This Weekend at LACMA

December 23, 2010

Happy Holidays! If you’ve got family in town this weekend, or if you’re just looking for something to do that doesn’t require standing in long lines at the mall, consider the museum. We’ve got plenty on view right now to satisfy just about anyone.

First, a note on our hours this weekend: Friday night the museum is closing at 5 pm, and Saturday we’ll be closed all day. Sunday everything is back to normal.

Have you had a chance to check out India’s Fabled City yet?  The show has been up for a couple of weeks now and it is a feast for the eyes—paintings, decorative arts, sculpture, photographs, even a couple of Bollywood clips for good measure. The exhibition looks at the northern Indian city of Lucknow, an artistic crossroads in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where artists from India commingled with those from Europe who came to city in search of wealth and patronage. For a brief period, Lucknow was an exhilarating hybrid of cultures and artforms.



Lucknow

Muhammad Azam, Nasir al-Din Haidar, c. 1830, collection Drs. Aziz and Deanna Khan, photo courtesy the Collection Drs. Aziz and Deanna Khan

If you want to make some interesting connections between Lucknow and the rest of the world, this is a good week to do it. Inside the Resnick Pavilion are two European exhibitions whose timelines overlap with India’s Fabled City: Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915 and Eye for the Sensual: Selections from the Resnick Collection—the latter closes on January 2.



Vigee

Elizabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun, Portrait of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, 1783, collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick

If you’d like to skip ahead to the twentieth century, you can check out the exhibitions on Steve Wolfe, Blinky Palermo, and William Eggleston—the latter two of which are also closing soon, January 16.

This just scratches the surface of all that is on view. Take a look at our list of smaller installations currently on view, plus the free docent tours on offer every day,  or just pick a permanent collection gallery and start wandering.

Scott Tennent