The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) became an institution dealing exclusively with the fine arts in 1961. Its origins, however, began in 1910 as the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. The initial displays included materials from the city’s collection, including fossil specimens excavated from Rancho La Brea, and objects from local donors, including stained glass given by Mrs. and Mrs. Vance Thompson. The museum’s subsequent transformation from a collective public institution to a world-class museum of art was in great part guided by the expertise of William Valentiner, named co-director in 1946, who developed a circle of prominent patrons including William Randolph Hearst. Almost all the museum’s large-scale works of art and elements of architecture, as well as all the remaining glass came from Hearst. In the United States, its collection of Swiss glass is exceeded only by that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually. In 2008 the Museum entered a vigorous new phase with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, with a building designed by Renzo Piano.

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Levkoff, M. (2008). Hearst the Collector [exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art] Los Angeles.

Muchnic, S. (2015). LACMA So Far: Portrait of a Museum in the Making, San Marino, California: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.