Category: California

In case you need to duck into a #SafeSpace to escape the completely unnecessary military occupation of entirely peaceful Los Angeles, some recent photos from the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Broad (both free, even to those who aren’t smart enough to have SNAP/EBT cards). The Broad:

It’s apparently rare for a Black person to enter the Broad, but in case one does his/her/zir/their flag is ready:

Size Matters (LA MOCA; Alfonso Gonzalez, Jr.):

Did you know that “artists are marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation” (LA MOCA)?

It’s important to look at the world through a “queer lens”:

If children want to adopt the queer lens they can start in the gift shop:

Equality is so important that artists who don’t identify as “women” are excluded from books in the same gift shop (the late great Louise Nevelson, who explicitly said that she didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a “woman artist” is pigeonholed as a “woman sculptor”):

The gift shop was a Black-free environment rich in books regarding the Black Queer lifestyle (also a book about abortion care):

Did a Deplorable get into the museum woodpile or does the painting make fun of the Deplorables? (Christine Tien Wang):

A painting about the Black body in a museum where I didn’t see any Black employees or visitors:

A painting about “LGBTQ+ rights activism” and “the AIDS epidemic” (which is not in any way a “gay disease”?):

Speaking of a virus that is not in any way “gay”, if you’re concerned about SARS-CoV-2 infection, Science says that the best job you can choose is one in which you’re guaranteed to be exposed to hundreds of potentially infected humans every day (extra points for the below-the-nose mask):

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A recent trip to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)….

They’ve gone big into Yayoi Kusama, still productive and creative at age 95.

Both of these works are from 2023! (Perhaps she had some help with the physical construction.)

The “Get in the Game” exhibit appears to be about sports, but a sign explains that it is actually about “gender” and “race”:

Frontiers of aeronautical engineering… a lead airplane from Anselm Kiefer:

Old-school Dan Flavin, made with simple fluorescent lights of color (these could be updated, perhaps, with LED bulbs so that different color patterns can be offered at different times of day):

The museum quotes Kerry James Marshall as wanting to see only pictures of Black people and then obliges with a show of Amy Sherald’s work, in which only Black people are depicted (even in San Francisco, nobody wants to see paintings of Taiwanese people fabbing the chips that hold up the SF AI economy? A Black person standing around is more valuable to Humanity than a TSMC employee making an Nvidia H100?).

Speaking of Black people who aren’t fabbing H100s… there is a huge lobby area devoted to Kara Walker’s work:

The major photograph show is devoted to pictures of Black people… by a white woman:

There’s a smaller show by a “woman of color” (from Peru) who “rewrites male-dominated history” by recreating Edward Weston’s photos using herself as a model:

Here is a Weston for comparison (Americans had better-defined waists back in 1936, apparently):

Exit through the gift shop, at which a complete home library may be purchased (or replace your worn copy of The Story of Art Without Men):

What do the streets outside look like after this $42 per person experience for Californians who say that they will pay any price and bear any burden to end homelessness?

Note that the museum and special exhibition admission is free for those who are beneficiaries of welfare programs such as MediCal and SNAP/EBT.

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