We reserved our free tickets to The Broad museum (the 'r o a d' in 'broad' is pronounced the same as 'road') in downtown Los Angeles a week in advance, and set out to visit the museum at 9:15 a.m. for our 10:30 appointment. I didn't know anything about the museum, other than it was contemporary art and a good place to visit with the kids, along with lunch at the Grand Central Market, and The Last Bookstore, both nearby. Excerpts from Wikipedia, where I'm an annual donor - sorta gives me quasi-rights to publish its content without permission:
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| Cy Twombly's magnificent artwork |
The Broad (/broʊd/) is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropist Eli Broad, who financed the $140 million building which houses the Broad art collections. The museum offers free general admission to its permanent collection galleries. The museum was opened by Broad and his wife on September 20, 2015. Celebrities in attendance included Bill Clinton, Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Perry, Heidi Klum, and Larry King, among others
We got there a few minutes early, parked in the government owned structure connected to the museum for $15 flat fee (ain't nothing in life free), and went in. The main attraction there, for which we had to line up to get ourselves in queue was the Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, designed by Yayoi Kusama, with a face only a mother would love (Google her).
We went to the 3rd floor, which is where most of the exhibits are, and indulged ourselves in what can best be described as mostly ho hum viewing of the paintings, sculptures, and one significantly juvenile and exceedingly pointless collection by Cy Twombly that any talentless child can muster - see above for incontrovertible proof. Genius! My most favorite artwork was the giant dining set, and as I marveled at its size, I pictured giants dining there - I spooked myself a little at the thought. |
| View up from the museum elevator |
The elevator was interesting, as it was made of glass, and you could see through its ceiling all the way up.
Then there was the main attraction, the Infinity Mirror, which we finally got a text notice that it was our turn to hurry up and wait. Now that was an experience, which I spent most of our 45-second allotted time filming. It felt like inside of Professor X's Danger Room but without his Cerebro (X-Men reference). We did our tour of this room and left for an In N Out lunch truck outside at Elin's insistence. Actually, there were a bunch of lunch trucks, but all were for a private party event and not open to the public which explained why none had menus. We initiated plan B - eat at the Grand Central Market. We got in our car and drove to another $15-fee parking lot next to the market, went in, surveilled all eateries and settled on a vendor with grass-fed hamburgers. The hamburgers, as Elin voted later, was the highlight of the trip for her. This place was packed with the smell of food everywhere as Hanna noted. We ate, we left and walked to our final destination, the iconic Last Bookstore, and a highly unique one at that. "Every inch of the place is designed to make book lovers fall in love with it, and it succeeds." The store is 22,000 squar feet built in a former bank with books on two levels, including a former vault. There's even a 2016 award winning documentary on the book store called ""Welcome to the Last Book Store."
I'd promised the girls they could each buy a book there, but neither showed interest in books. They found items they liked - a scarf for Elin's favorite stuffed animal import from Puerto Rico, and a yarn for Hanna. The store clerk took an eternity to run the items through her computer system, and ended up giving us Elin's $10 scarf for free because she couldn't find it in her system - and THAT was the highlight of my trip.
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| At the Grand Central Market and after devouring a delicious grass-fed hamburger with some fries |
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| Lo and behold, the book to the left of Hanna's head is the one that I just finished reading! |
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| I bought a $4 book titled, "The Empire of Time", published in the 1970s |
