The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has added 11 board members over the past nearly three years in its efforts to reach its $750 million goal for its new Peter Zumthor–designed building, called the David Geffen Galleries.
The most notable of these new board members include actor Cheech Marin, who joined in September 2022 and arts patron Boojin Lee, who was elected earlier this year.
Having amassed one of the country’s most important collections of Chicanx art, Marin has ranked on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list since 2017. That year he announced that he would donate a large portion of his collection to the Riverside Art Museum to form the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, which opened in 2022.
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Lee is a member of the family that founded the Samsung Group, and she has held leadership positions at various Samsung-related entities, including most recently serving as president and chief executive of Hotel Shilla in Seoul. Through the Samsung Foundation of Culture, she helped support the realization of LACMA’s recent exhibition, “The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art.”
Additionally, Qatar Museums chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa AI-Thani, who has ranked on the Top 200 list since 2012, joined LACMA’s board in 2021, as did singer-songwriter Lionel Richie.
The other recently elected board members include Top 200 Collector Jon Brooks; Susan Hess, a previous co-chairman of the Whitney Museum’s board; businesswoman Ashley Merrill; sports agent Rich Paul; venture capitalist Jim Tananbaum; artist Gregory Annenberg Weingarten; and Jeff Yabuki, the current board chair of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Brooks, Hess, and Annenberg Weingarten joined in 2020, while Paul and Merrill joined in 2022, and Tananbaum and Yabuki joined this year.
According to the museum, its board has contributed $330 million to date toward the campaign to Zumthor building, which is expected to be complete construction late next year. Currently, the museum has raised $736 million of the $750 million goal, or 98 percent.
In a statement, LACMA director Michael Govan said, “We are grateful that these impressive and accomplished individuals have joined LACMA’s board during this important juncture for the museum. LACMA’s board members bring a true diversity of experience in the fields of art, technology, philanthropy, business, sports, and entertainment, among others. The trustees who came aboard in the past three years have already helped strengthen our local-global connections and will advance the museum’s objectives in its exciting next chapter.”
