LA County Museum of Art

LACMA

Spent a lovely day at LACMA (thanks Sara for the tickets and tour!) and the La Brea Tar Pits next door. I enjoyed seeing the Levitated Mass. It was lucky that we got to savor it alone on a less-crowded weekday. If you haven't already, listen to Jesse Thorn describe the project here. It was something special to stand beneath it.

I also loved experiencing the Richard Serra pieces. I first encountered his work at the Seattle sculpture garden next to the ocean about 10 years ago, and his curving steel structures seemed weird and minimalist but evocative of the ships all around. My initial impression was it was a lot of hype for nothing. Then I ran into them at MOMA in New York in their gardens and then at the SFMOMA. Each time I saw his work, it affected me more. The installation at LACMA is perfect. There are four spaces in the single continuous work to walk inside and the size of the piece along with the room size means you are overwhelmed with the softly curving perfect rust patina all around you.

The La Brea Tar Pits museum was smaller than I remember and the pits themselves were stinkier than I remembered, but it was a nice place to visit and be reminded that the flora and fauna of Los Angeles was vastly different just a few thousands of years ago.