Genesis and LACMA Announce New Multi-Year Arts Collaboration

Genesis and LACMA announce a multi-year arts partnership featuring public talks and global initiatives, offering readers a clear overview.

Genesis is deepening its presence in the global art world with a new multi-year partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the largest art museum in the western United States. The agreement extends the Genesis Art Initiatives and builds on earlier collaborations with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Tate Modern in London.

At the heart of this new chapter is the public program The Genesis Talks. The series, moderated by LACMA’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan, brings together artists, architects, philanthropists, and cultural leaders to explore how creativity, vision, and collaboration are reshaping our relationship with art, space, and the urban environment. The institutions emphasize that the conversations will address not only individual projects but also the role of the museum as a vibrant community hub.

The first season has already taken shape. On 4 December 2025, Jeff Koons will join Michael Govan at the museum to discuss his monumental sculpture Split-Rocker (2000), adorned with living plants and flowers, and to reflect on how large-scale works can activate public space and transform the viewing experience. On 16 January 2026, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford will take the stage to talk about the museum as a “vibrant community hub” and about how institutions can support dialogue, creativity, and connection across the city.

In spring, the focus will move to LACMA’s own architecture. In April 2026, ahead of the official opening of the new David Geffen Galleries, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor will appear in The Genesis Talks. A dedicated LACMA announcement has already set the date for 22 April 2026, from 7 to 9 pm, at the East West Bank Plaza, and has confirmed the format: a ticketed public event priced at 10 dollars, or 8 dollars for museum members. The conversation will centre on light, space, and the ways architecture shapes the museum experience.

The partnership between Genesis and LACMA goes well beyond the talk series. The brand will support a named Genesis Gallery within the new David Geffen Galleries and will serve as presenting sponsor of the opening gala in April 2026. In this way, Genesis becomes embedded not only in LACMA’s programming but also in its spatial transformation, from public discussions to a dedicated gallery inside the new building.

The David Geffen Galleries are among the most discussed architectural projects in the museum world in recent years. Designed by Peter Zumthor in collaboration with SOM, the building is a raised concrete-and-glass structure that stretches across Wilshire Boulevard and deliberately avoids a conventional front or back. The project has been more than a decade in the making, and its overall cost is reported at around 720 million dollars, with some critics citing higher figures. Supporters see an opportunity to rethink the display of the collection, while others focus on the reduced gallery area and the price tag, but the museum presents the Geffen Galleries as the start of a “new chapter” in its history.

The curatorial model of the new building is based on a move away from strictly encyclopaedic divisions by geography and period. Instead, LACMA plans to create more flexible, cross-cutting narratives that bring together works from different regions and eras in shared spaces. Panoramic windows open views onto Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits, and neighbouring museums, underlining the connection between the collection and the city. In this context, Genesis’s support, including the Genesis Gallery and the opening gala sponsorship, becomes part of a broader reset of the museum campus.

The new agreement also follows the trajectory set by Hyundai Motor’s decade-long partnership with LACMA, which focused on the Art + Technology Lab and on long-term projects exploring the relationship between art and technology. Genesis, part of Hyundai Motor Group, is now building its own line of collaborations, from facade commissions at The Met to a major exhibition at Tate Modern and public programs in Los Angeles.

In New York, Genesis Art Initiatives supports The Genesis Facade Commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The current project is Jeffrey Gibson’s installation The Animal That Therefore I Am, a group of four large-scale bronze animal figures installed in the niches of the museum’s main façade. On view from September 2025 to 9 June 2026, the work draws on the writing of Jacques Derrida and addresses themes of coexistence, urban environments, and Indigenous heritage.

In London, the partnership with Tate Modern takes the form of The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House. The major solo show, running from 1 May to 19 October 2025, spans three decades of Do Ho Suh’s practice, from translucent textile “houses” and staircases to paper rubbing projects. By reconstructing domestic spaces from Seoul, New York, and London, the artist explores ideas of home, memory, and identity, while Genesis’s support helps realise the exhibition at a substantial scale.

Against this backdrop, the new multi-year partnership with LACMA appears as a natural next step. The museum, with a collection of more than 150,000 objects spanning roughly 6,000 years of art history, has long positioned itself as a platform for experimentation and cross-disciplinary dialogue. Genesis, in turn, is building a network of collaborations with institutions that address contemporary challenges while affirming long-term values. In the coming years, it will be through projects such as facade sculptures, textile “houses,” and public conversations about the role of museums in cities that audiences will see how this partnership shapes encounters with art in Los Angeles, New York, and London.