Happy Birthday, LACMA!
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, better known by its acronym, LACMA. Though it’s unlikely that you’ve never heard of LACMA, you’ve almost certainly seen it, as several of its large-scale exhibitions like Levitated Mass and Urban Light are featured in countless advertisements for […]
Art Armchair Traveling!
We’ve all heard of armchair traveling by book. And as social media has developed, one hardly needs to get up from their computer to see what anywhere from London to Beijing looks like. But seeing as it’s currently way too hot outside for any sort of hardcore traveling, we’re going to go virtual-armchair traveling to some […]
What’s that Rothko in Ant-Man?
So I finally saw Ant-Man last week and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, it’s Ant-Man, the superhero that’s most likely to have us mutter “seriously?” under our breath, but it’s totally self-aware that it’s Ant-Man. It’s Marvel plus Paul Rudd as ex-con-turned-heroScott Lang, so of course I expected some tongue-in-cheek humor with a bit of […]
Gainsborough and Co.’s Best Portraits
As I was flipping through some of my art history materials lately, I came upon a realization: British portraits of the late 18th century are actually some of the most entertaining things ever. Why? Well, around that time, Neoclassicism and Romanticism began to take root in Great Britain, and painters continued to create portraits of their […]
Museum Spotlight: Getty Villa
We’ve all heard of the Getty Museum, one of L.A.’s preeminent art museums that houses an impressive collection of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, manuscripts, and photography. The impressive modern structure sits on a hill above the 405 like a beacon. You can probably see it if you look hard enough when you’re stuck in rush […]
Art Reads: Musée des Beaux Arts
Today we’re going to take a look at the art that inspired one of my favorite poems, “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden! Composed in 1938 after Auden’s trip to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels (hence the title), the text of the poem reads: About suffering they were never wrong, The […]
Artist Spotlight: Francisco Goya
So I had heard of Francisco Goya before riding the Metro in Madrid, but I had never really heard about him. One of the stops before mine was named after him, and to my regret, I never alighted there to find out why. But I remember turning the name over in my mind, and when we finally […]
Art Reads: Best Art Periodicals
As we all know, the art world is alive and thriving. However, aside from occasional peripheral blurbs in the news about a Picasso painting being auctioned for millions of dollars at Sotheby’s or a new exhibition opening in a museum that’s not even close to where you live, how does one keep up with what’s […]
Museum Spotlight: The Huntington Library
For today’s museum spotlight, we’re going to take a look at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens! A nonprofit research and educational institution founded in 1919, the Huntington Library showcases what were the private collections of art and manuscripts of businessman of Henry E. Huntington. Housed on Huntington’s former estate in San Marino, […]
Sandcastles: A New Kind of Sculpture?
What better way to test you (and your kids’) skills at sculpting than building the perfect sandcastle? At the beach, sand is free and sandcastles are relatively easy to build. The Guardian and Redbook even have step-by-step foolproof guides to building the perfect sandcastle, if you really want to impress the other beachgoers. To a […]