Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles

Museum-scale contemporary art fills the restored Globe Mills flour-mill complex here, and you can walk straight in without paying admission. Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles opened in March 2016, taking over the former mill as an adaptive-reuse cultural campus restored with architectural consultation. The industrial scale matters: the galleries have the height and volume for large temporary shows, survey exhibitions and site-specific commissions that would feel cramped elsewhere.

The programme draws on major international and Los Angeles-based contemporary artists, with large-format works and commissions by figures such as Mark Bradford, Paul McCarthy and Raymond Pettibon regularly shown in the repurposed mill spaces. It is the kind of place where the building does some of the work, its old industrial frame sharpening the impact of ambitious contemporary art.

Stay for the courtyard garden, a productive urban plot with raised beds and a chicken coop supplying Manuela, the onsite farm-to-table restaurant. ARTBOOK and the Gallery Kiosk add catalogues, artists’ publications and Ursula magazine for a slower browse afterwards.