Today was a fun filled day of art and Japanese wackiness. We headed up to Little Tokyo to catch the amazing Murakami exhibit at MOCA and then on to the Giant Robot retrospective at the Japanese American National Museum. Both were fantastic and made us want to reach our goal to visit Japan sooner than later!
First things first – Murakami. Nothing can be wackier, and nothing made us happier than to see this work being featured at MOCA. The trademark Japanese anime style has infiltrated our culture and shaken things up as much today as all of the big time artists in the pop art movement did in the ’60s. Murakami’s world is a different world alright, and we like it. You feel like a child, but at times the subject matter is very adult. You can’t take pictures in the museum, but we managed to find a few out there on the good ol’ world wide web.
The space was so transformed into this crazy land that the walls in some areas were covered in eyeballs – or flowers – and bright splashes of color were everywhere. Then of course there were the sculpture pieces that looked like space age plastic cartoon characters that were adorable and disturbing all at the same time.
We loved it!
After taking in all of the Murakami madness, we decided to stop by Starbucks – after all, the red cups are here, and Carrie couldn’t be happier!
Next up was the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). We hadn’t been there before, and were glad to finally visit. Giant Robot is a magazine that we’re both big fans of. Basically, it’s an artsy magazine featuring work by edgy artists and art school students that features hip pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek humor. It’s super cool and pure eye candy to look at. 
The art was awesome and we were excited that they let us take a few pictures inside.
JANM also has another really interesting exhibit going on at the moment called Common Ground and it has tons of photos, posters and objects telling the story of 130 years of Japanese American history. It was pretty amazing and we both were pretty moved by it.
As it turns out, the museum also has a super cool gift store and we know that one day in the future when there is a cool little baby Kim, we will have to buy this shirt:
All in all, it was an inspiring day – and we say if you haven’t gone out and caught an art exhibition lately – get out there and see something!