Urban Light (LACMA website)

Experience LA: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
With more than 100,000 pieces of work from ancient to modern art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also known as LACMA, is the largest museum on the West Coast. The museum has nine different areas of exhibition in which each building is dedicated to a different type of art or public display.

Each building contains a different theme of art, and the interiors of the buildings are decorated accordingly. Of the different exhibitions, I thought that the ones in the Ahmanson Building, which held modern and ancient European, Islamic, and Southeast Asian Art was extremely captivating. Perhaps the most memorable piece was the Weeping Woman with Hankerchief by Pablo Picasso. The painting is of a weeping woman who was also Picasso’s lover and muse when she was alive. Nonetheless, the picture is a sad one that depicts Picasso’s grief, not unlike the grief of Spanish women that grieved for their loved ones, children, and country during the warring period in Spain. I was able to feel Picasso’s pain and fear in the distorted painting of his lover crying in despair.

Aside from the many memorable and engaging artworks from the museum’s collection, there are also interesting special exhibitions. As of now, there are exhibitions such as Stanley Kubrick, which explores the different artistic aspects of film and photography that Kubrick adopted while working on various projects finished and unfinished, and a beautiful French ceramic collection from the Marylou Boone collection located in the Ahmanson Building.

Of the many exhibitions being currently held, the two that stood out to me the most were Walter De Maria’s The 2000 Sculpture and the Metropolis II by Chris Burden. The 2000 Sculpture, located in the Resnick Pavilion dedicated to special exhibitions, is a huge artwork that is 33 x 164 feet, made up of 2000 varying white shapes lined up in straight lines. The immaculate geometric shape, structure, and line of the exhibition appeared minimalistic yet intricate at the same time. While the display made up of 2000 white blocks were more or less the same size and weight, the way they were displayed somehow made the work appear differently when looked at on different sides or angles. Another exhibition, Metropolis II, located on the first floor of the BCAM (Broad Contemporary Art Museum), by Burden, is a reproduction of busy life in the city. There are roughly 100,000 cars and 8 trains that move rapidly through the concrete jungle that is our busy city. Adults watched in awe as the cars frantically drove through the big city and little boys jumped in excitement as they witnessed the thousands of cars driving through the car tracks and city. The exhibition is a miniature representation of the city, nonetheless the intricate city is difficult to observe from a single angle, thus it would be best to observe the exhibition from the second floor that surrounds the Metropolis II in order to see the entire city at once!

Of course you cannot leave without seeing the famed Urban Lights (also by Chris Burden) that sometimes people mistake for just “pretty lights” but that are actually a piece of contemporary art made from antique street lamps. Around 6pm, when the sun goes down, the Urban Lights located at the entrance of the museum turn on, and at once you see a swarm of people with cameras, loved ones, and friends rushing towards the charming lights. Something about the expansive collection of street lamps attracts visitors without fail. People are gravitated towards it even though they may not fully understand and comprehend the intention of the artist. The same goes for all other pieces of art and exhibitions held at LACMA or any other museum. You do not necessarily have to know or understand art to enjoy it – sometimes something about the art itself is inviting and captivating to all who see it, quite like a universal language that people of all ages and backgrounds speak and somehow understand.

5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036 / 323-857-6000 / $10 (Student) or LA county residents free after 3pm

Everyday is a good day to experience Los Angeles!

Reach Staff Reporter Celine Park here.