The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) (1) has one of the country's finest collections of American and European art created since 1940. Located in Downtown LA, the museum is an easy walk, subway ride or DASH ride from Downtown hotels. If you’re driving, you can park at Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is less than a block from MOCA.
With some 5,000 works in the permanent collection rotating throughout the year, you might find different landmark paintings depending on when you visit. Highlights include works by Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and many other modern masters. A particular favorite is Robert Rauschenberg's Coca Cola Plan.
Your next stop is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (2). If you’re driving, exit the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking lot on Grand Avenue and drive south. You will be in a tunnel for a few blocks (it’s called Lower Grand Avenue). At Wilshire Boulevard, turn right and drive approximately six miles west. Park in the underground garage at Sixth Street and Ogden Drive. If you’re traveling by public transit, take the DASH B bus from 2nd Street and Grand Avenue south to 5th and Grand, then hop on the 720 Wilshire Rapid bus. Get off at Fairfax Avenue.
At LACMA, you’ll find the largest and finest encyclopedic art museum in the western United States with 150,000 artworks spanning five continents and time periods from the prehistoric to the present day.
First, visit the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) via the red exterior escalator on the north side. Don’t miss works by today’s revered modern artists such as Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein and dozens more.
After touring BCAM, walk through the piazza to the original LACMA campus, where you’ll find two excellent lunch options at the central court. World-famous chef Joachim Splichal oversees Pentimento, a fine dining restaurant featuring indoor and outdoor seating as well as a bar. (Reservations are recommended.) The cafeteria-style Plaza Cafe offers a wraparound patio and views of the gardens and the Pavilion for Japanese Art.
From the central court, walk west across the courtyard to the Ahmanson Building. LACMA’s European treasures await on the second floor. The collection includes Rembrandt’s Portrait of Dirck Jansz Pesser (c. 1634) and one of Georges de la Tour’s signature chiaroscuro works, The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (c. 1638-1640). Other paintings recognizable by their style and subject matter include Canaletto’s Piazza San Marco Looking South and West (1763) and El Greco’s The Apostle of St. Andrew (c. 1600).
The Art of the Americas building is across the courtyard from the ticket booths. Here you’ll find one of Mary Cassatt’s tender mother/child works, Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child (1880). Also here is David Hockney’s panoramic Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, a work that captures both LA’s vibrancy and driving culture.
The Pavilion for Japanese Art is a stunning, separate building filled with screens, scrolls and porcelains (second level). Notably exquisite is the pair of six-panel gold-leaf screens by Sakai Doitsu from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The first floor features the remarkable collection of netsuke, highly prized and intricately carved button-like counterweights used to secure personal items from the sash of a kimono.
Walk back to the central court toward the grand staircase, then wind your way around the Bing Center and look over the railing. In the garden below is one of Alexander Calder’s whimsical, bright mobiles Hello Girls (1964).
End the day by stopping by the scrims on south side of BCAM’s exterior, where rotating artists showcase their work to the thousands of cars that pass by on Wilshire Boulevard. A leisurely stroll to your car or to the bus stop puts the finishing touches on a day well-spent exploring some of the world’s most impressive modern art — all here in Los Angeles.
On the corner of Wilshire and Westwood Boulevards and the Hammer Museum (3). Its permanent collection, located on the east side of the building on the second floor, includes paintings by such masters as Rembrandt, Cezanne, Pissaro, Monet and van Gogh, as well as the famous portrait by John Singer Sargent, “Dr. Pozzi at Home."
In addition to classic works of art, the Hammer has an impressive contemporary collection and often has the hippest traveling and special exhibitions in town. Occasionally, late night parties there are open to the public and always recommended by locals.
