The Main Museum of Los Angeles Building, Architect,Downtown LA Architecture Photos
The Main Museum of Los Angeles Art
Californian Building in Old Bank District, LA, USA – design by Tom Wiscombe Architecture
Jun 16, 2017
The Main Museum of Los Angeles
The Main Museum of Los Angeles Art
Design: Tom Wiscombe Architecture
The Main Museum of Los Angeles Art is a non-profit contemporary art museum conceived of by visionary developer Tom Gilmore and located in the heart of the Old Bank District of Downtown Los Angeles. Capitalizing on the tension between historical and contemporary architecture, the project is part adaptive re-use and part new construction. It is devoted to engage the public with the most important ideas of our time through the art of Los Angeles.
The project is located beneath, within, and on top of the historical Farmers & Merchants Bank, the Hellman Building, and the Bankhouse Garage at 4th and Main Street. The museum is a three-dimensional space that weaves through these buildings, inhabiting their hidden recesses and forgotten spaces. It is an unorthodox museum form that withdraws from iconicity and creates an interior world, which occasionally reveals itself to the outside world. Rather than the traditional presentation and preservation of a collection in an exclusive environment, the museum embeds art deep into the space and life of the city.

A sequence of architectural objects draws visitors through the space. Objects penetrate through floors,...