Transformation Phase 1: BCAM Opening @ LACMA

At: LACMA

Info: Free Admission, but MUST reserve ticket through website

• Members: Feb 11th - 15th, 11am - 4pm
• For the rest of us: Feb 16th - 18th, 11am - 8pm

LACMA presents “Transformation Phase 1″ featuring the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. Its free admission but you have to reserve in advance tickets with a specific time for the tour. Members get to actually go inside the new BCAM, while the public can gawk at it through the entrance.

As Jaime is a member of LACMA and her office did something relevant to LACMA’s website (I forget what), we scored member’s tickets on Wednesday to view the new BCAM section of LACMA. The architecture of the building itself is well designed by Renzo Piano with a noticeably large emphasis on red beams- structure, walk paths and escalator. As you enter the building, you start at the Third Floor and work your way to the bottom. The space is beautifully set and as you look up at the ceiling you can see the natural light come down with a nice see-through partition below the glass to shield you from the light. Noticeably one of the most interesting part of the building was the huge elevator in the middle of the building that looked like some kind of ride you find at Disneyland if Disneyland surrounded itself with Contemporary Art.

The art was appropriate as it was “Contemporary” which for the most part meant to me: I don’t get it. Let’s be honest here. If somebody had told me long ago that you could put three basketballs in an aquarium of water or that a stack of boxes labeled: Corn Flakes is called Art and that it can sell for a bunch of money, I would have been a artist at the age of six already. Low and behold, somebody has defined it as Art and well, you see where I am going with this. The pieces we enjoyed most: the shiny stuff on the third floor, such as the over-sized Balloon dog and the red metallic-esque cracked egg, the Over-sized furniture and the labyrinth steel structure of Richard Serra’s The Band.