Michael Govan

Michael Govan is the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art (LACMA). Since coming to LACMA in 2006 he has overseen the
transformation of the 20–acre campus with buildings by Renzo Piano and
monumental artworks by Chris Burden, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Barbara
Kruger, and others. At LACMA, Govan has pursued his vision of contemporary artists
and architects interacting with the museum’s historic collections, as evidenced by
exhibition and gallery designs in collaboration with artists John Baldessari, Jorge
Pardo, and Franz West, and architects Frank O. Gehry, Fred Fisher, Michael
Maltzan, and others. Under his leadership, LACMA has acquired nearly 35,000
works, building and expanding its collection of works from Latin America, Asia, Africa,
the Middle East, and the Pacific. In 2015, Govan undertook the museum’s most
successful art gift campaign in honor of LACMA’s 50th anniversary, as well as the
most significant bequest in the museum’s history, the Perenchio collection of
Impressionist and early 20th-century art.