ABSTRACT
Los Angeles’ lack of a museum of contemporary art was long felt to be a major lacuna in the city’s cultural life. In 1979 Marcia Weisman, a wealthy art collector, and William Norris, lawyer, political savant and recent art collector, independently suggested to Bradley that Los Angeles needed a museum of contemporary art. In conformity with Agency stipulations, one and a half per cent of the total capital investment would have to be spent on fine art. A major art museum in downtown Los Angeles would help solve the dilemma of how to transmogrify an agglomeration of highrises into a city with a meaningful core. The artists knew that they would have to make their participatory goals very clear, establishing an architect’s acceptance of them as a primary condition of employment. The low, box-like buildings resembled the industrial warehouses that house so many artists’ lofts and in which so much contemporary art gets made.
