I think the beautiful thing about California is the diversity of our state. We are, you know, the largest community of X, fill in the blank, outside of Y, fill in the blank. That is true for the largest community of Palestinians outside of Palestine. The largest community of Armenians outside of Armenia. The largest community of Chinese outside of China. The largest community of Jewish people outside of Israel. And the beauty of living in and experiencing that beauty and that diversity. California Senator Laphonza Butler.

A couple of weekends ago, Michele and I drove down to L.A. to get away from the clouds and overcast of Northern California. The plan was to visit LACMA – the Los Angeles County Museum of Art – The Broad, the home of Edythe and Eli Broad’s art collection, have a couple of Mexican dinners, and drive home.

A couple of days after we got home, I read an article about a teacher in South Carolina who was reprimanded for teaching Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It turns out that South Carolina has a law that prohibits teaching students anything that makes them feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his [sic} race or sex. Two students complained saying that Between the World and Me made them ashamed to be White which resulted in a formal complaint and the teacher being reprimanded.

I can understand the shame. Between the World and Me is beautifully written but it does not soft peddle slavery, saying: Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular,  specific enslaved woman, whose mind is as active as your own, whose range of feelings is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in a particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, who thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels in dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. “Slavery” is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribed this love in its sacred texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, hold her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved…For this woman, enslavement is not a parable. It is damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains – whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains. 

I don’t know why this law is on the books but, it seems to me, that looking at our ugly past should not be discouraged. Indeed, looking at and acknowledging our ugly past is the only way we can move forward. As difficult as it is to look at crimes committed by our ancestors, as much shame that it brings up, looking at the truth of our past should be encouraged. Looking at the ugly past seems to be happening in the two LA museums we visited, where California’s diversity is on full display.

Michele had never been to LACMA so that was the goal of our first day. To the surprise of both of us, LACMA was undergoing a major rebuild, and most of it was closed. There were, however, two exhibitions that I want to highlight to prove my point. The first is a gallery remembering the mostly Mexican community that was destroyed to build Dodger Stadium. It features paintings by Vincent Valdez and was organized by, improbably, Ry Cooder. Titled El Chavez Ravine, the exhibition features an ice cream truck painted by Valdez, that, according to LACMA, is a monument to a disturbing chapter in L.A. history and symbolizes struggles across the country about affordable housing, eminent domain, gentrification, and discrimination. 

The second exhibition features murals for the LA River.

As an aside, the LA River is 51 miles long and falls 830 feet from its official headwater where two creeks come together (that is more than the Mississippi River falls over 2,000 miles). Like most desert rivers it is usually dry or a small trickle, but, rarely, in 1815, 1825, 1862 1914, 1938, and, now, 2024, being notable, it was a raging torrent. The 1938 flood resulted in the river having been made over as a concrete flood channel for much of its length. The flood channel is an eye sore and divides the City and LA is planning on spending up to a billion dollars to gentrify the river and better tie it into the surrounding City. End aside.

As another aside to the main theme here, LACMA still has lots of fun art on display, two of my faves were a David Hockney painting entitled something like “My Road to Work” showing the LA hills and the flat, flat valley floor and, of course, everybody’s fave, “City Lights”. End aside.

As the last aside, the new museum, according to LACMA, will: While replacing nearly all of the existing galleries in the four aging buildings, the new building totals 347,500 square feet, replacing approximately 393,000 square feet of existing buildings. In the new building, the entire 347,500 square feet will be on one floor about thirty feet off the ground, and all the separate traditions, Chinese, Italian, Korean, Japanese, French, Indian, blah, blah, blah will be treated equally in that they are all on the same level and partially intermixed. End aside.

The next day, we went to The Broad. The money to build The Broad and fill it with art came from Eli Broad, primarily, who made his money building tracts of homes for largely first-time buyers. The Company, Kaufman and Broad – now KB – started in Chicago, then Arizona, and finally moved to Southern California in the early sixties where they became hyper-successful (the company is worth about 4.6 billion now).

With some of that money, Edythe and Eli Broad have assembled the best private collection I have ever seen. I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the same can be said for art and I am predisposed to like this art. The collection is contemporary art from the 50s until today and that is right in the middle of my sweet spot. Still, all my prejudges aside, this is an amazing collection, ranging from the usual suspects like Jean‐Michel Basquiat and Chuck Close to Jeff Koons to Andy Warhol. It also contained dozens of artists I hadn’t heard of but thought were terrific like Mark Innerst, Shio Kusaka, and Mickalene Thomas.

But the most surprising piece of art was West by Doug Aitken which showed the damage builders like KB do to the enviroment.

All in all, I enjoyed the Broad more, which was unexpected, but both museums were worth seeing. Even more worth seeing is art as a window to reality even when it causes discomfort.