That Vintage Girl

During a recent visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) , I viewed their collection of 19th century French Impressionism art that included masterworks from revolutionary artists like Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Edgar Degas.  Their curated collection captured a pivotal moment in art history when painters abandoned studios for en plein air painting - a practice of painting outdoors that was made possible by the invention of premade paint tubes.  To capture the shifting shades of natural light, they used a palette of bright hues. By stepping outside the studio, these painters captured fleeting moments in time. Rather than focusing on historical or mythological themes, Impressionistic painters captured the beauty of daily life: summer sunlight filtering through trees, the rhythmic dance of water lilies, the bustling crowds of Parisian boulevards, or the smoky haze of train stations.   Visiting the museum offered a quiet passage through time, where t...

The Neutra Reunion House is a unique Mid-Century Modern home that is located in the "Neutra Colony" of homes within the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Richard Neutra designed the Reunion House in 1950 as a concept home for grandparents that could accommodate family reunions while ensuring privacy for different generations.  The residence features signature Neutra designs such as extensive use of glass, stucco, projecting "spider leg" beams, and an emphasis on indoor-outdoor living through walls of glass and private gardens. Richard Neutra was an Austrian-American architect who was one of the most influential modernist architects in the twentieth century that helped define "California Modernism". His architectural style blended modernism with the biorealism design philosophy that aimed to harmonize nature and the environment, human physiology and psychology, and functionality and culture. His designs used industrial materials like steel and expan...

The Hollywood Heritage Museum has a new exhibit called Broadcast from Hollywood: When Movie Stars Met Television that displays memorabilia from televisions shows like I Love Lucy (1951-1957),  The Lucy Show (1962-1968), Here's Lucy (1968-1974), Adam-12 (1968-1975), Three's Company (1977-1984), The Survivors (1969-1970), and Mad Men (2007-2015). The exhibit explores how television transformed the Hollywood entertainment industry.  In the 1950s, Hollywood studios considered television programs a threat as the rise of televisions in the household lead to a decline in theatre attendance. According to the Library of Congress, the number of American households with televisions grew from 9% in 1950 to 90% by 1960.  However, Hollywood eventually embraced television as it diversified its scope of entertainment to engage audiences in both the theater and home.   Starting in the late 1940s, television studios such as the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broad...

This Museum Day post is about my visit to the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris, California. Tucked away in a remote part of the Inland Empire, the museum has one of the largest collections of interurban electric street cars that were used on the Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles during the early 1900s. The museum collects and restores these beautiful vintage rail cars to preserve and share their historical significance in the development of transportation and communities in America.  It was not too long ago in American history when the primary mode of intercity transportation was just walking.  So people shopped and worked close to their homes.  But this stationary lifestyle began to change in the late 1800s with the development of electric powered trains referred to as trolley or street cars.  As more and more trolley lines were built,  they evolved into expanded interurban railway systems that ran within and between cities. Developers began...