Travel Through Time at Three Los Angeles Museums

on Nov 17, 2024

By Jim Farber

If you have ever wanted to go time-traveling, this is the moment and Los Angeles is the place. Within an easy stroll's distance along Wilshire Boulevard it is possible to visit three museums that can transport you to the prehistoric past of woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, then beam you to Hollywood's vision of a digital dystopian future where cyborgs battle humans.

At the La Brea Tar Pits Museum you can walk among the skeletal remains of long-extinct creatures and see them come to life in spectacular dioramas. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is renowned for its extensive array of exhibition galleries. Finally, you can enter the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and explore the magical realm of the movies from both sides of the camera.

Currently (and well into 2025) all three museums are also featuring exhibits that fit the theme of the Getty's expansive festival -- PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

For millennia liquid asphalt in the form of tar oozed its way to the surface and formed pools on land that would eventually become Rancho La Brea. But it wasn't until 1901 that geologist W.W. Orcutt, working for the Union Oil Co., discovered that the pools contained a very different treasure -- layer upon layer of bones. There were the prehistoric mammals that roamed 10,000 to 20,000 years ago and became trapped in the tar that preserved their remains as well as shells dating back 20,000,000 years to the Cretaceous period, when an ocean covered the land.

Which is why, to this day, the La Brea Tar Pits remain one of the greatest prehistoric fossil excavation sites in the world.

As the creative jumping-off (or digging-in) point, artist Mark Dion worked side by side with the museum's paleontologists in the pits learning to unearth, preserve and categorize their findings. His exhibition for PST ART is simply called, "Excavations." You might call it serio-scientific, as Dion blends the work of "real science" with playful satire where detailed drawings of mammal skeletons commonly found in the tar pits are scientifically labeled with the names of local scientists, artists, historical figures and landmarks: the David Hockney femur and Ed Ruscha jawbone, for example.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has not one but multiple exhibitions linked to PST ART. "We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art" explores the science, art and cosmology of color in Mesoamerica with a vast and informative array of ancient artifacts. "Mapping the Infinite: Cosmologies Across Cultures" covers depictions of the cosmos over centuries and was created in collaboration with scientists at the Carnegie Observatories and the Griffith Observatory. Josiah McElheny's elegant "Island Universe" consists of large star-burst light sculptures designed to capture the concept of the multiverse. In contrast, "Digital Witness: Revolution in Design, Photography and Film" connects the digital dots of how an emerging computer-driven technology changed how we see the world.

There is no better place to end your time-travel tour than the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and its PST ART exhibit, "Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema." No more standing in front of replicas of woolly mammoths or admiring pre-Columbian figurines. "Cyberpunk" takes you inside the movies. It is an immersive experience, an all-surrounding leap to a dysfunctional future Earth (and very often LA). You're a gamer in "Tron," a "Blade Runner" hunting down "skin jobs," threatened by "The Terminator" telling you, "I'll be back."

There is also an exhibit featuring iconic props and the elaborately conceived background paintings that make these possible futures come to life.

If there is anything disappointing about "Cyberpunk," it's that there isn't more and more and more. Welcome to the grid. Take the red pill! Hasta la vista, baby!

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WHEN YOU GO

PST ART: Art & Science Collide: www.pst.art

La Brea Tar Pits and Museum: www.tarpits.org

Los Angeles County Museum of Art: www.lacma.org

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: www.academymuseum.org

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Jim Farber is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.