I love museums and I find it sad that I have been to some of the best museums in the world but not many of those in my home town. So after work on Sunday Chris and I hopped in the car and drove into LA to see what the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was all about.
Even though I had looked at the buildings on Google Maps I was shocked at the size of the Museum. It consists of 9 different buildings containing collections from Ancient Egypt to Modern Pop Art. We spent a little time taking photos out front with all the other tourists at the very cool lamppost forest. Created by Chris Burden it contains 202 vintage street lamps. Then got into line and bought out tickets, you can wander the grounds without a ticket and there are several very cool sculptures and restaurants on the museum campus.
We headed into the Ahmanson building first to look at Art of the Pacific. There were several hand carved boat prows. A few of the pieces had Cassowary feathers on them which I thought was awesome since I haven’t seen anything that mentions Cassowaries since I left Australia. Upstairs was several rooms with Germanic impressionism. I liked the furniture they had in this section. It was not over ornamented but the detail that was apparent in the structure of each piece made them amazing. We preceded to loose ourselves in the endless maze of the museum. There was always a low hum of voices, which I find much better than the stale silence you usually find in art museums.
We then ventured into the Hammer Building and the Ancient Egypt section which I loved! Photos of the pyramids at Giza, figurines of warriors and cats, and a sarcophagus. The detail put into the painting on the funeral masks just amazes me. There was a whole collection of different types of Bronze Spearheads, some for fishing, war, or decorative. From there we traveled into Europe with ornate gilded china and real clothing. This section became so confusing Chris and I were not sure we could fins our way out! My favorite piece from this section was a pair of globes, one terrestrial and one celestial made out of silver and gold. they were absolutely beautiful and the celestial one had all the constellations on it.
Our final stop, we didn’t get to 3 of the buildings, was the Pavilion for Japanese Art where they had a special exhibit of calligraphy masters. The brush work was stunning, there is no do-over or erasing with this type of art. Every move has to be deliberate. Some of the pieces had such clear expressions without many lines or different colors the artist was able to convey what their subject was feeling. I learned about the Zen masters and how Buddhism, Taoism and Confucius were similar in their goals but different in their paths. The whole building is a continuous winding path leading you from one piece to the next and lands you back where you started before you know what happened.
As we wandered out the sun was setting over the Pavilion for Japanese Art making it look almost as if it were on fire. There is so much variety in the collection of art at LACMA that everyone will find something they like. It could easily take 6 hours up to an entire day depending on how quickly you wanted to walk through the exhibits and how often you wanted a break. :) While not as impressive as the Louvre I greatly enjoyed this museum. The Norton Simon remains my favorite simply because my love of impressionism will keep me going back. The LACMA offered me styles and origins of art work I had never seen before and that is a feat in and of itself.
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