The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is not a museum that I have ever been to, but it is definitely a museum that is a well-known and highly professional in the way that it handles it’s artifacts as well as how it presents it’s exhibits so that it all flows as smooth as it possibly can. It is also home to a few well known landmarks such as the public art display “Urban Light” which even if you haven’t heard the name you have probably seen it at least once before.
On it’s website it has a detailed map of the campus with all the buildings easily seen and numbered for easy navigation and all of the buildings have the different exhibits listed under their assigned numbers. The first building is listed as the pavilion for Japanese art and all of their listed exhibits under the name are all pertaining to Japanese art. The second complex is the Bing Center where they list the auditorium and cafe. other well known buildings are the Hammer building which has all of the various obscure exhibits listed under it. It also features the Art of Americas, Ahmanson Building, BP Grand Entrance, Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Resnick Pavilion, LACMA West. All of these are listed with their various exhibits in order, which makes all of the categories easy to find on both the map and much easier to find if you were at the actual museum itself.
The museum does a fantastic job in the way that it organizes itself. It does;t try to bring in any sort of niche way of creating categories. it is just a formula that separates all the various buildings and exhibits and shows where they are all located which in my opinion is one of the best ways to organize a museum. This museums mission is clear that it wants to give a broad and diverse view of the world through various forms of history, expression and art. I also believe that the museum does a great job of fitting the criteria that Conn gave in his quote as it does organize the world in a rational sense by separating the diversity but keeping it under one complex.
An alternative system of categorization might be through color coding and dedicating on or two buildings to the various peoples of all continents and this might make for a more engaging experience.
I think your idea of color coding is really cool and seems really intuitive for the visitor! Looking at how this museum is organized, it’s pretty clear it was designed with the intent for general audiences especially considering how it designed its map. But I’m wondering how does dedicating one or two buildings to various people of all continents make it a more engaging experience?
I appreciated what you had to say about LACMA’s lack of specificity in the breakdown of its buildings is in of itself a specification of its mission: to be inclusive and to be diverse. As a large museum, I think it does do a good job of once you are a visitor, compartmentalizing information so that it’s digestible, but has arranged itself in a way that allows it accommodate new experiences and exhibits as the museum grows and changes.