Day 6: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

They call this museum "The Lacma."

Morgan and Sam met us there and got us all in free because they are members.

I call the image below: "Morgan Plays in the LACMA Elevator."

I spent a lot of time taking pictures of my hand in front of the art, first in a series of rooms featuring an exhibition of David Hockney's work ("82 portraits on 1 still life"), then at an exhibition of Iranian art ("In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art"), which "explores the continuous and inescapable presence of the past in Iranian society. This notion is revealed in art and literature in which ancient kings and heroes are used in later contexts as paradigms of virtue or as objects of derision, while long-gone Shi‘ite saints are evoked as champions of the poor and the oppressed."

Afterwards, I gave the kids a mini-lesson on how the U.S. and the U.K. helped the Shah take power from a democratically elected government that wanted to nationalize the Iranian oil reserves in 1953.

"In the Fields of Empty Days" featured several videos. Pablo especially enjoyed a cartoon about a chess match in which the chess pieces actually fight each other. It ended with the two kings facing off against each other. Instead of fighting, they sit down to play a game of chess.

The eyes of the women depicted in this collection of photographs artfully integrated video footage that made their eyes appear to blink, move, tear up, and cry.

After lunch, everyone but me checked out the La Brea Tar Pits, which were adjacent to the LACMA. When the Museum closed, I took the photos below of the kids interacting with Michael Herzer's "Levitated Mass."

We had dinner that night at the Capri Italian restaurant--an Eagle Rock neighborhood favorite of Sam and Morgan--which the kids later identified as one of their favorite meals of the trip.