Jori Finkel has the news that LACMA is turning some loans into gifts to match other recent gifts to build momentum for the new building project and the museum’s 50th anniversary:

This weekend the museum announced that it had secured roughly $200 million worth of art as “anniversary gifts,” on top of the $500 million recently pledged by the former Univision chairman Jerry Perenchio.

A show called “50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA’s Anniversary,” which will open April 26, reveals the scope of these new acquisitions. Highlights include a version of Hans Memling’s masterpiece “Christ Blessing,” donated by Lynda Resnick of POM fame; a verdant Monet garden landscape showing the artist’s wife, donated by the Hollywood veterans Wendy and Leonard Goldberg, and Vija Celmins’s dark 1964 painting, “T.V.,” which shows a television scene of aircraft combat or explosion, given by the film producer Steve Tisch. An imposing, sinuous wooden sculpture identified as a serpent headdress from Guinea came from the head of Activision, Bobby Kotick.

Many of the gifted artworks are promised or future pledges.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art Reveals New Acquisitions – NYTimes.com