LA's top 5
art hotspots
Los Angeles is all about going to the beach and spotting stars. Right? Well, not exactly. It’s also the city with the most museums in the U.S. Reason enough to put together a list of 5 cultural hotspots.
Los Angeles is all about going to the beach and spotting stars. Right? Well, not exactly. It’s also the city with the most museums in the U.S. Reason enough to put together a list of 5 cultural hotspots.
Surrounded by the continuous display of colour and beauty of 14,000 species of plants in its botanical garden, The Huntington showcases European and American art from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. One of the masterpieces is the eighteenth-century portrait of a boy dressed in blue by Thomas Gainsborough. It’s been said that ‘blue’ as a boy’s colour owes its popularity to this portrait.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art houses a wide collection of art from all over the world. Islamic, Asian and Latin-American highlights: you’ll find them here. One of the many famous artworks is the painting Día de Flores by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. For years Rivera was the life partner of Frida Kahlo. One of his rare portraits of her can be admired here.
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) contains thousands of works of art from 1940 to today. Paintings by such greats as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko hang side by side with fascinating works by less well-known artists. Good to know: since 2019 this museum is totally free of charge.
One of the most eye-catching museums in Los Angeles is the Broad Museum. This free museum in downtown LA opened in 2015 and is no less than ten thousand square metres in size. More than two thousand works by icons like Roy Lichtenstein and Jeff Koons are exhibited here. The building is surrounded by a courtyard with hundred year-old olive trees, where you can enjoy a meal from the museum restaurant in their shade.
Here you can enjoy lofty art both literally and figuratively. Perched atop a mountain, far from the hustle and bustle of downtown LA, this must-visit museum contains many nineteenth and twentieth century European masterpieces, from paintings to sculptures and photography. The building alone is worth the visit. From the parking lot, a hover train whisks visitors up the mountain to the museum entrance.