#8 Long Beach Museum of Art

There is so much to love about my city! I live very near to the Long Beach Museum of Art, but I had yet to go in the two years I've been here. There is no excuse for that! So of course, I added it to my list. One of the greatest things about it is the "Free on Fridays" program. Yay free!

Jen was still in town from the movie fun, so she joined Lisey and I for a day of art. We walked (more free! no gas!) along the beach to the Museum, and it was the perfect day for playing outside.
When we arrived at the museum, we were greeted by this:

He was a little disturbing, and we wondered how they neighbors felt, having to look at him every day. Yikes.
The museum is pretty small, and it's currently housing four exhibits, plus a small room of permanent pieces. In the permanent collection room hung two giant Jackson Pollack-inspired paintings. One was blue, and you could probably guess that was my favorite.

The first exhibit was GORD PETERAN: FURNITURE MEETS ITS MAKER. Now I don't know about, but I don't really get excited about furniture art (except the Dali lips couch at the Tate in London ... that was amazing.). However, this furniture was COOL! Some of it was funny, some of it was thought-provoking, but all of it was captivating. My favorite pieces were two gigantic doors. They were paned, and each pane had a different image built on it or etched into it or cut out of it. These doors were practical, having been used in homes in Canada, and they were incredible. Here is a picture of one of them, but it's too small to really see the details. His most famous work is probably this one.

Upstairs we found the Robert Rauschenberg exhibit. This was neat, because it included newspaper clippings from several decades and several states. It was fun to see what was deemed newsworthy years ago.

The next room housed a collection of figurines. I never knew that ceramics could be funny! There was a little alcove that showcased these works, and we thought there should have been an age requirement to go in. The pieces were
all Victorian/Colonial, and some of them were impish and little bit racy (for their time period). They were all
pastoral pieces, with couples or trios around a tree. One series had the same man with three separate women.
In the third piece, the man has his hand on the woman's breast, and she is slapping him across his face. The
next piece showed him alone with his dog, and a collection of shoes he had taken from the various women. Hilarious.

The final collection was The Art of Commerce: William Livingston's Pinhole Photographs of the Port of Long Beach. This was exciting for me, since I've been temping at the Port. I was familiar with the subjects of all of
the pictures. The pinhole effect is really neat in general, and I feel that it was particularly striking with these images.

All in all, not bad for a totally free day :-)


Miles: 3.4
Cost: FREE!

Miles to Date: 260.8
Cost to Date: $124.06