I always loved winter holidays because Dad would take us somewhere we’d never been to do something we’d never done. Wherever we found ourselves, we’d go to a museum. We went to museums of art, history and science to learn about ships, neon and archaeology; we visited raisin museums, roadside museums—what vivid worlds we explored!
This holiday I was happy to see so many families keeping the same traditions. The lively “Toy Trains” exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History was a fine way to bring families through the doors to see the excellent “Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California” exhibition (which officially opens with a reception this Friday). The trains are tucked away now, but children can still delight in the color, whimsy and accessibility of the ceramic and glass art. Parents can explain just how the art is made, thanks to numerous informative text panels.
Families were well represented among the masses at San Francisco’s de Young Museum to see the “Post Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay” (through Jan. 18). This cleverly edited visit with Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Rousseau and others shows these artists with their contemporaries in a highly compressed space. This blockbuster requires purchasing tickets for a specific time period (best in advance), then shuffling past the artwork in crowds two deep without time to pause, discuss or reflect. With so little opportunity to engage, I’d rather take kids to the museum’s African Art or Art of the Americas exhibitions, which offer springboards for discussion of the constancy of the human condition regardless of time and place. Alternatively, the neighboring California Academy of Sciences is designed interactively with kids in mind.
In Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue is a favorite stop. On this trip I would go there just to sit quietly in a basketball court-size room of Rothkos and remember a conversation with my daughter when she was little about how Rothko made us feel. MOCA offers an effortless, elucidating walk through the development of contemporary art. Tours are available daily by docents who seem trained to engage a wide range of ages and backgrounds.
Not far uptown is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the largest museum in the western United States: a network of awkwardly connected buildings housing historic and contemporary art of all cultures as well as a children’s gallery. This time I chose the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a playground where Jeff Koons reigns supreme. Next door, “Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico” shows monumental sculpture from Mexico’s Gulf Coast created in the same era as the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Culture: There’s a lot to talk about.
Read more of the Exhibitionist at KUSPorg/exhibitionist.
