Museum Hopping in LA

I had a few hours to kill in La La Land on account of booking a red eye from LA to Atlanta. So, I took a page from my college days and went bar museum hopping.

For starters, it’s free to visit several world-class museums in LA. Not bad…huh? You can thank a couple of billionaires for that. Though admission is gratis, parking is not, so there is a small cost, but nothing like $30 tickets at the MoMA, the Met, or the Guggenheim in New York. You do need an online reservation for the three museums I visited: the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad, and the Getty Center.

“But what about the crime?! And the homeless…my God, the homeless!!! Aren’t the streets covered in unbathed junkies with hypodermic needles stuck in the arms?”

Allow me to explain…

If you live in a city where the Super Bowl or Final Four have been hosted, then you’ve seen the miraculous overnight disappearance of the entire homeless population. One day they’re there, and the next day they’re gone. Though we all speculate, no one knows where they go, how it’s done, or if it’s even legal. In a similar fashion, there isn’t a single homeless person anywhere near the museums in downtown LA. In fact, the sidewalks don’t have so much as a piece of bubble gum on them. The entire area is shockingly clean – almost too clean. So, while I’m sure the homeless population in LA is north of half a million, not one of them is anywhere near the museums.

Now that we’ve addressed the minutiae, here’s how my day unfolded:

1:35pm – I parked at the Walt Disney Concert Hall ($8 all day) to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is a one-minute walk away.

1:45pm – My reservation was for 2:00pm, but they let me in on account of it being a slow day. The MOCA is incredibly well curated and pleasantly immersive. In addition to the giants—Rothko, Pollock, Kline, Stella, Twombly, de Kooning, Lichtenstein, Mondrian, and Basquiat—I was introduced to Rosha Yaghmai, Amy Sherald, and Joey Terrill, whom I fell in love with.

The MOCA is a fabulous museum. It’s small in comparison to the other two I visited and older, but it has a patina that adds to the experience. It’s decidedly un-LA. Maybe…if I had to, I’d categorize it as an “artist’s museum.” Any city would be lucky to have it.

3:15pm – Visiting the Broad, which is across the street from the MOCA, starts when you first lay eyes upon it. The Diller Scofido + Renfro building is a masterpiece in contemplative confusion and unorthodox beauty. Your brain will try to interpret what you’re staring at while intuitively recognizing an attraction to it; it’s odd in every sense of the word, but it’s appealing on account of being terrifically amusing. Mind you, you still haven’t set foot in the museum. All of this happens as you wait to cross the street. The cherry on top is that it’s adjacent to Frank Gehry’s twisted-up Walt Disney Concert Hall.

**The Broad and Walt Disney Concert Hall**

Entering The Broad is as close as you’ll get to being inside a Flintstones cartoon. The lobby is cave like, but with ample natural light. There are no angles, and the walls look like they’re made of prehistoric stucco in the most unusual of shapes. I felt like someone was looking down on me through a galactic microscope while the whole of us aimlessly shuffled through the innards of an amoeba. Again, keep in mind you still haven’t set foot in the actual museum.

Eventually, once you get your faculties back, you hop on a 105-foot-long escalator that ascends through an ominous tunnel, like you’re traveling through a dystopian city, and all you can see is light at the end of the tunnel, which adds a transitory feeling to an already curious experience.

♬ *Flintstones, meet the Flintstones, they’re a modern stone-age family* ♬

And then it happens—the escalator delivers you into the light! Gone is the infernal darkness as you step into a madhouse of ethereal beauty and gargantuan works of art, like Mark Bradford’s Deep Blue, which is fifty feet long and twelve feet tall, and Jeff Koons’s seventeen-foot-long metallic Tulips. At this point, you’ve been in the museum for all of two seconds. It’s positively overwhelming.

The entire museum is bursting with the work of brilliant imaginations and iconoclastic musings. If nothing else, it’s just flat out fun to walk through.

Similar to the MOCA, there is no shortage of famous works, from a ton of Warhol’s and Basquiat’s to a wing full of Lichtenstein’s. But the real fun is discovering new artists who don’t make the news when their pieces go on the auction block, such as Kara Walker’s cutouts and Robert Therrien’s Under the Table.

I only spent an hour and a half in the Broad and wish I could’ve stayed longer, but I had a few things to do before calling it a day at LAX.

5:00pm – I parked my car at Will Rogers Beach and took in the sunset. At first, the skies were coated in bright lava as the sun dipped below the horizon, and in a matter of minutes, the clouds looked like swaths of pink cotton candy against an azure background. The ocean appeared to be falling asleep. Small waves made for barely audible crashes…there was a gentleness to all of it. I took several long breathes, inhaling briny air into the bowels of my lungs, completely immersed in the moment.

5:25pm – I drove up Sunset Boulevard, past Riveria Country Club, and through the windy canyons of Brentwood to the Getty Center, where I had a 6:30 reservation at the museum.

I’ll go ahead and say this again: California is the most beautiful state in the USA.

It’s hard to compete with the majesty of the Rocky Mountains. And it’s hard to compete with the turquoise beaches of Florida, the craggy shores of New England, or the mountainous deserts of the southwest. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible because California has all of that and perfect weather.

6:00pm – I pulled into the Getty Center parking lot and drove in so many downward concentric circles that I lost count. By the time I parked, I felt the heat of hell coming through the floors. I’ve been in big parking garages, but this one takes the cake. Since I was there on a Saturday and it was past 6 p.m., parking was $10; otherwise, it’s higher during the week.

6:25pm – The museum, which is only one part of the complex, is on top of a hill (feels like a small mountain) and requires guests to board a tram, which, in and of itself, is an enjoyable experience. The ride lasts five minutes and drops you off in what can only be described as the epicenter of a billionaire’s outrageous imagination.

I was BLOWN AWAY! It’s impossible not to be. It’s also impossible to accurately explain the size and scope of Mr. Getty’s legacy, but I’ll try.

First of all, it sits on 110 acres – in Los Angeles. The last time the property was assessed was in 2013, and it was valued at $3,850,000,000 (not including the art). Secondly, it comprises 1,500,000 square feet. To put that in comparison, The Broad is 120,000 square feet. The garden alone is 134,000 square feet. Yes…these are insane numbers.

The museum, which houses 44,000 works of art dating back to 6,000 B.C., is a museum in every sense of the word. Included are antiquities, manuscripts, drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and decorative arts. This is a place where an art lover could spend a week. Unfortunately, I had ninety minutes.

I made a beeline for the Monet’s (my first love), and like every other tourist, I checked out Van Gogh’s Irises. I raced from floor to floor and from building to building, which is the worst way to visit a museum. But I’ll go back and do it the right way.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad, and the Getty are unique in their own right and all worthy of a visit (for no other reason than they’re free). In a city where a salad can cost $50 and a cigar over $1,000 (story for another day), Los Angeles has the museum part figured out.

Every person who has stepped foot in one of these museums should give a heartfelt thank you to Mr. Eli Broad and Mr. J. Paul Getty. These two billionaire businessmen worked their tails off and used their money not only for the benefit of Los Angeles but also for mankind. The fact that anyone can spend as much time as they want with some of the greatest art in the world for nothing more than the cost of a parking spot is something to be applauded.

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