Page 62 - 2020 Travel Guide to California

MUSEUMS & ART
BY LAURIE WEED
State of the Arts
The Left Coast pays tribute to art, science and culture
NORTON SIMON
MUSEUM
The Norton Simon Museum
began as the Pasadena Art
Institute in 1922 and was
renamed in 1975 for art collector
and museum director Norton
Simon. The museum comprises a
collection of about 12,000 objects
that include paintings by
Raphael, Rembrandt, van Gogh
and Degas, and a significant
collection of Indian and
Southeast Asian sculpture that
spans more than 2500 years.
Above, an art student traces the
lines of a sculpture in one of the
museum’s galleries.
Whether you prefer to ogle modern art or
antiquities, Ice Age fossils or space shuttles,
the Golden State’s wealth of world-class
museums awaits. With more than 1,000
museums of all sizes across the state,
there’s a lifetime of fine art, science, history
and culture to explore, as well as weird and
wonderful collections for every imaginable
niche-interest, from Star Wars memorabilia
to the legends of Bigfoot. While it’s impos-
sible to do them all justice here, we’ve
attempted to highlight the best of the best.
The Arts
Visiting LA? It’s easy to spend hours in the
West’s largest art museum, the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (LACMA). Down-
town, the Museum of Contemporary Art
(MoCA) and Geffen Contemporary show-
case the best in 20th- and 21st-century
painting, sculpture and conceptual art. The
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA LA), for-
merly the Santa Monica Museum of Art, is
now housed downtown to great acclaim.
The renowned Getty Museum includes
both the modern Getty Center in the Brent-
wood district and the Getty Villa in Malibu,
which focuses on Greek and Roman clas-
sical art. Pasadena’s Norton Simon displays
European and Modern artists amid a serene
sculpture garden. In nearby San Marino,
The Huntington features an impressive
VISIT PASADENA. OPPOSITE: COURTESY SFMOMA; VISIT CARMEL
60 2020 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA