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.

Assorted Updates

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Over the last month or two we have seen more than the usual number of items in the press that tie into places we have visited recently. Here is a sampling:

La Brea Tarpits History. The Los Angeles Times ran a retrospective article, A mammoth move to the tar pits, on November 1, 2015 (November 2 print edition), pulling from coverage they did in 1967 explaining the history of the outdoor mammoth sculptures in and around the large tar lake in Hancock Park. The article included several striking photos of the sculptures being transported and put in place. The famous fiberglass mammoths at the La Brea tar pits have kept watch over Wilshire Boulevard for five decades. But few who gaze at the tourist attraction know how the prehistoric “creatures” got there. It turns out the first one got a lift from a 1958 Volkswagen.

Urban Planners Give Olvera Street a Shout Out. Also in the Los Angeles Times, we saw an article reporting on Olvera Street’s grand honor, namely national recognition as a “great street,” based on architectural features, accessibility, functionality, and community involvement. Downtown’s historic Olvera Street, one of the oldest streets in Los Angeles, was named this week as one of the country’s top five “Great Streets” by the American Planning Assn. The brick pedestrian street “is a place where visitors can get a taste of Mexican culture and a sense of the history that still stands preserved in the buildings and plazas that surround the street,” the association said in its designation.

Everybody Loves Vermeer. The Vermeer painting we loved so much when we saw it at the Timken Museum in San Diego — Woman in Blue Reading a Letter — has moved on, this time to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, where it will be on display just until December 1. NPR ran this story about the exhibition.

Timken Acquires New Art. Not content to rest on its laurels after the Vermeer and Raphael special exhibitions, the Timken Museum has purchased a painting, Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco Zurbaran. The San Diego Union Tribune reported on the acquisition in an article in its October 30, 2015 online edition (November 1 print): The Timken Museum of Art has purchased Zurbarán’s 1635 masterpiece “Saint Francis in Meditation,” the first acquisition in a decade for the 50-year-old Balboa Park institution and the second Zurbarán acquired by a San Diego museum this year.

Hammer Museum Acquires More Room to Spread Out. Just after we had been on our most recent visit to the Hammer Museum in Westwood, we saw an article in the Los Angeles Times, More space, more room for art, which appeared online October 26, 2015 (October 27 in the print edition). The Hammer Museum at UCLA is expanding its footprint in Westwood, taking over five floors of the Occidental Petroleum office tower that will give the contemporary art institution more than 30% additional exhibition and administrative space. Until recently, the Hammer had leased its space from Occidental. Officials at the Hammer and UCLA said Monday that the expansion is part of a recent real estate deal in which the university has become the Hammer’s new landlord. UCLA said it has acquired a full city block of property from Occidental that includes the office tower and the museum building, both of which had belonged to the oil company. The acquisition also includes the 634-space underground parking garage.

Skirball — Manzanar

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Skirball Cultural Center
November 7, 2015
Sepulveda Pass

We took Margaret to see two special and related exhibitions: Manzanar: The War Time Photographs of Ansel Adams, and Citizen 13660: The Art of Miné Okubo. Both exhibitions run through February 21, 2016.

Skirball_Manzanar

The Manzanar exhibition, offered in association with the Japanese American National Museum, is centered on photographs taken by Ansel Adams during World War II at the Manzanar internment camp in the Owens Valley. The exhibit also features work of two other photographers, Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake. We signed up for the docent led tour of the exhibit and learned a great deal about the background of all three photographers.

Lange’s work was commissioned by the government but turned out to be too stark and realistic for the authorities. Her photos were suppressed at the time, buried in government archives and only released several decades later. Adams went to the camp later and was given a better reception, in part perhaps because of his acquaintance with the camp commander. Also, his focus was more on the everyday life of the inhabitants, and less on the grim aspects of their life in the camp. Adams published a book of those photos in 1944 while the war was still going on, Born Free and Equal, and through it he criticized the government’s policy of relocating Japanese-Americans to the camps. The entire book can be seen online at the Library of Congress website. The third photographer whose work is displayed in the exhibit is Toyo Miyatake, a Japanese American who was himself incarcerated during the war. Although cameras were not allowed in the camp, he smuggled in a lens and film holder and managed to construct a camera which he used to document life inside the camp.

The exhibit also contains other artifacts from the time, including anti-Japanese propaganda, pamphlets put out by the Society of Friends protesting the relocation and internment policies, and everyday objects from the Manzanar camp, such as the camp newspaper and high school yearbook. Several videos and other displays explain the controversies that arose with the government questionnaires camp inhabitants were required to fill out, including key questions about whether they would fight for the United States and renounce loyalty to the Emperor of Japan.

We next went on to the exhibit Citizen 13660, featuring the art of Miné Okubo. She was a Japanese American artist who studied in Europe. She came home to the United States after World War II broke out and was soon caught up in the forced relocation and internment. She sketched scenes of her experience from throughout her journey: from Europe, back to the U.S. hearing the news of Pearl Harbor, then at the Tanforan transfer station in San Bruno, and then at the Topaz camp in Utah to which she and one of her brothers were sent. In 1946 she published a book, Citizen 13660, containing those sketches together with narrative explanations. Today we might call her book a graphic novel. It is an important first person witness to the entire relocation and camp experience. We bought a copy in the museum gift shop which Meredith is currently reading. She promised to pass it along to Margaret, who expressed interest in it.

We then spent a little time in the museum’s permanent collection, Vision and Values, about the Jewish experience through history and particularly in America. The area has been re-organized since we last visited it. We enjoyed the display cases on life stages and also on religious holidays.

We ate lunch at the museum restaurant, Zeidler’s. The food there is consistently excellent, and the prices are reasonable for what they serve. Margaret and Meredith each had cheese blintzes; Bob had the salmon burger. Both dishes were served with ample sides of fresh fruit.

The Skirball is just one of three museums in Los Angeles which participates in the Bank of America Museums on Us program. On the first full weekend of each month, Bank of America debit or credit card holders can get in for free. Regular adult admission is $10 for adults. Parking is free.

We skipped our usual Starbucks stop and had our coffee break at the Skirball’s snack bar, then took Margaret home and rushed back to San Diego. We wanted to get home early, to be there when our middle daughter brought us the latest addition to our household, Casey, a mellow and friendly cat whose foster owner felt he would be happier in a home where he is the only cat.

Casey_with_Meredith

Hammer Museum — Landscape Painting

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Hammer Museum
Westwood
October 24, 2015

We did not expect to go back to the Hammer Museum so soon; we had last been here in August. But we were intrigued by Mike Boehm’s article which we saw in the Los Angeles Times on October 10, Brush with Conflict or Stroke of Genius?, about the Canadian landscape artist Lawren Harris. A follow up article appeared in the Times the day we went to the exhibit.

Hammer_Harris

The Harris paintings were quite striking. Although they are landscapes, they are somewhat abstract. There are echoes of art deco in them. A great range of Canadian geography was represented, from Lake Superior to Baffin Island to the Rocky Mountains. It reminded us of our trip to Canada last year, although we had stayed in urban areas of Ontario, but the exhibit inspired us, and perhaps we will go back to see some wilder places in the future. The Harris exhibit at the Hammer runs through January 24, 2016.

We toured the other special exhibitions, including three that were in small galleries: Avery Singer; Njideka Akunyili Crosby; and Jessica Jackson Hutchins. We enjoyed the intricate details and shapes and perspective of the paintings in the Singer exhibit. We also liked the collages by Crosby and Hutchins’ use of ceramics. We then went on to a larger exhibition of Frances Starks’ works. She uses quite a variety of different media, and there were several pieces we liked. We were most entertained by a three-dimensional piece: a black dress on which an old-fashioned rotary dial telephone face had been affixed. Margaret and Bob posed in front of it, with Margaret holding out a hand to make it appear she was dialing the phone, although of course she was not actually touching the art.

Hammer_phone

We ate lunch in the museum café and were all pleased with our food. Margaret had a good appetite, which was nice to see.

Museum admission is free. Parking on Saturday costs a flat $3 charge. Wheelchair accessibility is generally good, except that the doors into galleries are heavy and do not have automatic opening mechanisms. With two of us assisting Margaret, that is not an issue, but a wheelchair patron visiting alone would have to rely on staff and other patrons to open doors.

We did have a few odd moments in the museum parking garage when leaving. Margaret at first thought we were at the wrong car and did not want to get in it. We did finally convince her it was our car.

We then met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen for coffee, and we gave Margaret a book of cartoons from the 1940’s that she had remembered recently, Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley, by Crockett Johnson. She was very pleased with the book, and Meredith read through the first chapter with her.

Fowler Museum — Native American Art

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Fowler Museum
UCLA Westwood
October 10, 2015

Fowler_group

We took Margaret to the Fowler Museum to see two new Native American exhibitions. We first saw Zuni World, a series of paintings displayed around the atrium. They were created by contemporary Zuni artists and feature traditional places, symbols, and subjects. We enjoyed the balance and colors and the fine details. Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon were each depicted in several paintings, reminding Margaret of visits she had made to those sites. This exhibit will run through January 10, 2016.

We then went into a gallery featuring textile art of the Southwest, mostly made in the period 1860-1880. This exhibit, Treasured Textiles from the American Southwest: the Durango Collection, was written up by Jessica Galt in the Los Angeles Times the same day we went, although we did not see the article until after we had been there. The majority of those pieces were blankets woven by Hopis and Navajos. Different designs were represented, and the display showed the evolution of designs over time. We were impressed with how vibrant the red pieces still are. The final pieces in the gallery were woven by Hispanic artists. Interspersed with the textile pieces were some historic photographs providing context, and there were good explanatory notes with each piece. This exhibit likewise runs through January 10, 2016.

Our final stop at the Fowler was a room displaying ancient Colombian pieces from the Magdalena Valley, both ceramic and metal, from about 900 to 1600 A.D. These pieces will be on exhibit through January 3, 2016. We did not spend much time in the permanent collection on this visit. It contains some excellent anthropological pieces from around the world, and also the splendid Francis E. Fowler, Jr. silver collection.

We had lunch before the museum visit, at an Italian café in the Anderson business school, Il Tramezzino, just a few buildings over from the museum. We each had a panini and enjoyed our meal. There were very few people in the restaurant when we arrived at noon, but as we finished a number of students crowded in. The restaurant is up a level from the museum, so we had to go into a classroom building and take an elevator up. We blundered into what turned out to be a service elevator letting us out in a kitchen, but the staff were quite nice and showed us the way through the kitchen out onto the Anderson plaza. After we ate we found the passenger elevator for our return trip, and a fellow passenger made sure we were oriented in the right direction to head back toward the Fowler.

Admission to the Fowler is free. There is a donation box at the entrance for those who wish to contribute. We parked in a nearby underground garage and paid $5 to park. There was ample parking for our Saturday visit; we do not know what the weekday parking situation may be.

Fowler_Zuni_video

Margaret was fairly talkative and alert at the beginning of our outing, and chatted with us about family over lunch. We reminded her that her oldest grandchild had a birthday coming up the following week, and helped her pick out a card in the museum gift shop. Margaret grew tired as the afternoon went on and was struggling a bit for words at the museum, but she did enjoy the videos there. The Zuni exhibit included a video explaining the origin of the art project, and showing several of the artists at work. She also watched two short videos in the permanent collection, one about potlatch ceremonies in British Columbia and the other about Hopi culture in the Southwest. She perked up a bit and joined in the conversation when we met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen for coffee at the end of the day. The transfers from wheelchair to car and back remain hard for her, and we are now planning our outings so we can eat at or near whatever museum we visit, and not have to make an additional transfer. For smaller places that do not have a café on site, we may bring a picnic or get sandwiches to go.

Springfield Armory

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Springfield Armory
Springfield, Massachusetts
September 23, 2015

We spent a week on vacation back in Massachusetts, visiting family. While there we visited the Springfield Armory with our son-in-law. What originated as the Springfield Arsenal, a military supply depot, became known as Springfield Armory in 1794 when on-site small arms manufacturing was approved by President Washington. From 1794 until 1968, the facility was an armament factory run by the U.S. government, and it was famous for its rifles. One of the main buildings is preserved as a museum run by the National Park Service.

We first watched a video covering the history of the armory, which nicely set the context for the displays. The museum is divided into two areas, one explaining the development of the industrial processes and key inventions used at the armory, and the other section showcasing representative guns from the 18th through 20th centuries. In between is a large gift shop area. The entire museum is housed on a single floor within a red brick room which was one of the assembly shops for the armory when it was in business.

Springfield_lathe

Around 1819 Thomas Blanchard invented a lathe which was capable of shaping irregular surfaces. This lathe dramatically reduced the time needed to make the stock of a rifle, and other industrial advances soon followed. The era of individually crafted guns gave way to mass production of guns with interchangeable parts. The Springfield Armory manufactured guns used in every U.S. war from the War of 1812 to the Vietnam War, and production progressed from flintlock muskets to M14’s.

Springfield_guns

The greatest number of employees at the Armory, mostly civilians, worked there in World War II from 1941-45 when over 14,000 men and women labored day and night fabricating the semi-automatic M-1 Garand rifle. The original Armory stretched over two city blocks in what was known as the “hill shops,” and this is the area we visited. Also associated with the Armory were the “water shops” located about a mile south on the Mill River, where heavy metal forging and machining was done as well as gun stock shaping. That is now a privately-owned industrial site, and we did not see it. We were told that although it is closed to the public the buildings are still there and can be viewed from the outside.

The park is open free of charge, including the museum. There is no on-site restaurant; we went out to dinner after our visit. Parking is free in front of the museum, and the facility is wheelchair-accessible.

Getty Center — Bronzes

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Getty Center
Sepulveda Pass
September 13, 2015

We took Margaret to the Getty Center to see the special exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World. The exhibition runs through November 1, 2015. The Getty has gathered many bronze sculptures of the Hellenistic period, from 323 to 31 B.C., some on loan from museums in the Mediterranean world. The exhibition presents a wonderful sampling of Hellenistic art of portraiture and the human form. Each piece was accompanied with a good write up explaining where it was found, when and how it was made, and what the salient details are to look for in it. The museum’s website offers an excellent gallery of images of the pieces in the exhibition. We were both very impressed with the seated bronze statue of the tired boxer in the center of the second area of the exhibition space. Margaret liked the two very similar statues of athletes in the middle room. Their large size and fine detail make each statue an outstanding piece in its own right, but they are also interesting because they are clearly made from the same master model.

Getty_bronzes_plaza

After the bronzes we took a short walk through the exhibit about Renaissance artist Andrea Del Sarto and his workshop. We caught that exhibit on its final day. It was interesting because it included both drawings and paintings, giving an idea how the masterworks were put together.

At the end of our stay we took a stroll through the 19th century European painting area of the permanent collection, including the Impressionist paintings. Bob likes the Sisley landscape depicting the road from Versailles to St. Germain; Meredith never tires of Monet’s painting of snow dusted wheat stacks in the morning sun.

We ate in the museum café, a food court style cafeteria that is less expensive than the museum restaurant upstairs. Margaret had a salad, and we each had Mexican dishes. The food was good. There was not much of a crowd. Perhaps the Sunday attendance is lighter than Saturday.

Admission to the Getty Center is free. The only cost to get in is $15 per car to park. If one arrives by public transport, then there is no cost.

Getty_hike

We had a bit of an adventure leaving. The trams between the parking garage and museum had broken down. We had the choice of taking a shuttle bus or walking down the hill. We chose to walk. That is not an option we have ever seen offered before so wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. It took us a little more than 15 minutes, and the walk gave us a chance to enjoy the views out over the pass.

California Science Center

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California Science Center
Exposition Park
September 6, 2015

We took Margaret to the California Science Center, to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, on its final weekend there. The Science Center is in Exposition Park, as is the Natural History Museum, near USC and the Coliseum. Exposition Park as at the outer range of as far as we like to drive when we go up to see her, but we had been looking forward to this exhibit for months, and did not begrudge the extra driving.

Science_ctr_deadsea

Admission to the permanent galleries at the Science Center is free, but the center charges for special exhibitions and the IMAX theater. The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was separately ticketed, as was the companion IMAX movie, Jerusalem 3-D. We had purchased tickets online, and we were glad we did; the Scrolls exhibit was sold out that day.

We arrived early enough to have lunch before the movie. The café has expanded from what it was last time we visited. There is now a grill run by Trimana, and several other food court options as well. Service was quick, and the food was good.

We then went on to the IMAX theater, where Meredith’s sister Kathleen and our youngest daughter and her boyfriend all joined us. The movie had some stunning aerial footage of Jerusalem today, and interesting narration and interior shots of the various holy sites, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Good production values all around, and the film was narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch.

After we saw the movie, we had a gap until our timed entry to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. None of us had seen the retired space shuttle Endeavour, so we went over to the pavilion that houses it. That area is separately ticketed, but it was included with our tickets for the Dead Sea Scrolls so we were able to walk right in. (For visitors who are not purchasing IMAX or special exhibit admission, the museum charges $2 for admission to the Endeavour pavilion and requires timed entry tickets on the weekend, but not on weekdays.) The website gives information about Endeavour reservations. The first area has material about the history of the space shuttle missions generally and Endeavour in particular. There is a simulated Mission Control center with a rotating series of videos. Margaret and Meredith watched the video of the final launch of the Endeavour, while the rest of our group circulated around looking at other parts of the exhibit. We were all intrigued and amused by the zero gravity toilet, displayed in a glass case. There is a very interesting video of the final journey of the newly retired Endeavour, through the streets of Los Angeles to its new home. Then we went on in to see the shuttle itself; it is a quite impressive sight! Bob spoke with a volunteer who had samples of the various materials that make up different areas of the outer surface of the shuttle and was able to touch them. (Visitors are forbidden to touch the shuttle itself.)

From the space shuttle we went on to the third-floor special exhibition space. We still had a little time to spend before we could get in to the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we looked through the transportation exhibits on that floor.

The first part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit consisted of a timeline, with representative artifacts spanning a broad time period of the history of what is now Israel, from prehistory until the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Next there was a room with a short video describing the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and explaining what the scrolls consist of. We then went into the main room. Fragments of the scrolls were displayed in a circular area in the center of the room under glass, with dim lighting to protect the fragments. Translations and explanations of each fragment were displayed next to the cases. Around the edge of the room were displayed a number of ancient artifacts contemporary to the Scrolls, such as pottery, glass, and mosaics.

Even with the timed entry, the room was crowded. The patrons around the central display moved slowly and made room for newcomers only grudgingly, and then we found that Margaret could not see the scroll fragments from her wheelchair. She was too weak to stand and look down at them as other visitors were doing, so we took turns showing her around the outer area of the main room instead. After that room, we passed through a small room with a stone which had fallen from near the southwestern corner of the Temple when the Romans destroyed it in A.D. 70. We found the experience quite moving, to actually see and touch a stone from the Temple. Paper and pen were there for visitors to write notes and leave them, as visitors do at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Nearby there was a video screen displaying a live feed from the Western Wall. We passed fairly quickly through the final room, which had some hands-on activities.

We finished our visit as we began it, down in the café, this time enjoying some coffee and chatting with the rest of the group before we all headed our separate ways home.

As noted above, admission to most of the science center is free. The permanent galleries include many hands-on activities and are popular with children. Parking is $10 per car and can be in short supply when the Coliseum is being used for a USC football game. Visitors are encouraged to use public transport, and our daughter and her boyfriend used the Metro. The permanent collections of the museum are adequately accessible for wheelchair patrons. We did find some access challenges on this visit though. When we first arrived, the main visitor elevator was out of service, so we had to wait in a long line to use the service elevator in a back hall. Then we found the layout of the Dead Sea scrolls display did not allow for good viewing of the Scrolls themselves from a wheelchair, as noted above. There was limited disability seating in the IMAX theater, and Meredith was only able to get a seat next to Margaret by asking another patron to move.