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Olmecca Of History At The Resnick Pavilion

Jessica Cho |
September 29, 2010 | 10:29 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

View of the Resnick Pavilion (Photo by Jessica Cho)
View of the Resnick Pavilion (Photo by Jessica Cho)
Noticed those "OLMECA" flags hung on every other roadside light post recently?

It's clever attempt to combine two words to advertise the Olmec exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Three exhibitions, Olmec being one of them, are opening Oct. 2 in celebration of the opening of a new building at the museum — Eye for the Seusual: Selections from the Resnick Collection; Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico; and Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915.

This new building is named in honor of long-time patrons Lynda and Steward Resnick, whose $45 million donation was used to further LACMA’s Transformation campaign.

The Resnicks own Roll International Corp., a holdings company that oversees companies such as POM Wonderful, Fiji Water and Teleflora. The Resnicks also donated $10 million worth of artworks from their private collection for the Eye for the Sensual exhibition.

The Resnick Pavilion, a single-story, 45,000-square-foot structure, is the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.

The architect for this project was none other than world-renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize (the architectural equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize). He has designed many famous buildings, including the New York Time Headquarters in New York City and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

When asked what she hoped the new Pavilion would do for LACMA, Lynda Resnick said, “I think what it will bring to the city is an exciting exhibition for all, a place that people can view art in the most ideal circumstances. It’s just a great gift to the city that’s been so good to us.”

The Olmec exhibition is a great way to show off the space of the new pavilion because of the collection of the colossal stone heads and other statues. Even with these large pieces, the room still felt spacious. This exhibition coincides with Los Angeles celebrations of the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence and the centennial of the Mexican revolution. 

Although not many people have heard of the Olmecs, they were actually the ones who laid the cultural groundwork for the Aztecs and the Mayas.

“So what we’re really looking at is the origins of the Meso-American civilization. All these civilizations followed the Olmec, they really laid down so many of the patterns that . . . were adopted and adapted by later people,” said Virginia Fields, senior curator of arts of the Ancient Americas.

Contact staff reporter Jess Cho here.



 

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