Last week, the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA was pre-opened to selected guests with a gala benefit dinner to honor long-time museum patrons Lynda and Stewart Resnick.

The Resnick Pavilion was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano. Renzo Piano’s Resnick Pavilion is a key feature of LACMA’s ongoing Transformation project and offers a major expansion of the museum’s exhibition space. It’s a single-story, 45,000 square foot structure. According to the museum, the Resnick Pavilion is the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world.

Robert Irwin’s Palm Garden installation surrounds the Resnick Pavilion. The palms, some quite rare, come in a wide variety of sizes, colors and shapes. They are set into orderly grids, articulated by Cor-ten steel walls and containers.

The Resnick Pavilion will open to the public on October 2, 2010, with three exhibitions: Eye for the Sensual: Selections from the Resnick Collection; Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico; and Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915.

Since its inception in 1965, LACMA has been devoted to collecting works of art that span both history and geography – and represent Los Angeles’s uniquely diverse population. Today, the museum features particularly strong collections of Asian, Latin American, European, and American art, as well as a contemporary museum on its campus.

Resnick Exhibition Pavilion (Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA) by Renzo Piano. Press Preview, September 23, 2010.

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