While Govan admins that the proposed building replacing the four buildings slated for demolition is 'slightly smaller,' this is an understatement so extreme that one could call it NOT TRUE. And while bigger might not always be better, the true reduction in size happening at LACMA threatens the collection: the largest encyclopedic museum west of the Mississippi will have to go mainly into storage or be dispersed to satellite locations. The 'mothership' will be weakened and no longer function like an encyclopedic museum, a collection that takes strength from variety of examples.

Michael Govan uses the term transparency often. Unfortunately, neither was the process transparent, nor will the project be.
THE PROCESS:
- Michael Govan selected the architect himself, without public process, without a competition amongst peers.
- Govan and Zumthor are working on the project since 2008, almost exclusively behind closed doors. 
- after over a decade of planing, they are still not ready to release the floor plans to the public, only a "draft site plan" was released. What do they have to hide?
THE BUILDING:
- Govan claims to achieve "transparency" by offering floor to ceiling glass windows on the elevated exhibition area. But curtains will be needed to regulate the light, should they indeed use the area for exhibitions.
- Fences are shown in the technical documents, which were missing from the renderings released around the same time to the wider public.

Thanks to decades of careful planing and smart decisions, LACMA is currently in a strong financial position. But this will likely change with the construction of the planned building, not because of the steep construction cost, but because:
- The county of LA has not only agreed to pay $125,000,000 of construction and soft cost of the new building but also agreed to up to $350,000,000 in bonds. This debt could proof to high for an institution that is planned to serve the same amount of visitors, and not more in the future and has no expansion options. 
- Operating cost of the museum are likely to increase because spanning Wilshire makes it an easy terrorist target and security needs to control the sites to both sides of Wilshire and the bridge above 24/7.
- The planned square footage could easily be build north of Wilshire only, saving the Spaulding site for a later expansion or for a commercial project that would create additional income to LACMA, supporting the collection and programming. Instead, a financial opportunity is wasted on a museum too small to serve the needs of the collection.