Miscellaneous and Memorable Museums of Greater Los Angeles

Published in Issue 9 by Shana Nys Dambrot

To some extent, every museum, be it dedicated to art, science, history, or wearable food, is the expression of the personal interests of its founders. Everyone knows the big surnames that grace the transoms of cultural landmarks from coast to coast — commemorating investments of time, money, and space motivated by genuine concern for public education, and/or ambitions of respectability for fortunes amassed in robber-baron hi-jinx, and/or freaky private stuff. From traditional to truly wacky, this brand of altruism has endowed not only the art world, but the worlds of industry, agriculture, heritage, and Michael Jackson memorabilia with monuments to connoisseurship both vast and intimate — each one realized because someone cared more about one idea than they cared about anything else in this world.

Los Angeles has art museums of international stature, as well as a proliferation of small but salient regional institutions, most of which are easily tracked down in your favorite search engine, events calendar, or locally-published arts magazine. The most common piece of unsolicited advice during the formation of this story was "please don't cover the Jurassic or the Panorama again." Got it. Obscurity would be the name of the game; what was called for was not a redundantly comprehensive approach, but instead trolling cocktail-party conversations and distilling memories in search of roads less traveled through the niche-museum badlands of Los Angeles.

The Bunny Museum is the Barnes Foundation of the rabbit universe — an architecturally notable private residence in Pasadena, whose every available inch is dedicated to the display of arts, crafts, and live specimens (aka family pets) that chronicle the eclectic, international ubiquity of the rabbit (bunny, bunnikin, cottontail, Brer) in folklore, mythology, religion, fairy tale, and nature. It also celebrates the bunny as the enduring symbol of the true love shared by the couple who operate the museum. Several of the nearly 29,000 objects in the permanent collection are featured in a Funny or Die commercial starring Elijah Wood. So they've got that going for them.

The Doctors House Museum is technically more of an architectural monument, though it also contains rotating exhibitions about its most famous residents. This 19th-century Queen Anne-Eastlake style manse was restored and moved in pieces to a new location 30 years ago; since then the Glendale Historical Society has been making regular house calls to this quirky bit of local history. The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch is a socially networked online emporium of art and artifacts assembled in the golden pre-eBay days, containing thousands and thousands of rare gems from the heyday of Bakelite, Black Power, Afro-Piks, Soul Food, and sundry moon-age daydreams, as well as Willis' original art. It's headquartered a private house, Willis Wonderland, somewhere in the Valley, which is legendary for its invite-only parties and in-home music studio where Willis the composer cranks out Grammy, Tony, and Emmy-winners — the better to pay for the obsessions of Willis the collector.

You may already be turned on to the Museum of Neon Art, a highlight of the monthly Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk for the past few years, and purveyors of fine citywide, poet-led, neon-signage bus tours. Fair warning: they just signed a lease for a permanent home in Glendale. They'll be packing up and moving sometime this year, so catch them in their current location while you have the chance. La Plaza de Culturas y Artes, on the other hand, celebrated their grand opening in Downtown LA on April 16. Five years of renovations to the industrial brick palace that is the once-abandoned Vickrey-Brunswig Building are finally complete, and this landmark structure on historic Olvera Street offers a platform for preserving and encouraging contemporary expressions of the Mexican-American cultural experience, influence, and presence in Los Angeles. Downtown's other visionary art-set, the ones that work the runways and couture houses, showcase the icons of their artistry with revolving exhibitions at the FIDM Galleries & Museum. Think of it as a Hollywood spin-off of the Met's Costume Institute.

Speaking of institutions preserving the singular cultural expressions of pioneering Southern Californians, the newly completed Salton Sea History Museum celebrated the grand opening of its newest incarnation on April 3, made possible by the tenacity of the residents of this godforsaken but beloved colony. The first show is an ambitious and surprisingly progressive group exhibition of fine art inspired by the area's unmistakable aesthetic character; including Deborah Martin whose starkly rendered yet emotionally evocative paintings convey something of the hardscrabble pride in the townspeople's souls; and Kim Stringfellow, whose impossibly forlorn technicolor landscape photographs have, for better or worse, come to define the identity of this remarkable place. If one surreal adventure in the desert isn't enough for you, cruise by Desert Hot Springs and while away a few hours at Cabot's Pueblo Museum, once a private homestead that from 1913 until the founder's death in 1965 was an ongoing labor of love, as a 5,000 square-foot Hopi village was painstakingly replicated, brick by brick and brushstroke by brushstroke. It's a little creepy, sure, especially the giant feathered totem visible from the road, but the man had good intentions and a sharp eye for detail.

Science types might enjoy the Camera Obscura at the Santa Monica Pier, one of the only surviving fully functional examples of this centuries-old "photographic" technology. Torrance is home to the International Museum of Printing, a refreshingly analog assembly — among the world's largest — of antique printing equipment, font-fetishist delights and live demos. And finally there's nothing finer for a curious, antiquarian art-and-science mind than the da Vinci Hollywood Exhibit at Hollywood & Highland through the end of the year — a hands-on installation of replica machinery and artwork on the order of the 1955 World's Fair da Vinci Pavilion. Across the street, stop in at the Art Deco temple that is the Max Factor Building, and feast your eyes on the dioramas at The Hollywood Museum, reenacting the miracles of mid-century aesthetic science that created Marilyn Monroe as an American Mona Lisa — enigmatic, obsessed-over, and muse to a million artists.

Suffice it to say there are countless regional and national museums worth exploring, such as the Museum of Bad Art in Boston whose collection showcases "the work of talented artists that have gone awry," and Philadelphia's Mütter Museum of the history of medicine. You can also take a virtual tour at The Museum of Online Museums that features a "museum" of lost-and-found grocery store receipts.

With too many to mention, we turn to you our readers to keep the information streaming. We'll get the ball rolling by posting links and pictures on the Bluecanvas Facebook page. Have a look and feel free to post anything you think we missed so your fellow Bluecanvas readers can benefit from your obsessions too.

Museums:
The Bunny Museum: thebunnymuseum.com
The Doctors House Museum: glendalehistorical.org/doctors.html
Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch: alleewillis.com/awmok
Museum of Neon Art: neonmona.org
La Plaza de Cultura y Artes: lapca.org
FIDM Museum & Galleries: fidmmuseum.org
Salton Sea History Museum: saltonseamuseum.org
Cabot's Pueblo Museum: cabotsmuseum.org
Camera Obscura at Santa Monica Pier: santamonica.com
International Museum of Printing: printmuseum.org
Hollywood & Highland da Vinci Museum: davincihollywood.org
The Hollywood Museum: thehollywoodmuseum.com
Museum of Bad Art in Boston: museumofbadart.org
Mütter Museum of Medicine: collphyphil.org/Site/mutter_museum.html
Museum of Online Museums: coudal.com/moom/

Magazine