Erewhon Becomes LACMA's Permanent Cafe, Complete With a Calder Smoothie

LACMA has made the Erewhon pop-up inside its new David Geffen Galleries the museum's permanent cafe, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced this week. The glass-box cafe sits directly beneath Peter Zumthor's $720 million structure, facing Alexander Calder's recently restored fountain, "Three Quintains (Hello Girls)" (1964).

The Calder work now extends beyond the plaza. LACMA's new signature smoothie — blended from organic mango, mandarin, pineapple, strawberry and lion's mane — takes its inspiration from the tripartite mobile, as does a pre-distressed capsule apparel collection. The drink's unnatural gray hue, Hyperallergic's critic notes, resembles the concrete of Zumthor's building, floating with blobs of Calderesque color.

What did LACMA say about the partnership?

"This integration represents the perfect synergy between two brands inextricably rooted in Los Angeles culture," Elizabeth Wiatt, senior vice president of strategic partnerships at LACMA, said in a press statement.

Erewhon President Josephine Antoci offered her own framing of the permanent cafe: "It's a place for all to gather and make memories for years to come."

The announcement caps a stretch of visibility for the museum's new building, which the Guardian described as "designed to disorient" and which recently hosted the star-studded unveiling of Ed Ruscha's poster for Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film Digger (2026).

How did Erewhon get here?

The chain's origins bear little resemblance to its current form. Founders Aveline and Michio Kushi opened the first Erewhon in Boston in 1966, guided by Taoist principles and macrobiotic cooking. Today the Los Angeles grocery chain sells adaptogenic cocktails, celebrity-collaboration smoothies and a $12 cup of "Sacred Water," and it has become synonymous with a status-driven version of LA.

The label carries costs beyond the register. In New York, the city's only Erewhon tonic bar sits inside the Kith Ivy padel club, whose initiation fee runs $36,000 — prohibitive, Hyperallergic observes, in the current art market.

Why does the pairing read as fitting?

The original report argues the partnership mirrors the art world itself: an ecosystem that grows more optimized, more expensive and more materialistic with each day. Overpaying for a smoothie, the piece suggests, somehow makes it more delectable — much as commercial partnerships increasingly present themselves under the language of "community."

As the permanent cafe settles in beneath Zumthor's concrete canopy, visitors will be able to gauge that proposition directly, smoothie in hand, with Calder's "Hello Girls" spinning outside the glass.