Over Spring break, Dr. Miller's class — “California Dreamin’: LA Culture and the Making of the Twentieth Century”— had the opportunity to spend seven days in Los Angeles, as part of the West Bay View Foundation Travel Seminar Endowment. Over the week, they explored both the renowned high art institutions and the grassroots public art that make the city an invaluable site for the development and study of American visual culture. They stayed in the historic Biltmore Hotel in the heart of downtown and spent their days immersed in the city’s art, architecture, and neighborhoods. Their first stop in L.A. was the Watts Towers, sculptural towers made of scavenged materials and homemade concrete by Simon Rodia between 1921 and 1954. They then visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology, an eccentric collection of materials and exhibits, some based in fact but many entirely fictional. Their second day in L.A. was dedicated to exploring downtown, which they did through a walking tour led by a volunteer from the Los Angeles Conservancy in the morning, and their own exploration of The Broad contemporary art museum, Union Station, and the historic center of El Pueblo de Los Ángeles on Olvera Street in the afternoon. Day three was spent in the lush hills of Pasadena. They started with a visit to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, then took a tour of the Gamble House—a Greene and Greene-designed icon of the Craftsman bungalow style and a trip highlight for many—and ended at the Huntington Library, Museum, and Gardens. On day four, led by local writer Daniel Nussbaum, they traversed the hilly neighborhood of Silver Lake. They visited a collection of modernist homes by emigré architect Richard Neutra and spent a moment alongside the LA River (which Jenny Price described to us as an “outsize concrete sewer” but also the place to think about “how we react to nature” and “how nature reacts back”). The next day, they visited a concrete tributary of the LA River for an entirely different reason: Judy Baca’s The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a 0.5-mile-long mural cycle in which Baca, working with hundreds of youth and community members, recounts California history, shifting the Anglo-centered narrative by focusing on California’s ethnic peoples from prehistoric times through the 20th-century. Immediately after, they met Ms. Baca herself at Painting in the River of Angels, a LACMA-exhibit-turned-artist-studio. They collectively fangirled as she painted the following two panels of the mural cycle. They eventually made their way to West LA, where Getty researcher Meryn Chimes led them through First Came a Friendship, an exhibition on the Gemini G.E.L printmaking workshop. On bikes, they also explored Venice Beach, soaking up its still vibrant Beatnik bohemian energy.
Their time in LA was not just sightseeing and research – they also met the owners of independent production company Monkey Deux, Kim Soleau and Alan Griswold (Distinguished Alumnus award from the Sam Fox School in 2017) and Alan Warhaftig and Cynthia Buiza (2023 recipient of Champion of Social Justice from Immigrant Defender).
