structures they work with. The Main is part restoration, part re-imagination. It's a way to both honor and interpret these buildings, not just to knock them down and start from nothing. And the architecture alone really is its own reward - with lofty tiled and columned spaces, and subterranean surprises like old-timey wheel-locked bank vaults, brick walls and Rube Goldberg-like engineering gauges, dials and piping, vertiginous catwalks and turbine halls straight out of a Fritz Lang fantasy.
Second, there's the matter of its founding, funding, and curatorial structure. I'm the primary initial benefactor, explains Gilmore, but this is not the Broad. I'm not a fan of naming buildings after yourself. This isn't my museum - it's the Main Museum. When you see the Broad you see Eli's taste in art. When you see the Main it may have nothing to do with my own artistic sensibility. It's designed to be autonomous, to be flexible in how it can to speak to this evolving time and place. It is its own animal, with a template that gets added onto and that will morph over time. It goes way beyond just me.
Image: Courtesy Tom Wiscombe Architecture
That's where the role of its director, Agsten, becomes so paramount. In her previous post as curator of public engagement at the Hammer Museum, and indeed throughout her career, Agsten has been particularly interested in social practice and avant-garde forms of performance art, especially intimate, experiential, immersive and site-responsive formats - making her a well-suited leader for Gilmore's project to explore and celebrate the deep neighborhood history of working artists, while at the same time expanding that conversation to include other kinds of local history, innovations in real-time, ongoing support of the present-day L.A. artist community, and contextualize it all in the wider global cultural dialogue about art's role in civic life. The fact that in contrast to the Broad, which opened with its permanent collection, the Main is opening with a performance piece in a transitional space, immediately followed by an ad hoc locals-only gallery installation, is a gesture specifically meant to set this tone.
It's clear Agsten's influence is rubbing off on Gilmore, when he describes the Main's curatorial approach as a way to redefine what content can be. People can have a myopic focus on the object, and that's a false narrative. Process is also content. This resonates with certain language around ideas like Constantin Brancusi's architecture is inhabited sculpture and its containment of public space as expressive of cultural engagement. The performance engages the process right out of the box, Gilmore continues, and the space is a fundamental component of their performance. They've really been embracing the undone-ness of the place, seeing building it as an act they can help undertake as part of their presence. Agsten points out that Lacy and Bowers specifically operate in the context of endeavor and malleable use, deconstructing ideas about labor through the visible doing of non-art actions. They love the space. I think it hearkens back to the really raw places where they used to stage their works, many of which were in this part of town.
Photo: Courtesy of the Main Museum
During the opening, the artists will build a wall in the space to begin the process of sequestering themselves and to underscore how raw the space is, applying their own creative process to its architecture. This is just the kind of thing that's been getting Gilmore so personally inspired. The anthropological nature of the architecture history here through the years is evolving, but this is what m
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Image: Courtesy Tom Wiscombe Architecture 
