The One with Mood, Tar, and the LACMA

Ever seen Project Runway? You know how it was filmed in Los Angeles this current season? Wellllll, we totally went to Mood today where they all buy their fabrics!Minor bump in the road though: it was closed for Labor Day. Shoot.
Still, I snuck a look inside and it was only a 15 minute drive so I'll go back soon.
This is cool painted wall across the street from Mood.

Then we drove a few blocks up to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) because it was free admission today due to the holiday. We arrived at 11:00 and the museum didn't open until 12:00 so we walked around.

Trash or art? Or both?
It's supposed to be art and everyone participates by hanging their recycleable goods on these fences.

Dirty lake or tar pit in the middle of the second largest city in the United States?Believe it or not, these are tar pits! I mean, I've heard of tar pits before, I've seen them in the cartoon "Land Before Time" but I never really thought they were real, let alone, dotting the grounds of Los Angeles. Soooo random!
Scientists are calling the excavation of these pits Project 23. They've uncovered over 700 measured specimens including a large pre-historic American Lion skull, lion bones, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, juvenile horse and bison, teratorn, coyotes, lynx, and ground sloths so far. Most rare of all is a well-preserved male Columbian mammoth fossil, about 80% complete, with 10-feet long intact tusks found in an ancient river bed.

I was taken aback when we walked by this enclosed pit and saw it was bubbling! Freaky.

We still had about a half hour before the museum opened so I took the time to take some pictures. These are colorful plastic containers strung together and dangling from the ceiling.
I thought this cluster of lamp posts was interesting.

Finally noon rolled around and we practically ran to the Broad Contemporary Art Museum to see these massive and famous Richard Serra sculptures Band and Sequence.
Sequence in its assembled form is sixty-seven feet long, forty-two feet wide, and twelve-feet-nine-inches tall. Composed of segments of contoured weathered steel, it weighs two-hundred-thirteen metric tons. Twelve semi-trailer trucks, each carrying one segment of the work, traveled eight days cross-country to bring Sequence from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
These sculptures are A.MA.ZING. I have no idea how Serra made these ginormous almost 3" thick steel plates bend. If these were made out of almost any other material, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive. But the fact that they're so massively heavy and sturdy is incomprehensible. Walking around and through these structures is the only way you can really appreciate these forms.Chris was giddy with excitement. We've seen these in pictures for years and years, but to actually be walking through them and seeing them with our own eyes was incredible.
Upstairs we saw this:
Michael Jackson and Bubbles by Jeff Koons. The one and only. I've been seeing pictures of this since I was in elementary school. Then we got off the elevator, turned the corner and THERE IT WAS! It's so fun to finally see famous artworks in real life.

At the Ahmanson Building we saw some more really cool works of art. Like Bird in Space by Constantin Brancusi.Dozens of Picasso's.
A plethora of Giovanni Giacometti sculptures which Chris loves.
And one of my favorites: a Jackson Pollock. This is a relatively small piece, about 3 feet square. Doesn't look like much from afar.
But upon further inspection, do you see how many layers of paint there are? Do you know how long that would take? I love all the squiggly lines and hints of color and how the paint has built up.
And holy crow, I was not expecting to see this! Rene Magritte's This is not a pipe. This is like the epitome of Conceptual Art!
A+++ for LACMA. To quote the governator: "I'll be back."