Tag Archives: Skirball

To Boldly Go

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Skirball Cultural Center
Sepulveda Pass
Los Angeles
October 30, 2021

We trekked up to Los Angeles the day before Halloween to see Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds at the Skirball.  We met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen in person for the first time since the start of the pandemic.  This was only our second indoor museum visit since March 2020.  It still feels a little awkward, but also a pleasure returning to old routines.

We have always enjoyed Star Trek, in its various incarnations, and we enjoyed this exhibition.  At the start there is a large timeline on the wall, showing the timing of various events in the fictional Star Trek future.  Excellent short videos are spread out in spots around the gallery, which include comments by actors and writers from the several Star Trek series, along with other commentators.

The display cases throughout the gallery house items such as spaceship models used in filming, costumes, set pieces, and props.

The original Star Trek series enjoys pride of place, but all of the TV series and films are covered.  The exhibition also puts the optimism of that first series in context, against the backdrop of what was happening in the 1960’s – the Vietnam War, space exploration, and civil rights protests.

The Star Trek exhibition has timed admission.  We arrived a little early and looked through the permanent collection, Visions and Values, for a while.  We each liked the outdoor reproduction of the third century synagogue at Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee.

Meredith splurged at the gift shop, then we enjoyed a late lunch with Kathleen at Zeidler’s, the museum cafe.  The food was excellent, as always. Zeidler’s is our favorite museum restaurant.

The Star Trek exhibition will run through February 20, 2022.  Admission requires advance reservations, and COVID protocols are in place.  Visitors must show proof of vaccination, along with matching photo identification.  Parking is free and accessibility is good.

The Los Angeles Times’ review of the exhibition can be read here.

Paul Simon: Words, Music, and More

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Skirball Cultural Center
September 2, 2017
Sepulveda Pass
Los Angeles

Time, time, time
See what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
— “A Hazy Shade of Winter”

We made it to the Skirball museum for the final weekend of the Paul Simon: Words and Music exhibition. We met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen who lives in Los Angeles to see it together.

We had prepared ahead of time by listening to lots of Paul Simon’s music the week before, both solo and Simon & Garfunkel recordings. The biggest hits have always been things we listen to fairly often, but it was fun to get reacquainted with some of the songs we hear less often.

Words and Music is a traveling exhibition created by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum. The primary special exhibit room at the Skirball was filled with photos, artifacts, and videos. The exterior wall was arranged in chronological order, with thematic displays in the center space. Among the many artifacts were Simon’s very first guitar, which his father bought for him for $50, and three of Simon’s Grammys.

The exhibit spans the entire period of Simon’s career up to today and includes a number of videos in which he reflects on what he was doing during each period, and who and what influenced him. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were classmates in school, met in sixth grade, and started singing together as teens. Near the beginning of the exhibition their very first recording contract is displayed, signed on their behalf by their respective parents. They first performed as “Tom and Jerry,” using the stage names Tom Graph (Garfunkel) and Jerry Landis (Simon), to sound more all-American and not distinctly ethnic Jewish.

There were interesting facts and vignettes throughout. We learned that “Mrs. Robinson” had started as “Mrs. Roosevelt.” Simon was working on the song at the same time the duo was working up the sound track for The Graduate, so the name change was both obvious and convenient.

The Skirball had a related exhibit down the hall called the Music Lab. Several machines were set up in that room, and the visitor could experiment, mixing songs, playing on drum pads, and blending rhythm and vocal tracks. Unfortunately, the museum was quite crowded the day we went, and Kathleen found the cacophony in that room unbearable. Meredith listened through headphones to an interesting video in which Simon described how he writes songs. She then left the lab and wandered off in search of her sister. Bob stayed, tried all the machines in the room, and had a great time.

We ate a late lunch at Zeidler’s, the museum restaurant. When we first stopped by, no tables were available. We headed over to browse the permanent exhibition, which is quite interesting and worthwhile. (The Skirball Center is the Jewish cultural center in Los Angeles. The permanent collection spans over 4,000 years of the Jewish experience, from antiquity to modern America.) Then we headed back to the restaurant. The food was very good, as we have found it to be in the past. Zeidler’s is our favorite restaurant museum, and everyone’s visit to the Skirball should include a meal at it.

Parking at the museum is free and ample. Handicapped access is good. The museum participates in Bank of America’s 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.

Labor Day weekend was the end of the Simon exhibit at the Skirball, and it has now closed. The Skirball’s next special exhibitions will be part of the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA cooperative endeavor. Starting on September 14, Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico will open, and then on October 6, Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in LA will open alongside the Brenner exhibit.

Third Blog-iversary

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May 23 marks three years we have been writing this blog. In the first two years most of our entries chronicled outings we took with Meredith’s mother, Margaret. Once she had moved back to Los Angeles, we started a routine of visiting her and taking her out to lunch and then a museum or historic site. Often we finished the visit by meeting up with Meredith’s sister for coffee. After a while we thought, why not write about those trips? It gave us a chance to review the museums and also to write about our interactions with Margaret.

Over the past three years, we have written 85 posts, counting this one. The museum featured most often was the Getty Center in the Sepulveda Pass. Margaret preferred historical and archeological exhibits to art museums, per se; when the Getty featured special exhibitions of that sort we tried to take her to them. Our favorite museum restaurant is Zeidler’s Cafe at the Skirball Museum, also in the Sepulveda Pass.

Margaret passed away in June of last year. Two months ago, on what would have been Margaret’s 80th birthday, Meredith met up with her sister Kathleen and our oldest daughter to scatter Margaret’s ashes. Meredith plans to post a page here, eventually, with photos of Margaret’s life.

What are we doing in Year Four? Going forward, we continue to post as we visit places and things strike our fancy.

  • Meredith plans to be in Tennessee for the total solar eclipse in August and will write an entry about it.
  • We are looking forward to the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA collaboration running from September 2017 through January 2018 at dozens of museums around Southern California. We went to a number of the exhibitions in the original Pacific Standard Time collaboration, which predated our blog, and we will definitely seek out some of these new exhibitions.
  • Time permitting we want to see the Paul Simon exhibition at the Skirball, which is running currently and will be there until September 3, 2017.

If you have any places you want to see written up, mention them in the comments or contact us directly.

Skirball — Baseball

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Skirball Cultural Center
Sepulveda Pass
April 9, 2016

We took Margaret on her first museum outing for nearly three months, since our January visit to the Southwest Museum. All three of us love baseball, so we were pleased that the Skirball has just opened a pair of baseball themed exhibitions.

Skirball_Greenberg

Chasing Dreams: Baseball and Becoming American pays tribute to the American Jews and other immigrants and minorities who played baseball or contributed to it in other roles. Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax feature prominently, as do Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Fernando Valenzuela, and many other ethnic minority players. The exhibit includes many pieces of historic memorabilia, such as jerseys, bats, mitts, baseball cards, among other things. We were impressed by the four baseballs autographed by Sandy Koufax to Walter O’Malley after each of his four no-hitters, including his perfect game. Meredith was puzzling over a large photograph of Hank Greenberg with a Yankee player, wondering who the Yankee was, and Margaret recognized immediately that he was Joe DiMaggio. This exhibition will run through October 30.

Skirball_sakoguchi

In a separate gallery we enjoyed seeing vibrantly colored paintings by artist Ben Sakoguchi, The Unauthorized History of Baseball in 100-Odd Paintings. Each painting is done in the style of the old orange crate labels popular from the 1920s through 1950s. Various different baseball players, personalities, and themes are illustrated, some humorous, others poignant. There is an excellent short video featuring the artist, discussing his work and describing his inspiration. A baker’s dozen of images can be seen on the museum’s website: here. This exhibition runs through October 2.

Both of the baseball exhibitions are included with the museum admission, as is the museum’s permanent collection, Visions and Values, Jewish Life from Antiquity to America. Prices are $12 for general admission; $9 for seniors, students, and children over 12; and $7 for children 2–12. Parking is free and generally ample.

We enjoyed our lunch at Zeidler’s Café, possibly our most favorite in-museum restaurant of all the museums we have visited. Margaret and Bob each had sandwiches; Meredith had the spinach and cheese empanada. Margaret was a little befuddled when presented with her options for side dishes, saying simply “too many choices.” We reminded her that she likes the fresh fruit Zeidler’s serves, so she ordered that, and she particularly enjoyed the pineapple. All the food was tasty, service excellent, and the portions were generous. The cost was reasonable considering the quality of the food and service.

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

Skirball — Films

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Skirball Cultural Center
November 2, 2014
Sepulveda Pass

We took Margaret to see the “Light and Noir” exhibit at the Skirball. For more information about that museum generally, see our post from July 2014. This exhibit was about émigrés and exiles who came from Europe to Hollywood, and about their role in making movies in the 1930s and 40s. It dovetailed nicely with our prior visit to LACMA, with its “Haunted Screens” exhibit about German expressionist filmmakers in the 1920s. (See the immediately preceding post.)

We followed a red carpeted walkway from the main Skirball museum over to its special exhibition space. The hallway was lined with movie posters from Academy award winning movies associated with émigrés and exiles, including for instance The Lost Weekend written by Billy Wilder. The first part of the exhibit had photos from the building of Universal City in 1915. Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal Studios, is a leading example of one of those who emigrated to the United States for better opportunities. The exhibit then shifted from émigrés to those who were exiled from Europe, that is who had to flee Nazi persecution. One display case had immigration papers for a number of well-known Hollywood personalities, including Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, and S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall. There was a whole room given over to Casablanca, a movie whose cast was made up largely of exiles. We knew this from having read the book Round Up The Usual Suspects by Aljean Harmetz some years ago, but we love the movie, so it was fun to watch the film clips and see the rest of the items in that room.

In the main exhibition space there was a clever division, with one side given over to displays about comedy movies made by exiles and émigrés, and the other side given over to noir movies. The comedies included, among others, Harvey and It Started with Eve. The noir side included Mildred Pierce and Sunset Boulevard, another one of our favorites. Looking at the Mildred Pierce display, Margaret commented that she had never liked Joan Crawford. Meredith replied that was probably a common sentiment. Bob, the contrarian, suspects that was not a common sentiment until the biographical movie Mommy Dearest came out, based on the book by Christina Crawford.

The last part of the main exhibition had a section with displays about the Hollywood 10 and the House Committee on Un-American Activities and another section about the émigré salons and social life in Los Angeles.

We then returned to the main part of the museum and toured a related special exhibition about the “noir effect.” That exhibit featured contemporary art, such as paintings and graphic novels, which draw on the noir film genre. One wall had a large photo of a street scene, in front of which the visitor was invited to take photos. We did.

Skirball noir effect

We ate in the museum restaurant, which we have always enjoyed. Lately Margaret has seemed to want quesadillas whenever we go someplace that offers them. Zeidler’s does not. We had joked before we picked her up that maybe she would want a cheese blintz, which is the closest thing to a quesadilla on this menu. Without prompting from us, she did in fact ask for cheese blintzes when she saw them on the menu. She enjoyed them, as did Meredith. The blintzes were served with a large side portion of fresh melon and pineapple slices. Bob had a salmon pastrami sandwich, which he also enjoyed.

The museum was quite busy. In addition to many regular visitors like us, there was also a conference going on and a wedding party on the central terrace. Usually we visit on Saturdays, and we did not recall the museum being this crowded before. This time we went on a Sunday, and perhaps the facility is busier then, since it is not the Sabbath.

Parking is free, and there is a large parking garage. Wheelchair access is easy. The museum participates in the Bank of America Museums on Us program.

Skirball Cultural Center

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Skirball Cultural Center
Sepulveda Pass
June 14, 2014

We took Margaret to the Skirball Center to see the special exhibition of art by Ezra Jack Keats. Keats is best known for his 1962 book The Snowy Day, which won the Caldecott medal. The exhibition was extensive, with art from Keats’ early career as well as pieces from a number of the children’s books he did. Keats grew up in New York City, the son of struggling Jewish immigrants. His art reflects the city he knew and loved. His children’s books were considered groundbreaking when published because they featured children of color, first a Puerto Rican boy in My Dog is Lost, and then an African-American boy in The Snowy Day. The books struck a chord then, and remain popular now, mainly because they have universal appeal and show children simply having fun.

skirball-photo-2032

We have been to the Skirball Center before; we like to visit there when there is a special exhibition of particular interest to us. Our first visit predated Margaret’s move back to Southern California. We went to see a special exhibition on the Golden Age of comic books, recommended by Jerry Robinson, the creator of the Joker.

The Skirball Center is the Jewish cultural center in Los Angeles. It has an excellent permanent collection, spanning over 4,000 years of the Jewish experience from antiquity to modern America. We have seen that exhibit before but did not visit it this time.

The Skirball 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.

The museum has several kid friendly areas. We visited Noah’s Ark this time, which we had not been through before. Entry is included with museum admission but is time-limited, presumably for crowd control purposes. In the vestibule there are display cases with ancient artifacts and a general explanation of the archaeological exploration process. Meredith was intrigued by the display outlining the development of the Hebrew alphabet from earlier Egyptian and Canaanite pictographic writing. The interior of the exhibit is mainly fun, with stylized animals made from recycled material and an extensive Ark play area.

There is a separate archaeological “dig” area up on the roof. Five or six separate sandbox areas contain buried (modern) clay artifacts and simulated stone ruins which children can excavate. We had fun watching several budding young archaeologists dig things up, and we queried them about what they were finding. We then took a quick stroll around the surrounding garden area, had a close encounter with a hummingbird, and looked out over the lily pond.

We ate at Zeidler’s Cafe, the restaurant within the museum. Margaret enjoyed a bowl of mushroom soup, Meredith had a half sandwich / half soup combination, and Bob had the salmon club sandwich with fresh fruit on the side. The food and service were excellent, as has been our experience in the past. Portions are generous without being enormous.

Parking is free for visitors at the Skirball, and their garage has ample space.