For more than two decades, LACMA has been simultaneously in pieces and in the process of putting itself back together. The old 1960s buildings came down, the campus shrank, and for years the museum existed in a kind of productive suspension—still showing work while waiting … for what? It was waiting for Peter Zumthor. The Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss architect was commissioned to design a new permanent home for the collection, and has finally delivered a 900-foot-long pour of sculptural concrete that floats 30 feet above Wilshire Boulevard. The building has had its skeptics; costs approached three-quarters of a billion dollars; and at least one critic described the interiors as “bunker-like.” Still, by any measure, it’s one of the most ambitious museum projects in American history. And now it is finally opening, with art spanning 6,000 years. —Elena Clavarino