LACMA started demolition during the pandemic before announcing key details about its new building. | Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The museum bulldozed its old campus without a clear plan for its replacement. Does it owe L.A. one" It was more emotionally wrenching to watch than I thought it would be. The way the exterior wall flopped over, as if a piece of cardboard was being folded, the glass bricks popping like hundreds of light bulbs, sublimating in a puff of white smoke. Building demolitions are rarely associated with grace or deftness, but there was something about the way that this one felt particularly careless, almost nonchalant.
Of course, I wasn?t there to see the fall of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in person. Unless you lived in the neighborhood and just happened to be out walking the dog, you, like me, saw it through a social-mediated stream of photos and videos. LACMA, which has been closed to the public since L.A. County?s stay-at-home order was issued in March, never alerted the public that demolition was about to begin. You?d think, after the museum made such a big deal about moving a rock through the streets of L.A., that it might have commissioned a local artist to immolate the place (The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire, for real). Perhaps the news was soft-pedaled out of concern, to prevent people from gathering during the pandemic. But more likely, as with everything about the museum?s troubled expansion, it was ye...