1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, CA
The Hollywood horror legend—yes, that Vincent Price—donated his vast personal art collection to East Los Angeles College in 1957, and the museum bearing his name has quietly become one of the most important localized Los Angeles institutions. Located in Monterey Park, it features everything from Japanese prints and impressionist paintings to artefacts from the Ancient Americas, with a specialization in Chicano art. Recent exhibitions have included 93-year-old artist Ofelia Esparza’s large-scale alters, and artist and poet Luis J. Rodriguez’s photos taken of 1960s through 1980s Chicano life in LA. Free to visit and deeply rooted in the East LA community it serves, VPAM is the kind of spot that makes you feel like you actually know the city.
221 S Grand Ave, DTLA, Los Angeles, CA
The Broad is the place for contemporary art’s greatest hits—and that’s not a dig. Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s cruise liner-shaped Downtown landmark houses Edythe Broad and her late husband Eli Broad’s contemporary art collection, and yes, it skews market-driven and blue-chip heavy. But when the hits are Ruscha, Warhol, Basquiat, Koons, Murakami, and Sherman, you’re in good shape. The permanent collection is free and compact enough to breeze through without committing a full day. (Special exhibitions—like an exciting new Yoko Ono show—run $15–$20.) And then there’s the main course: Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room, a mirror chamber so disorienting it borders on spiritual.
900 Exposition Blvd, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, CA
The Natural History Museum goes back—way, way, way back. Fossils are in focus; they have them in abundance from the museum’s convenient agreement with the La Brea Tar Pits, where many of them come from. The Dinosaur Hall delivers big time: three T. rex recreations, Triceratops skulls, and a pregnant plesiosaur—the only known fossil of its kind in the world. Don’t sleep on the permanent exhibition, Becoming Los Angeles, a sweeping walk through the region’s timeline—from the Gabrieliño nation and Spanish missions to the sprawling metropolis it became, thanks in part to some nefariously acquired water rights that may ring a bell if you’ve ever watched Chinatown.
