{"id":2433984,"date":"2026-05-27T10:09:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2433984"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:09:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:09:57","slug":"a-diana-thater-video-installation-at-lacmas-david-geffen-galleries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-diana-thater-video-installation-at-lacmas-david-geffen-galleries\/","title":{"rendered":"A Diana Thater video installation at LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When pedestrians and drivers head under the bridge formed over Wilshire Boulevard by Los Angeles County Museum of Art\u2019s David Geffen Galleries, they will soon be treated to a new permanent large-scale video installation by artist Diana Thater.<\/p>\n

As the sun set on a recent weeknight, Thater stood along the busy thoroughfare and pointed up at an early test run of her new piece \u201cOo Fifi, Five Days In Claude Monet\u2019s Garden, Part 3,\u201d expected to debut in September as both the largest work of Thater\u2019s career and the first time an artist has had a permanent outdoor video installation in a public space.<\/p>\n

The piece will run about seven hours from sundown to sunrise, 365 days a year, just across the street from Jeff Koons\u2019 monumental topiary sculpture \u201cSplit-Rocker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my goodness, it\u2019s becoming more visible,\u201d exclaimed the 64-year-old Thater.<\/p>\n

While the sunlight faded, two large projectors splashed 6K video footage that Thater took in 2025 of Claude Monet\u2019s lush garden in Giverny, France, onto a 59-feet-wide by 21-feet-high building wall \u2014 and part of the bridge\u2019s ceiling \u2014 on the north side of the recently opened Peter Zumthor\u2013designed galleries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe piece will look great at midnight, and it\u2019s going to pop when it gets very dark,\u201d said Thater with a smile.<\/p>\n

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Diana Thater\u2019s new video installation is tested at LACMA\u2019s David Geffen Galleries. The work was filmed at Claude Monet\u2019s garden in Giverny, France, and will debut in September.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

LACMA Director and CEO Michael Govan stood beaming beside her, adding, \u201cIt will be beautiful at twilight too, because you have [Chris Burden\u2019s nearby LACMA sculpture] \u2018Urban Light,\u2019 the sky, lights above, and the car lights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Footage of giant yellow black-eyed Susan flowers beams onto the wall from one projector, intersecting with video of swaying plants from another. The footage merges in the middle and then morphs into video of other natural wonders from Monet\u2019s garden \u2014 sunflowers, pink asters, golden marigolds and more, forming an ever-shifting landscape.<\/p>\n

Thater and Govan have known each other since 1999, and first worked together on Thater\u2019s 2001 show at Dia Chelsea in New York, where Govan served as president and director of the Dia Art Foundation for more than a decade. The pair later collaborated on Thater\u2019s seminal 2015 mid-career LACMA survey \u201cDiana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thater and Govan both recall a long-ago discussion about Thater\u2019s love of Zumthor\u2019s work, and his use of concrete in Austria\u2019s Kunsthaus Bregenz contemporary art museum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to show in Bregenz because video would look fantastic on gray concrete,\u201d said Thater. \u201cMichael remembers everything, and came back to me, when the new galleries were being built, and said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you do it here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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A test run of Diana Thater\u2019s new video installation at LACMA\u2019s David Geffen Galleries.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Thater\u2019s production designer friend Patti Podesta, who helped create titles for Thater\u2019s new piece, and LACMA curator and contemporary art department head Rita Gonzalez were also present for the recent installation test. While the test showed the ethereal beauty of the piece, quite a bit of technical work was also done. Throughout the night, LACMA\u2019s manager of gallery media, Mark Ayala, and two of his team members shifted the projectors left and right, getting the balance of imagery just right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stakes are high for the piece to run correctly,\u201d said Govan. \u201cBecause we\u2019re making it a permanent public installation, we need to design furniture to house the projectors outside. We also need permits, since the piece is on county land.\u201d<\/p>\n

To begin, each projector beamed a white grid in a trapezoidal shape onto the wall and a portion of the overpass ceiling. Thater and Ayala adjusted the grid\u2019s corners at the top, and marked the exact center of the wall with tape, before test projecting the footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this aspect,\u201d said Thater, adding that the piece works like a puzzle. \u201cAll the projections need to fit together and make a particular shape and form in space. Two projectors projecting onto this wall are going to make the wall appear bent in a certain way, like a funny illusion. You have two images dissolving into one another, in the center, with a soft, blurred crossover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Known for her use of film, video, light and sound, Thater has been a force in contemporary art for almost four decades, with pieces in museum collections worldwide, including at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art. She got her master of fine arts degree in art from ArtCenter College of Design\u2019s graduate art program, where she works as the undergraduate and graduate art departments\u2019 chair and a longtime graduate art professor.<\/p>\n

Monet\u2019s Impressionist work, included in LACMA\u2019s permanent collection, has long been an inspiration to Thater \u2014 one that Govan is keen to point out.<\/p>\n

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Artist Diana Thater stands in front of her new video installation at LACMA\u2019s David Geffen Galleries.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

\u201cMonet was an innovator, with a new way of seeing,\u201d Govan said, noting that Thater shared those traits. \u201cWhen people would ask, \u2018What\u2019s the future of art?\u2019 I would say, \u2018It\u2019s already been made and it\u2019s Diana Thater,\u2019 because that idea of putting moving image into space and architecture just rocked my world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thater and her husband went to Giverny in July 2025, just six months after they lost their Altadena home, belongings and equipment in the Eaton fire, and decades after Thater was a 1991 Claude Monet Foundation artist-in-residence, during which time she lived and worked for six months on the grounds of Monet\u2019s home. She also took footage of the garden during that time, which became 1992\u2019s \u201cOo Fifi, Part 1\u201d (Fifi was a sweet cat who lived in the garden, Thater said).<\/p>\n

The video from Part 1 separates into red, green and blue color components, and is inspired by Monet separating instead of mixing color. In Part 2 \u2014 also created in 1991 \u2014 the same video appears with each color projected by a different projector, and the image reassembled. LACMA owns both video pieces. Unlike in 1991, when Thater used a camcorder with analog tapes, in 2025 she used a heavy 6K digital camera by Blackmagic.<\/p>\n

Living in Giverny, she shot 40 hours of video and used only 90 minutes for Part 1 and Part 2. \u201cWith this piece, I thought I was going to put something together with original footage,\u201d said Thater. \u201cThen all my footage burned in the fire. I said to my husband, \u2018I don\u2019t know what to do.\u2019 He said, \u2018You\u2019re going to go back.\u2019 So, I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"A <\/picture>\n
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Diana Thater\u2019s new video installation, \u201cOo Fifi, Five Days In Claude Monet\u2019s Garden, Part 3,\u201d will debut in September at LACMA\u2019s David Geffen Galleries. It is Thater\u2019s largest work to date.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

For Thater, creating after the Eaton fire has been both challenging and freeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to explain what it\u2019s like to have absolutely nothing left of your life,\u201d said Thater, as the night sky grew dark, and her name shone in bright bold yellow and orange letters across the wall. \u201cTo be able to make this piece is a breakthrough for me. It\u2019s great that Michael and Rita have supported me and have let me come here as much as I want and do all these tests and fool around with color and titles. It\u2019s allowed me to get out of the pit that I live in right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaving a lasting legacy via a medium that\u2019s only around 75 years old is not lost on Thater, who said video and film are ripe for innovation. She also hopes this new work will inspire future generations of artists, and plans to bring her ArtCenter students to see the installation once it\u2019s open.<\/p>\n

This, she said to Govan, was a promise.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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