Museum sights in Los Angeles
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Museum of Tolerance
Run by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, this museum uses interactive technology to make visitors confront racism and bigotry, with particular focus given to the Holocaust. You can study various Nazi-era memorabilia, including letters by Anne Frank, a bunk bed from the Majdanek camp and Göring's dress-uniform cap. Lectures by Holocaust survivors take place several times a week.
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Getty Center
The Getty Center presents triple delights: a stellar art collection, Richard Meier's fabulous architecture and Robert Irwin's seasonally changing gardens. On clear days, add breathtaking views of the city and ocean to the list. A great time to visit is in the late afternoon after the crowds have thinned. Parking is $10.
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Museum of the American West
Hop over to the Museum of the American West, where exhibits on the good, the bad and the ugly of America's westward expansion rope in even the most reluctant of cowpokes. Star exhibits include an original stagecoach, a large Colt firearms collection and a nymph-festooned saloon.
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Getty Villa
Malibu's cultural star is the Getty Villa, a replica Roman villa that's a fantastic showcase of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities. Admission is by timed ticket (no walk-ins). Parking is $10.
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Grammy Museum
The Grammy Museum opened here in 2008, with mind-expanding interactive displays of the history of American music and plenty of listening opportunities.
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Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art is one of the country's top art museums and the largest in the western USA.
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Museum of Jurassic Technology
From the moment you ring the outside bell, you know something’s up. Inside the Museum of Jurassic Technology, you won’t find a pamphlet, just a short introductory film that’s…well, maybe just wing it and watch your mind fracture as you wander this whacked-out warren masterminded by MacArthur Fellow David Wilson. A gallery honoring Russian space dogs? The Pope in the eye of a needle? The myth of mice on toast? You’ll either giggle or run for the door, but you won’t read a museum plaque with any certainty again. See for yourself, though: in keeping with the museum’s spirit, this review may not be accurate.
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Hollywood Heritage Museum
Just south of the Hollywood Bowl is an unassuming little barn with a big history. Hollywood's first feature-length flick, Cecil B DeMille's The Squaw Man, was shot in this building in 1913–14, which was originally positioned at the corner of Selma and Vine Sts. DeMille went on to cofound Paramount and had the barn moved to the lot in the '20s. Now the Hollywood Heritage Museum, it's filled with a great collection of costumes, projectors and cameras from the early days of movie-making, plus DeMille's recreated office.
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Heritage Square Museum
Eight Victorian beauties saved from the wrecking ball were airlifted here to become the Heritage Square Museum , just off the Ave 43 exit of I-110 (Pasadena Fwy). You're free to walk around the grounds for close-ups of several impressive residences, including the way-cool Octagon House, a Methodist church and a carriage barn. The interiors can only be seen on tours offered on Saturday and Sunday on the hour from 12:00 to 15:00 (included in the admission price).
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Hollywood Wax Museum
Starved for celeb sightings? Don't fret: at this museum Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry and other red-carpet royalty will stand still – very still – for you to snap their picture. This retro haven of kitsch and camp has lots of monsters in the horror exhibit, plenty of stars in the sci-fi room and even waxen miniatures of the Capitol Records Tower and other local landmarks. Combo tickets with the Guinness World of Records Museum are available.
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Pasadena Museum of History
A palatial beaux arts mansion that once housed the Finnish consulate, this interesting museum now presents changing exhibits on some facets of the culture, history and art of Pasadena and its neighboring communities. If you want to see the precious antiques and furnishings of the house itself, you'll need to join a tour. The admission price also lets you sneak a peek inside a shed-like structure housing folk art from Finland.
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Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Life's pretty strange and it'll feel stranger still after you've visited Ripley's , where exhibits range from the gross to the grotesque. If shrunken heads, a sculpture of Marilyn Monroe made from shredded $1 bills and a human-hair bikini capture your imagination, this is your place. It's in a pretty cool building: just look for the T-Rex bursting through the rooftop with a clock in its fangs whose hands run backwards.
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Grier Musser Museum
Fans of Victoriana will get their fill at the Grier Musser Museum inside a beautiful Queen Anne home with intricate woodwork and luscious stained glass. It's stuffed with antiques and yesteryear's knickknacks, including a neat 1909 windup Victrola phonograph that still works. To keep things dynamic, the dedicated staff puts together monthly exhibits usually revolving around a holiday theme. The Christmas one is famous.
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California Heritage Museum
For a trip back in time, check out the latest exhibit at the California Heritage Museum, housed in one of Santa Monica's few surviving grand Victorian mansions. Curators do a fine job presenting pottery, colorful tile, Craftsman furniture, folk art, vintage surfboards and other fine collectibles in as dynamic a fashion as possible. To see locals at play, come during the Sunday morning farmers market in the museum's parking lot.
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Annenberg Space for Photography
Just west of Beverly Hills, in the skyscraper village known as Century City, the Annenberg Space for Photography opened in 2009. Built around a cylindrical core meant to evoke a camera lens, the space is the region's first museum of photography and presents changing shows, including the Pictures of the Year exhibit. Parking is $3.50 from Wednesday to Friday, or $1 on Saturday and Sunday or after 4:30pm daily.
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Fort MacArthur Military Museum
Just north of Point Fermin, in Angels Gate Park, are the Korean Friendship Bell , a gift from South Korea to the US government, and the Fort MacArthur Military Museum , an LA harbor defensive post until 1945. Unless you're a total pacifist, bring your kids to scale the gun batteries and search for secret tunnels, while you study up about yesteryear to the sound of toe-tapping big-band music.
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Travel Town Museum
The delightful outdoor Travel Town Museum displays dozens of vintage railcars and locomotives, the oldest one from 1864. Kids are all smiles imagining themselves as engineers, clambering around the old-timey iron horses or riding a miniature train. A huge hall holds historical fire engines and a model-train network, which a dedicated local hobby club operates, usually on weekends from 10:00 to 16:00.
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Page Museum
Between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, tarlike bubbling crude oil trapped saber-toothed cats, mammoths and other extinct ice age critters, which are still being excavated at the La Brea Tar Pits. Check out their fossilized remains at the Page Museum. New fossils are being discovered all the time, and an active staff of archaeologists works behind glass. Parking is $6.
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Craft & Folk Art Museum
Zulu ceramics, Japanese katagami paper art, Palestinian embroidery – cultural creativity has infinite ways of expression as you'll discover at this well-respected museum where exhibits change every few months. Also check for upcoming kid-oriented workshops and storytelling sessions, usually held on Saturdays. The gift store is one of the best in town.
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Los Angeles Maritime Museum
For a salty introduction to the area, visit this endearing but notoriously short-staffed museum. Galleries set up in a historic ferry building tell the story of LA's relationship with the sea and display enough ship models (including an 18ft cutaway of the Titanic), figureheads and navigational equipment to keep your imagination afloat for an hour or two.
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UCLA Film and Television Archive
Part of the huge UCLA campus is the Powell Library, which harbors the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the country's second-largest after the Library of Congress, with more than 220,000 movies and TV shows. It's only open to researchers, but regular screenings take place at the state-of-the-art Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum.
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Pacific Asia Museum
The Pacific Museum may be small, but with more than 14,000 works of Asian and Pacific Island art in its collection, the quality and range of the exhibits is almost unrivaled. The nine galleries, linked around a courtyard, include informative, accessible displays on Chinese, Tibetan, Southeast Asian and Japanese arts. The two-room Chinese Ceramics exhibit is fascinating.
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Banning Residence Museum
Just north of San Pedro, in the small town of Wilmington, the 1864 Greek-Revival home of Phineas Banning (1830–85) – aka the ‘father' of the port of LA – is now the Banning Residence Museum . Packed with a trove of gorgeous antiques, it offers an intriguing glimpse into the daily lives of well-heeled 19th-century Angelenos.
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Kidspace Children's Museum
Keeping the rug rats happy is child's play in LA. Many museums and attractions have kid-oriented exhibits, activities and workshops, but the excellent Kidspace Children's Museum specifically lures the single-digit set with hands-on exhibits, outdoor learning areas and gardens. It's best after 1pm, when the field-trip crowd has left.
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Zimmer Children's Museum
In the Jewish Federation Center, this charming museum brims with interactive exhibits that gently teach kids – Jewish or not – about tolerance, generosity, community spirit and other good values. Kids can 'fly' to exotic lands, fancy themselves an ambulance driver, work in a newsroom and take other fun journeys.
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