Saban Building

Saban Building
Downtowngal · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Name	Saban Building
Location	Los Angeles, California
Architect	Edward Durell Stone
Client	Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Completion date	1965
Style	Mid-century modern, New Formalism

Saban Building is the central landmark facility of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, originally opened in 1965 and extensively renovated in the 21st century. The building has served as a focal point for contemporary art exhibitions, public programs, and institutional leadership within Los Angeles, attracting partnerships with cultural organizations, donors, and civic institutions. Over decades it has intersected with the careers of major artists, architects, curators, and collectors associated with international exhibitions, biennials, and museum networks.

History

The building was commissioned during a period when municipal leaders and philanthropists sought to expand Los Angeles’s cultural infrastructure, engaging figures linked to the Getty family, the Annenberg Foundation, and the S. Mark Taper estate. Architect Edward Durell Stone, whose portfolio included the Kennedy Center and the Museum of Modern Art–era colleagues, designed the structure amid postwar debates involving proponents of Modernist architecture and advocates of New Formalism. The site’s selection involved negotiations with the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art stakeholders, and civic planners from the Department of City Planning (Los Angeles). Early directors of the museum, connected to networks around the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Walker Art Center, programmed inaugural exhibitions that featured artists from the California School of Fine Arts, the New York School, and international participants from the Venice Biennale and the Documenta exhibitions. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the building hosted traveling retrospectives curated in collaboration with institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Art Institute of Chicago, while debates over expansion mirrored controversies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum.

Architecture and design

The building exemplifies mid‑century modern principles filtered through Stone’s preference for masonry, rhythm, and axial planning, with a façade treatment that recalls his projects like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and civic commissions in the United States. Architectural critics compared its ordered colonnade and plaza relations to works by Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, and contemporaries in the New York and Chicago school. Interior galleries were organized as a sequence of white cube spaces interspersed with commissioned site-specific works akin to installations seen at the Dia Art Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Structural engineers collaborated with firms associated with high-profile cultural projects, while landscape interventions around the building engaged designers who had worked with the Getty Center and public art programs overseen by the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles. Decorative elements and lighting schemes referenced innovations deployed at the Centre Pompidou and exhibition conventions developed at the Smithsonian Institution.

Collections and programming

Though primarily a facility for temporary exhibitions and rotating installations, the building housed a growing permanent collection reflecting acquisitions aligned with the museum’s curatorial priorities. Exhibitions showcased work by artists from the Abstract Expressionism movement, the Pop Art milieu, and contemporary practitioners linked to the Los Angeles art scene, including creators who later exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Educational programs, artist talks, and film screenings were organized in partnership with universities and conservatories such as the University of California, Los Angeles, the California Institute of the Arts, and schools within the University of Southern California. The building also served as a venue for major loan exhibitions developed with the National Gallery, London, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and other lending institutions, enabling cross-continental curatorial exchanges that paralleled initiatives by the Asian Art Museum and the Hammer Museum.

Renovation and restoration

By the early 2000s, plans for a comprehensive renovation were advanced with input from architectural practices experienced on museum projects, comparable to firms engaged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Funding strategies combined philanthropic contributions from foundations including the Saban Family Foundation, major gifts associated with trustees who sat on boards of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Annenberg Foundation, and public-private partnerships similar to those used for the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. The renovation addressed seismic upgrades, accessibility improvements, and reconfiguration of gallery circulation drawing on precedents from restoration campaigns at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art. Conservators and curators collaborated to protect works from the permanent collection and to recalibrate environment controls in line with standards promoted by the American Alliance of Museums. Reopened phases introduced expanded education spaces, conservation labs, and a redesigned public plaza that echoed urban interventions near the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Grand Park.

Cultural significance and reception

Critical reception of the building has been shaped by its role in Los Angeles’s emergence as an international art capital, alongside institutions like the Getty Center, the Hammer Museum, and the Broad. Commentators from publications associated with the Los Angeles Times, Artforum, and The New York Times have debated the building’s stylistic legacy, its stewardship by successive directors, and its impact on community access programs modeled after initiatives at the Tate Modern and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The structure figured in scholarly analyses addressing regional identity, urban cultural policy, and the articulation of museum architecture in late modern and contemporary contexts, with comparisons drawn to the trajectories of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center. Its programming and public presence continue to influence collectors, curators, and civic leaders shaping the future of contemporary art presentation in Southern California.

Category:Museums in Los Angeles Category:Edward Durell Stone buildings