In the Arts

On Saturday the husband and I finally made our way westward for seven miles to LACMA. We had been meaning to go since moving here, but we kept getting caught up in some pressing activity like watching Breaking Bad marathons on Netflix or getting five dollar Old Fashioneds at The Thirsty Crow.

Our plan for this Saturday had actually been to go on a little hike through Will Rogers State Park, but when I got dressed that morning I put on a pretty new shirt (born of a birthday present gift card from my awesome mother-in-law, thanks Kelley!) and suddenly I didn't want to get all dirty in The Nature.

I wanted to stand around contemplatively in The Arts.

What am I even looking at here?

On our way to the museum we stopped and had lunch at a place I'd read about called Little Next Door and my goodness was it lovely. It's a sweet french cafe with a darling outdoor patio all covered in vines. It was bustling at 3pm, which is one of the many little things I love about living in a city again.
(In Iowa once we tried to get Sunday brunch at like 11:45am and they looked at us like we were depraved.)

New as I am to blogging, I was too shy to whip out my camera and get a picture of my gorgeous sandwich and macaron and teeny little espresso, but picture this: Lightly toasted home baked walnut raisin bread laid artfully in two triangles on a square plate. Inside, creamy white brie oozes out ever so slightly, blending with sweet, earthy figs and peppery arugula. There is a tiny square bowl on the plate, filled with exactly four chick peas, three teensy slices of tomato and some chips of cucumber.

My mouth is watering just writing about it.

The pistachio macaron looked like a pistachio macaron and was sweet and green and perfect and the teeny little espresso hit the spot and had us both raring to go see some Art!

We got to the museum and played around a little in Chris Burden's Urban Light installation, as one does.

(kissy face)

But when we went to get our tickets we realized that the museum wasn't free that weekend like we thought it was. But instead of feeling thwarted, we decided it would be fun and potentially cost effective to get a year long membership anyway, so that's what we did! They even gave us a fancy exhibit catalog (but alas, no tote bag, those were reserved for higher level memberships than ours.)

Our brand new membership allowed us into a special member preview of their new exhibit "In Wonderland: the Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States." It was awesome! (No flash photography allowed, but picture lots of Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo and Lee Miller and you'll get the gist)

Then we walked in and around and through Richard Serra's Band

Then I messed about in front of these giant hands of Bruce Nauman

Then, though we had lots of energy and time left, we decided to call it a day. Why? Because we're members now!  We can go back as much as we like!  (Perhaps I am a little over excited by this?)

We stopped one more time at Urban Lights because the sky was getting darker and it was pretty in a new way.

And of course we hung out for a few minutes by the giant animal heads

And then we headed home to play canasta.

It was a fine Saturday, I must say. And I tell ya, between this and our half season subscription to the LA Philharmonic that Jared got us, it is getting cultured around here.