travels with toby

Now that we are mostly settled in our new life in Los Angeles, it’s time to explore!

We visited the L.A. County Museum of Art(LACMA) on a rainy weekday and found that neither of us remembered anything about this fine museum. Nothing was familiar which made it more of an adventure. We planned our outing for a weekday because we thought traffic would be light, except it was raining that morning which may have slowed us down?

We bought advanced tickets, well, we didn’t “buy” them since the museum is free to Los Angeles residents. Our entry time was 11:00 when they opened and we pulled into the parking lot at exactly 11:00 so it was great timing! Nearly an hour to go 16 miles…….welcome back to L.A.!!

We went into the Resnick Pavilion first and looked around a bit. I took one photo in the Resnick Pavilion:

Since we didn’t see the art we were looking for, we headed out across the sidewalk where the taller building labeled BCAM was located. The information and map that was given to us wasn’t much help. I had hoped for a brief description of what was on each of the three floors but all that was shown was a photo of one piece of art for each floor.

Upon entering BCAM we found a room with a huge train track within an equally huge city. It could be any city but of course my first reaction was that it was Los Angeles. It does function but the day we were there it was being worked on(note the ladder on the left of the larger photo below). We’re planning to go back another time to see it running. As you move in for a closer view you can also see many Hot Wheels cars packed in on the freeways. There are 1100 custom made Hot Wheels cars!

We took a gamble and headed for the third floor and as soon as the elevator opened I could tell this is where we wanted to be. It is labeled “Modern Art” and this is where we spent most of our time enjoying many favorite artists as well as some new ones. Our favorites include Picasso, Miró, Kahlo and O’Keeffe. Click on any photo in the gallery below to see a larger image and to read captions.

We noted in the information for Metropolis II that there was another piece of art by the same artist entitled Urban Light on the premises. We asked a museum worker where we could find it. Since we parked on the 6th Street side of the complex we missed seeing it on our way into the museum. It’s located on the Wilshire Boulevard side of the campus. It’s made up of 202 vintage local street lamps. Here it is as I’m facing Wilshire Boulevard. It would be nice to see this all lit up.

We had lunch at the Beverly Glen Deli which is located in the hills between the west side of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley where we live. On our way home from lunch I managed to capture a nice view of the valley.

We enjoyed our outing to LACMA and we’re planning to go back again and again, but especially to see Metropolis II working. Plus: what’s on the second floor of BCAM that we didn’t get to? There is another building, the David Geffen Galleries, that is set to reopen next year. We’ll need to see that as well. Yes, more trips are definitely in order.