The View from LACMA

November 5, 2008

LACMA's façade, its windows, and vistas frame out many sides of Los Angeles, culturally and visually. I see the museum both as a vessel for viewing and observing art histories, and as an object in itself, one that is constantly redefining and reordering itself.

Looking from the window in the last gallery on the third floor in the Art of the Americas Building gives you one of these "slices" of L.A. Almost in a mini-gallery of its own off the main exhibition space, a huge floor-to-ceiling window carves out a cross-section of L.A.'s landscape and artistic history. In one sweeping view you can observe Hello Girls, the Alexander Calder mobile, listing slowly from above, while further in your sightline you can watch groups of school kids circling the tar pits.

For me, the view evokes our own struggle to keep afloat and change within our environment. You peer outward from within a modernist white cube, yet you're confronted with relics from thousands of years ago, fiberglass dinosaurs encapsulated in a battle against displacement both natural and man-made.

Paul Wehby, Senior Designer