Monthly Archives: December 2015

San Fernando Mission

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Mission San Fernando Rey de España
Mission Hills
December 26, 2015

We took Margaret to see the San Fernando Mission, founded in 1797, one of 21 missions established by the Franciscans in Alta California, i.e. what is now the state of California. (Missions were established in Baja California as well.)

SanFernando_grand_sala

This visit brought back memories of a week long road trip we took in 1999 with Margaret and our three girls, up to Sonoma and back down to San Diego, visiting all of the missions. Here are our three daughters back then, outside the San Fernando Mission:

Girls At Mission San Fernando 1999

As anyone who grew up in California knows, the missions were an integral part of the Spanish colonial era and of the history of early California generally. Nowadays the Southern California missions are generally well restored; some of the Northern California missions have been mostly obliterated. After the Mexican government secularized the missions, confiscating them from the Church, the mission buildings fell into disrepair. The adobe walls of some of them dissolved after opportunistic neighbors took the roof tiles for other projects. The San Fernando buildings have been well restored.

The mission church at San Fernando is an active place of worship, and there was a ceremony going on the day we visited — a quinceañera we think — so we were unable to see the church this time. We were able to see the museum rooms and gardens though.

Several of the buildings have rooms with historical displays in them. There are some informative displays, such as rooms arranged with period appropriate furnishings, and also some workshop rooms showing blacksmith and carpenter tools, a loom, and a saddle making display. Many religious artifacts are displayed, including both liturgical items like vestments and art such as statues, and there is an entire “Madonna Room” given over to iconography of the Virgin Mary. Some of the museum display cases have items which, although interesting in themselves, are not particularly appropriate to the mission. In the first couple of museum rooms, for instance, there were a number of Native American baskets on display. Those baskets included some very nice pieces, but few of them were from the local area.

Bob Hope is buried on the grounds. As he was dying, his wife Dolores asked him where he wanted to be buried, and he is reported to have said “Surprise me.” In any event, this is the resting place she chose for him. The thing Margaret most enjoyed about our visit was a pair of display cases featuring Bob Hope memorabilia. (These are tucked, for some inexplicable reason, in the workshop area.) Margaret even stood up, to see the photo of Bob with Dolores on the top shelf.

Admission to the mission grounds is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors. Most of the grounds and rooms are on a level, so wheelchair access is pretty good.

Margaret asked after her grandchildren as soon as we picked her up, and we brought her up to speed on family news over lunch.

Petersen’s Grand Reopening

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Petersen Automotive Museum
Wilshire Boulevard “Miracle Mile”
December 12, 2015

The Petersen Automotive Museum has just reopened after a long (14 month) remodeling project. We love old cars and so does Margaret, so we headed for the Miracle Mile to check out the new Petersen. We had been there with her at least twice before, most recently on Mustang Weekend.

The exterior has been totally redone and is the subject of some controversy in architectural circles: some love it, some, including Los Angeles Times’ architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, hate it, calling it happily tasteless and aggressively bad. Another critic called it an atrocity. The wall is red, and it is encircled by silver metallic undulating bands of metal, giving the feel of motion. On the whole, we liked it. We have to agree with Petersen board president Bruce Meyer, who told the Los Angeles Times “Before, nobody knew we were here. Now, nobody’s ever going to drive by this building and not know we’re here.”

You can get a little sense of the exterior, both before and after, from the photos below, the top one taken on this visit and the lower one taken in 2012:

Petersen_exterior_new

Petersen_2012

The interior of the museum repeats the red color on some accent walls, with complementary white, gray, and silver walls and carpeting.

The staff at the ticket desk suggested we start on the third floor and work our way down. The third floor kept us captivated for quite a while. It is a large open gallery with cars from all eras. The display starts with a beautiful replica of the first automobile ever built, in 1886 by Benz. Meredith was interested to see the rare Davis Divan on display. Its restoration had been the subject of a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. She is on the museum’s email list and had received periodic updates about the car, so it was nice to see it “in the flesh.” There is also a gorgeous 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air on display, which brought back memories for Margaret and Meredith of their family car in the 1960’s, a white 1955 Bel Air. Most cars cannot be touched, but we took turns sitting in an antique Ford.

Petersen_Ford_Bob

Meredith asked Margaret, what was the first car she ever drove? She said it was her mother’s 1949 Ford, and smiled at the memory.

One entire wall of the third floor gallery displays cars from movies and television shows, with film clips running in the back showing the cars on the screen. They were a varied group, including (among many other vehicles) the Jaguar and Aston Martin from the latest James Bond movie; the Batmobile from Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992); the Pontiac Aztec from Breaking Bad; and the Volkswagen bus from Little Miss Sunshine.

We had lingered so long on the third floor, that we decided to save the second floor for another day. It includes exhibits about the automotive industry, manufacturing, high-performance road cars, hot rods and custom cars, alternative power vehicles, and motorcycles. It also includes the Discovery Center with driving simulators.

We finished our visit with a stroll through the first floor galleries. The theme of this floor is artistry, and a large collection of the most beautiful classic luxury cars is displayed here, all perfectly restored. They are truly gorgeous.

Admission to the museum is $15 for adults, $12 for students or seniors, and $7 for youth. Bob was given free admission as an educator with his school ID card. Parking is $12 for all day.

Wheelchair accessibility is adequate to meet ADA requirements but is not outstanding. Visitors with a handicapped placard can park in designated spots on the ground floor of the garage, if any are available. (All were full the day we visited, but we had parked in the Page Museum lot to be closer to Johnnie’s for lunch, so were not inconvenienced.) If you have to park on the upper floor of the garage, be aware there is still no elevator! That omission was a missed opportunity in the renovation. Within the museum there are elevators, of course, but galleries and bathrooms have heavy doors without handicapped push button openings. That is not an issue for us, with two able-bodied people helping Margaret, but could be more of a problem for another visitor.

Petersen_Johnnys

The museum restaurant is not yet open; it is scheduled to open in April 2016. We had lunch before the museum visit at our favorite place on Wilshire, Johnnie’s New York Pizzeria. Our youngest daughter joined us for lunch, and we all enjoyed both the visit and the food.

Angel’s Attic

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Angel’s Attic
Santa Monica
November 27, 2015

We were looking for something new to see, so searched through a museum guide book we had purchased recently in the gift shop at the Page Museum: Museum Companion to Los Angeles, by Borislav Stanic. This book is a wonderful resource, listing many small museums in the area we were completely unaware of before.

Museum_companion

We settled on the Angels Attic, a small museum in Santa Monica. It occupies an old two-story Victorian house on Colorado Avenue. The collection includes an impressive array of antique doll houses, and also a number of dolls and other antique toys. The items on display are just a portion of the collection assembled by Jackie McMahan, heiress to the McMahan furniture fortune, who started the museum in the 1970’s together with her friend Eleanor LaVove. We were the only visitors there, and the curator gave us a tour, explaining the background and features of many of the pieces on display. In addition to the antique pieces, there are two intricate modern pieces commissioned for the museum: a miniature of the palace at Versailles, and a miniature house in the shape of a boot. (The latter made us think of the rhyme “there was an old lady who lived in a shoe”.) The miniatures were not limited simply to houses; for instance, that was also a miniature butcher shop and a French farm. The doll displays illustrated nicely developments over time, with 18th century dolls very different in style from the Victorian ones.

The wheelchair lift, located in the rear, was not working the day we visited, possibly a victim of the next door neighbor’s electrical work. The curator insisted on helping us lift Margaret, in the wheelchair, up the steps, and we were able to see the entire ground floor of the museum.

Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors; payment is by check or cash, not credit card. There are a couple of public parking lots in the area and a few metered spaces on the street, but no museum parking lot.

We ate lunch at Fritto Misto, an Italian restaurant just half a block from the museum. The food was excellent. Bob had lasagna, and Meredith had black and white spaghettini. Margaret had the soup and pasta salad combo, and enjoyed her clam chowder very much.