museums – Page 4 – thosecoolkims

The Facey Kids Go to the Symphony!

This past Christmas, our present to the Facey kids was a trip to the wonderful Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, to see Beethoven in the House, one in a series of concerts for kids put on by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As Kendall, the oldest, is now a clarinet player in her school orchestra, we thought it would be really cool for the kids to see a renowned symphony orchestra in one of the coolest concert halls in the world. We think it’s awesome that the LA Phil has a kid-friendly concert series that exposes kids to classical music and the arts, so we were only too excited to take the kids here.

Not surprisingly, all of the kids knew the iconic opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, but none of them knew that it was Beethoven that had composed it. So, they were in for a treat as we piled in the Land Rover I was testing for the weekend and headed off for Downtown LA.

One cool aspect of the Symphony for Youth series is that during the hour before the concert begins, kids can participate in all kinds of creative activities to learn about music, theater, and art. We decided to make masquerade masks for an imaginary ball. Here we are making them, and wearing them:

The concert itself was great, and the kids thought it was really sad that Beethoven couldn’t even hear his final 9th symphony (which contains the famous Ode to Joy) because he had gone deaf at the early age of 32.

After the concert, it was time to leave the concert hall for the next destination!

It was recently Chinese New Year, and this is the year of the Tiger. To celebrate, the Chinese American Museum held its Lantern Festival near Chinatown. The event had live performances as well as tons of arts and crafts projects for kids.

The kids made awesome paper lanterns, fans, embossed metal plates with their own drawings, and even abacuses!

No trip to LA is complete without a stop at Sprinkles for some gourmet cupcakes. Kendall and Jordan had been here before, but this was the first time for Mikayla and Ethan.

Despite the hour-long cross-town drive to Beverly Hills to get these cupcakes, the kids declared the trip worth it. Ethan summed it up best when he bit into his Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcake and exclaimed, “This is the best cupcake ever!!!” No argument from us; look at them!

Another awesome weekend with the Facey kids. We miss them already! Click below to see the album.

Facey Kids Weekend Feb 2010

MOCA’s First Thirty Years

mocapink

Ed & I headed up to catch the awesome First Thirty Years exhibit at MOCA two weeks ago, and being the modern art lovers we are, we have to say we enjoyed every bit of it! The exhibit is sort of a “greatest hits” of modern art. Of course, there are many pieces that you’ve seen before – but nonetheless, it was really cool to have them all in spot. Be sure to click the exhibition link as mentioned above, the site has a really great photo gallery that shows a lot of the work! (Unfortunately, Ed & I were only armed with the iPhones, so we didn’t get many pics!)

Probably the most impressive was the photography collection. I have been fascinated by photos of people ever since I was a kid, and two of my favorite photographers were on display: Garry Winogrand & Diane Arbus. Both of them have a real knack for capturing the most odd, yet beautiful images of ordinary (and in Diane Arbus’ case, NOT-so-ordinary!) people. Doesn’t hurt that they capture some fun 60s stuff, which both Ed & I love. Here are a few of my favorites from the show:

arbus_doglady arbus_giant

arbus_sunbathers arbus_twins

Diane Arbus: (top) Lady Bartender at Home with Souvenir Dog, 1964, A Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents, 1970; (bottom) A Family on the Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, N.Y., 1968, Identical Twins, 1967

winogrand_zoo

winogrand_spacectr

Garry Winogrand: (top) Couple in Central Park Zoo, 1967; (bottom) Kennedy Space Center, 1969

There were lots more that we really loved and hadn’t seen before. Ed looked pretty space age in RM669 by Doug Wheeler (1969), and I loved Mirror/Mirror-Table/Table (1964) by Richard Artschwager!

moca_c&e

Go see First Thirty Years at MOCA before it’s gone!

Discovery Science Center with Ethan and Mikayla

After our wonderful museum day with Kendall and Jordan, it was time to spend some quality time with Mikayla and Ethan. After an evening with 102 Dalmatians, we started off the day in much the same way as the prior night with Kendall and Jordan…no Facey kids’ weekend at our house is complete without some Guitar Hero! Here’s Mikayla rockin’ out.

Ethan learned how much Sophia loves to be treated gently! Look at her paws – that’s her way of saying, “I really like you!”

So then it was off to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana. We took Kendall and Jordan here a couple years back and now that Mikayla and Ethan are a little older, we thought they’d enjoy it too! This kids’ museum is full of all kinds of neat interactive exhibits that are both entertaining and educational.

Some highlights:

Ed and the kids at the pin wall; you push yourself into the pins from behind and a three dimensional image forms from behind!

Here, Ethan learns how tornadoes work!

A lesson in water erosion!

Ever wonder what it feels like to be in a hurricane? Step inside!

Mikayla LOVED the rock wall! She did it at least five times.

Carrie reminds us that only YOU can prevent forest fires.

Just before the “4D” movie about sea turtles and being respectful to the environment.

Mikayla and Ethan both got to make “jitterbug” robots!

“Camping” in the Discovery Science Center!

Mikayla the Zamboni driver!

Afterwards, it being the warm day it was, we had to finish it all off by introducing the kids to Golden Spoon!

What a great day we had! Check out even more pics by clicking below.

We miss you, Facey kids!

Mikayla and Ethan visit – August 2009

Museums and Fossils and Canters … oh, my!

This weekend, our 3 nieces and nephew get to spend some quality time with us. Last night, our oldest nieces Kendall & Jordan got to spend the night at our house, and then we had an action-packed day planned for them. We have been waiting for such a long time to take the big girls to an art museum … and then we decided to hit up the La Brea Tar Pits, too!

However, no time spent at Uncle Ed and Auntie Carrie’s house can go without a little Guitar Hero. Check out these rocker-girls in action!

After a fair amount of rocking ensued, we headed off to LACMA for an introduction to some modern art!

We were particularly excited for the girls to see the “Happy Happy” installation in the Your Bright Future exhibit. Basically, Happy Happy is bunch of brightly colored kitchen items from the 99 Cent Store, all hung from up high. It’s huge! You can walk through it, play in it – its fascinating for both adults and kids alike. I think the girls were really surprised to see how art isn’t just a painting on a wall or a drawing in a sketchbook.

We bought the girls sketchbooks and colored pencils so they could draw at the museum if they were inspired, or they could simply write how they felt about a piece that they saw. I was excited that they really got into it:

Kendall and Jordan also got introduced to some of our favorite artists – Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Wassily Kandinsky!
Learning about Warhol …

Intrigued by Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog” …
koons_balloondog
Inspired by Kandinsky!

After exploring the museum, we walked around to the back, and noticed that the Happy Happy artist also had another similar exhibition that allowed the public to participate in!

The girls were really impressed by this, and we checked out all the random objects people incorporated into the piece:

All that art worked up our appetites, so we decided to hit up Canter’s to show Kendall & Jordan how all the cool kids do lunch in L.A.!

Matzo Ball Soup, Pickles and Bagel Chips … yep, we’re at one of the best Jewish Delis ever!

We were feeling good after lunch, so it was finally time to check out some fossils and Ice Age skeletons at the La Brea Tar Pits …

Once inside, there was lots of cool stuff to see – including lots of bones! Just a few of the monsters we saw …

They even have real volunteers in the Paleontology Lab cleaning up the bones and fossils right in front of you! The museum said that after all this time, they finally found a Woolly Mammoth with tusks intact. This is the very first time they have been able to salvage a full Mammoth! Inside the lab, they are calling him “Zed”. Here is part of Zed’s tusks:

Pretty cool stuff:

Everyone enjoyed the visit, but the girls were surprised at how strong the smell was. Here is Kendall’s summary:

And finally, the perfect end to a perfect day – we made a stop at Sprinkles for Kendall & Jordan’s first “original” gourmet cupcake. Only the best for our girls!

Check out the album for more awesome pics!

Kendall and Jordan visit
August 2009

Tomorrow’s agenda: Another big day out with Mikayla & Ethan!

LACMA Day!

Last Sunday, Ed & I finally made it up to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) to see two exhibits we were both really excited about. I wanted to catch the Vanity Fair Portrait exhibition, and Ed was really excited about the Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures exhibit.

lacma_germany
The Two Germanys exhibit was really great. Basically, it compared and contrasted East & West German art & culture from after WWII up until the wall came down. You know how obsessed Ed is with all things German and history related, so you know this was right up his alley! I thought the exhibition was incredible. To look back and have this visual documentation of how different these two parts of the same country were, both emotionally & culturally, was just mind-blowing. Big kudos to the curator on this one.

lacma_elevator

The other really neat thing about this exhibit was that it is inside the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM). That’s right folks, LACMA’s got a “contemporary” building now – watch out! This is great news, because we love us some Contemporary art. We are very happy about the new direction LACMA is going in and can’t wait to see what they have next! The above photo is a picture of the giant elevator inside the building. The elevator was done by Barbara Kruger, who is one of the most intriguing artists to me as of late. Of course, she does have a graphic design background and her work is done in red, black and white … so I suppose it all makes sense! At any rate, the new BCAM building houses a ton of 3-D works, including a bunch by Jeff Koons, some Warhol, Ruscha, Lichtenstein and other modern art heavy-hitters.

Outside BCAM is a really cool installation of a ton of different lampposts! It looks awesome in person, and it is tough to really capture it, but we tried:

(Be sure to check out our album to see all of the photos!)

lacma_vf
On to the Vanity Fair exhibit … so exciting! I could look at photos all day – and when you add photos that appeared in magazines to the mix, I am all over it! For those of you familiar with Vanity Fair, you know about all of the artistic, editorial and culturally significant work that has graced their pages. We saw everything – a photo of Frieda Kahlo & Diego Rivera way back in the ’30s, to Demi Moore’s controversial naked-preggo shot in the ’90s! There were many more photos of course, the exhibit spanned from 1913-present. Did you know that Vanity Fair existed from 1913-1936 and then merged with Vogue? It came back in 1983 separate from Vogue again. I didn’t know that! Anyway, the exhibit was fascinating!

Finally, an added bonus was that LACMA is temporarily housing 4 BMW Art Cars. Basically, over the years, BMW has given cars to various artists to do with what they wish. The 4 cars on display were done by Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Of course, we had to see them! They were only in town for two weeks, and they have been traveling the world showing in Korea, India and Russia. Even though the two of us are huge Warhol fans, we actually were the least impressed by his car:

We actually thought Rauschenberg’s car was the most interesting, and it was cool to see how his collage-style translated in paint all over a vehicle!

All in all, it was a fantastic day. Do yourself a favor and get out to LACMA soon! We can’t wait to see what they have in store for us over the next year! Click on the thumbnail below to check out the album. More fun pics of art cars & lampposts! :)

LACMA – Vanity Fair/Two Germanys