One of the most impressive art museums, in a city full of art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) stretches over 20 acres. Even with large parts of the museum closed for inventory and storage reasons (which sounded more like lack of funds to man them to me) there was still plenty to see.
Starting with Jeff Koon, seemingly LA’s favourite artist judging by the number of pieces I saw by him around the city. His Balloon Monkey was striking in both colour, and black and white.
A few other interesting pieces on display.
The absolute highlight of LACMA was Richard Serra’s masterpiece Band, two hundred tons of steel, twelve foot high, stretching for over seventy feet. Every angle revealed something new and interesting, a wonderful piece of art.
Outside was the equally massive Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer, a 340 ton rock, laboriously moved from a quarry across the city to it’s final precarious resting place. Thanks to the documentary ‘Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer’s Monolithic Sculpture’ it was the first time I’d heard of LACMA. I think the size of the trench dwarfs the rock though, diluting the impact.
Finally LACMA has quite an eclectic selection of buildings, though all are architecturally interesting.
