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The Miracle Mile which stretches between
La Brea and Fairfax avenues along Wilshire Boulevard was the premier
property development of the 1930s. Many of the businesses have moved out,
but recent development has created a “Museum Mile” in their place.
Though the enormous LA County Museum of Art or LACMA
(Mon–Tues 10am–5pm, Thurs noon–8pm, Fri noon–9pm, Sat & Sun
11am–8pm; $6, free second Wed in the month) is one of the least
impressive of its buildings, some of the collections here are among the
best in the world. Despite the loss of Armand Hammer’s stock of
paintings to his own museum in Westwood, it justifies a lengthy
visit.
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Fearing Collection of funereal masks and sculpted guardian figures
from pre-Columbian Mexico is highly impressive, but where the museum
really excels is in its specializations, notably the German
Expressionist prints and drawings and the scrolls and ceramics in the Pavilion
for Japanese Art. An astonishing assortment of bones has been
recovered from the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits. For thousands of
years animals who tried to drink from the deceptive layer of water that
covers this pool of smelly and still-seeping tar have found themselves
stuck fast; it is now surrounded by life-size models of such victims as
mastodons and sabre-toothed tigers. If you’re interested, the site’s George
C Page Museum (Tues–Sat 10am–5pm; $6) will tell you all you want
to know.
The baby of media mogul Robert Petersen, the Petersen
Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd, pays sumptuous if superficial
homage to the automobile (Tues–Thurs, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm, Fri
10am–9pm, also open Mon during holidays; $7). It fails to explain the
reasons behind the collapse of LA’s early public transportation system
and the city’s subsequent obsession with what Tom Wolfe called the
“Tangerine-flake Kandy-Kolored Streamline Baby,” but it has enough
mint-condition classic models to make the car-crazy delirious with joy. |