School of Art, Long Beach State University

Summer Museum Visit

CSULB Students sitting on a bench and laughing at The Getty Villa in Malibu, CA
The Getty Villa

Activity: Visit an Art Museum!

  • You can go to any Art Museum in any city.
  • I love Culture, History, Science, and other museums too, but for this Art110 Activity, be sure to go to an Art Museum.
  • If you happen to be in Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Las Vegas, San Diego, or any other city – awesome! You can go to a museum that’s not in the LA area, and we can all share in your experience. If you are in the LA vicinity I’ll list some of our local museums below.

@ the Museum

  • snap a few pix of yourself at the museum
  • Pick 2 works of art at the museum and Compare & Contrast them.

If possible, take pix of your 2 works. Or if possible buy postcards of them in the gift shop. Museums usually will let you take pix of anything they own, but not of traveling works they don’t own.

  • Norton Simon – take pix of anything!
  • Both Getty’s – take pix of almost everything, except for the occasional traveling exhibition
  • LACMA – take pix of the majority of what’s on exhibition.

Your Canvas Post

Compare & Contrast

  • Formal: Start by talking about how the line, shape, color, texture, scale, rhythm, etc of the 2 pieces compare
  • Conceptual: how are the ideas these 2 works evoke in you similar and different?
2 visitors standing on a LACMA balcony and looking over the LACMA campus and off to the hills in the distance
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
View down Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown LA, Grand Avenue Arts District: MOCA on the right, The Broad Museum on the left. Behind MOCA is the Colburn School of Music, and behind The Broad is architect Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall.

Art Museums in the Los Angeles area

Admission prices vary. Some have student discounts. Some are free to students. Some are not-so-free. Some have free or low cost parking. Some have not-so-low-cost parking. Please check their website carefully for all that. Also be sure of their days and hours. It would really suck to drive out there when they’re closed!

Encyclopedic Art Museums

Contemporary Art Museums

The Broad & MOCA Grand Av are right across the street from each other. And if you’d like to eat, just a short walk down the hill is Grand Central Market. And BTW, if you eat at Grand Central Market, you really should go across the street and take a look at The Bradbury Building.

Alternative Art Spaces

Local Art Museums

Garden Spots

Art Museums outside the Los Angeles area

  • Pick any Art Museum you like. If you want help finding one, or want helping pick which one, just let me know!
dozens of "MOCA" stickers on a street pole
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles