LACMA’s Michael Govan and Katherine Ross Wanted a Home With a View. They Found an Architectural Marvel

Govan and Ross have become central players in LA’s cultural scene since they arrived in the city two decades ago. He’s the visionary director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), whose dramatic and highly controversial new building, by the Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor—his first commission in the United States—opens next April. (Among the first things installed will be a 27-foot-long work by Gray, created for the south entrance.) The museum is a 15-minute drive from their new house, and they’ll be able to see it from their bedroom window.

Ross, who spent 16 years at Sotheby’s, is a communications adviser on art and culture for Prada and Miu Miu; a consultant to the South Korean skin-care line Poiret, which she’s helping to launch in the United States; and a member of the board of governors at Otis College of Art and Design. She has worked closely with Govan on every aspect of the new museum and chairs two of LACMA’s leadership committees, doing events, development, and cultivating high-level memberships.

Govan and Ross, who have been married for 22 years, are always going out, entertaining, or on their way somewhere—he in his two-seater airplane or his itty-bitty Mazda convertible, she in her Audi S5 convertible. (When they slow down, it’s for walks on the beach in Malibu.) He returned a few days ago from a trip to Paris and London, and she got back yesterday from Milan. Amid all this activity, they managed to raise (or help raise) two daughters, Gabrielle, who is 20, and Ariana, 30, Govan’s daughter with his first wife.