LACMA

MEMORY MAKING: LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

Finally, But Not Quite

I lived in California for six years and made a few visits to LA every year. We moved back to Texas and have been back to LA several times. I had LACMA on my list every time, but never got there. There were always other things at the top of the list and I loved seeing those wonderful sights, but LACMA was not one of them. This trip it was at the top of the list and my poor husband was reminded of it frequently.

After our scheduled days with family, we waved goodbye and headed off to LACMA. That’s the finally part. The not quite part was the massive construction project they had going on. I had the opportunity to see mere snippets of the many works of the LACMA and I am so happy I went. However, there’s a lot more to see than was available for viewing, so LACMA went right back to the top of my LA list.

The Modern Part of Our Visit

So the red and glass building at the top of this post is BCAM, “the centerpiece” of LACMA (according to LACMA). We weren’t enchanted, but then we aren’t big fans of Contemporary Art. We listen to the lectures and look at the art, trying to appreciate it, but give us European Renaissance any day, or Impressionists, or Decorative Arts, or well, you understand. We killed most of an hour over there and at least 15 minutes of that was spent on a “is that all there is” re-tour of the facility.

The Other Part of the Museum

Then we stepped next door at the Resnick Pavilion which contained a “Highlights” collection and there we were perfectly happy for a whole lot longer. There was one gallery with a sort of one-of-each approach to the collection. One painting, one sculpture, one vase, one gemstone etc. etc. etc. I could have stayed there all day.

There was also a mural being painted in real time and an exhibition about it. This was California, so they had some lame-woke-liberal (IMHO) excuse for the mural which made me roll my eyes, but I did love watching the artists paint.

Then we wandered into the Arabic art section. Adored it. They had a room set up in which I could imagining several turban-headed men lounging on the sofas, smoking hookahs and watching belly dancers. The belly dancers are probably more imagination than I should have applied, but it was great. We spent a lot of time in that gallery, too. Fascinating stuff. One might wonder why Arabic art got a whole gallery, while the highlights were so parsimonious, but it is their museum, not mine.

It was time to hit the road and head towards Huntington Beach. As we left, I looked longingly at the David Geffen Galleries, under construction across the plaza, and promised myself I’d be back.

There were giant animal head sculptures along the plaza. I imagined them starting to talk, as if I were on a strange planet with Captain Kirk. Then I remembered Gobekli Tepe. One of my favorite ruminations is imagining future archeologist digging up some of our monuments and surmising who we had been. Would they recognize this as a museum or would they think the collection of animal heads were a tribute to our gods.

Anyway, I hope you’ll visit on Wednesday and Friday for Memory Keeping and Memory Sharing. In the meantime, here are the pages I created in Artisan to sum up our visit.