Los Angeles offers a wide variety of art museums

Los Angeles boasts some of the most renowned art collections in the world. The exhibits housed in the MOCA, LACMA and The Broad museums highlight pieces from famed international artists such as German photographer Thomas Struth. Such works mirror the ethnic diversity that can be seen walking down any street in Los Angeles. John McCracken’s “Planks” have long been associated with a uniquely Los Angeles perspective as their polished, lacquered surfaces that resemble L.A. staples such as cars and surfboards, lean casually against the wall to contribute to the impression of a detached California cool, while a temporary exhibit at the LACMA reveals the arduous and contemplative process of USC graduate Frank Gehry, who used technology to have more direct relationships with his models and sketches, many of which are on display. Here are some museums to consider:

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

This contemporary art exhibit can be viewed in a clockwise fashion as the works are organized in chronological order from the time they were conceived. With roughly 7,000 works already, the museum grows annually through purchases from patrons and artists within the Los Angeles community making up 90 percent of its works. If you start the museum on the left, you will walk though rooms that are arranged loosely around historical art movements starting in the 1940s and ending in the 1980s such as abstract expressionism, pop art, conceptual art and feminism. The many interactive and culturally provocative installations allow the viewer the ability to compare how such movements reflect the political, cultural and socioeconomic happenings of that time period. The fact that one is directed to view the art in a certain way suggests that the entire gallery is meant to be immersive, as strong clashing colors, eclectic subject matters and wide varieties of media, emphasize a self-reflexive experience that curator Helen Molesworth said, “Fosters a dialogue between the art objects themselves as well as between the artworks and the viewer.”

Conversely, this ability to compare the histories of these artistic styles teaches the viewer that contemporary art seeks to remove the hand of the author from the piece and tries to instill the impactful emotions one is supposed to feel from art through seemingly elementary yet relatable installations, such as Cy Twombly’s “Blackboard Series” in which he drew a whirling loop in white crayon on a grey painted canvas that perhaps implies that the artist is a student and not a master. This can similarly be seen in the wonderful room dedicated to the paintings by Marc Rothko who wanted his viewers to stand close to his works, so that they would have their vision flooded by luminous colors to create an atmospheric space of primitive emotions, shying away from grandiose representations that could indicate a wrongful and political motivation in art.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The LACMA celebrated its 50th birthday last year with 120,000 pieces in its collections that makes it the largest art museum in the western United States. Though the permanent exhibit houses works of abstract expressionism from famed artists such as Picasso,  Miro and  Magritte, among the museums’ strengths are its collections of Asian, Latino and Islamic art ranging from the pre-Columbian masterpieces to works by the leading modern and contemporary international artists. Two notable temporary exhibits are the “Rain Room” and “Frank Gehry” as they both reflect on the LACMA’s dedication to represent the interactive art scene of Los Angeles. The “Rain Room” by Random International is an immersive environment that offers the viewers the seemingly impossible ability to control rain and not get wet while walking through it. Though continuous rain comes down the top of the exhibit like a shower, the light sensors on the sides of the room detect your presence and signify the top not to exert water if there is someone under it. Therefore, they use science and technology to create an experience that aims to question the human existence within a machine world, engaging viewers through explorations of behavior and reactions to this natural phenomenon. Additionally, the Frank Gehry exhibit gives viewers the chance to get a taste of the Los Angeles architect’s revolutionary design process that continues to capture the heterogeneous nature of Angelenos and people everywhere. The exhibit that traces the full arc of the architect’s career contains many original models, designs and drawings that distinguished him as an urbanist, evidenced in his familiar local works such as his residence in Santa Monica and Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The exhibit that highlights his unique usage of CATIA (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application), a software tool used in the aeronautics and automobile industries, to create his models and generated new methods, technologies and approaches to sculpting his material. The exhibit demonstrates how Gehry questions a building’s very means of expression, as he has sought to distance architecture from its historical conventions and contend with the avant-garde art movement.

The Broad

The two-hour long wait to receive onsite tickets to enter this new postwar and contemporary art exhibit serves as an indication of the strength of the Los Angeles art scene. With its innovative “veil and vault” concept, the 120,000-square-foot, $140 million building features two floors of gallery space to showcase the Broad’s comprehensive collection of 2,000 artworks by more than 200 artists that chief curator Joanne Heyler says, “is a result of a sustained and intensive engagement with art and artists that reflects many of the forces and ideas that have shaped art since the mid-20th century.”  Arranged chronologically, the crowded installation begins on the top-floor galleries with icons of American postwar art, mainly 1960s pop art from artists such as Jeff Koons, as seen in his depiction of balloon animals, to key works of the 1980s New York art scene from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, to art from the 2000s that depicts the happenings of the present like Takashi Murakami’s works that reflect the 2011 earthquake in Tohoku. The Broad prominently features Los Angeles artists. John McCracken’s “Planks” that lean casually against the wall to contribute to the impression of a detached California cool also endows the tall, slim object with a sense of volition or opposition from traditional paintings for it appears as if it decided to climb down off the wall and immerse itself in the three- dimensional world of the spectator. The glossy and fine finish that offers no indication of the artist’s hand and no sign of the construction process, suggests that the work was born spontaneously, rather than made, in order to critique the falseness of material and capitalism in Los Angeles culture that is predominantly focused on the final product. Single artist galleries on the bottom floor show selected works from a specific artist to demonstrate the museum’s commitment to both the arc of the artist’s career and the viewers’ innate understanding of the art by providing contextual comparisons with which to envision the similar themes and styles that the artist is trying to portray. Similarly, artists that are exhibited together indicate shared concerns and notable emphasis in the collection, such as a strong current of socially and politically themed art, a major focus on American media-saturated culture, as well as particular interest in contemporary German art.