Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Wilshire Boulevard, Miracle Mile
February 7, 2015
This visit fell on the first full weekend of February, so we took advantage of LACMA’s participation in the Bank of America Museums on Us program, and strolled around the art museum campus today. Last month we had noticed an article in the Los Angeles Times about an Eugene Delacroix painting on exhibit for a short time, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi. The painting is on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, France. It is an allegorical painting made in 1826, featuring a feminine figure symbolizing Greece mourning over those killed by the Turks during the unsuccessful defense of the port city of Missolonghi. The exhibition did a good job of explaining the symbolism in the painting itself and also showing other contemporary pieces to give context to the work.
We also went through a special exhibit, A Journey through the Cauca Valley, featuring prehistoric Colombian ceramic pieces in the Art of the Americas building, and we strolled through part of the permanent collection in that building as well. Although the Delacroix exhibit was easy to find, the Colombian and one other small special exhibition (Louise Nevelson) that we looked for were not well marked, nor did the guards we spoke to know where they were, which seemed a bit odd. Even a docent wearing a red apron with large lettering that said “ASK ME” could not tell us where the Nevelson exhibition was. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant outing. Our hunt for the special exhibitions let us through various galleries in the permanent collection we might not have browsed otherwise, and we enjoyed many of the pieces we looked at along the way.
The museum is located at the west end of Hancock Park; the Page Museum, better known as the La Brea tar pits museum, is at the east end of the park. We parked at the east end of Hancock Park, in the lot that is actually associated with the Page Museum. That lot cost us $10, the weekend rate. There is also parking in a garage at the west end of the museum, which costs $12. We strolled through part of the park, stopping to listen to a busker play first a piccolo and then a banjo.
Admission to LACMA is $15 for adults, $10 for seniors. Wheelchair accessibility throughout the museum is good, although we had to make frequent use of elevators, because different parts of the campus are connected on different levels, and there is a fair amount of going up and down to get from one building to another.
We had lunch at Johnnie’s New York Pizzeria, just a short walk east of the museum on Wilshire. That is our go-to lunch destination when we visit a museum on Wilshire’s Museum Row. We enjoyed Johnnie’s, as always, and the staff recognized us. Margaret and Bob had their usual dishes there, turkey panini for her and chicken panini for him. Meredith tried and liked the Chicken Puttanesca.
We had a nice visit with Margaret, apart from a little upset at the beginning. Bob’s aunt Min writes Margaret frequently and encloses photos with her letters. When we visit, Margaret always likes to share the latest letter she has received from Min. She had some trouble finding it this time, and snapped at her caregiver. He is very patient and hunted the letter out without taking offense, and we went on our way. After that, Margaret was calm and fairly alert and verbal. She asked after our daughters and commented on a news article Meredith had sent her a couple of weeks ago, about the possible restoration of the Southwest Museum. Margaret also mentioned her recent visit with Jennifer, the independent geriatric care manager we have check in on Margaret monthly, and she proudly told us that she had beaten Jennifer at Scrabble. We suspect Jennifer may have let her win, but we had heard independently that Margaret had done quite well with word formation. All in all it was good to see Margaret functioning well on this visit.