LA Girl's Weekend

Yet another great birthday weekend celebrating my Mom getting younger.

This year we went to Westwood in the backyard of UCLA, my alma mater (and my sister's, as well). The location was ideal for walking into town, to museums, through the campus, and residential neighborhood's where we could drool over the houses and gardens.  We stayed at the wildly hip W Hotel, which undoubtedly was going for the night club vibe inside and at the pool.  Imagine disco music everywhere!  I fully expected to see Paris Hilton in one of the covered poolside cabanas.

The first day, we visited the private Frederick Weisman Art Collection in a house in Bel Air.  "House" is an understatement.   It was a sprawling Mediterranean villa with lush gardens filled with modern sculptures.  The house overflows with art which is hanging just where the owners had placed it when they lived there.   It's a who's who of the moderns from Picasso to Warhol and Hockney to Pollock. Seeing a Miro, Magritte and Kandinsky in someone's dining room was really something. Nevermind the Rothko, Dubuffet and de Koonings in the living room.

A truly amazing ensemble of pieces from the sublime to the absurd, and in every nook, cranny and available wall space.

In the afternoon, we walked from our hotel to the Hammer Museum in downtown Westwood.  The grand scale minimalist architecture and cafe were a treat in themselves (best Chinese chicken salad ever!).  The small art collection was superb.  The Van Goghs, Monets. Pissaros, and Rembrandts were just a few of the treasures.

The next day's art crawl took us to Bergamot Art Center and the Santa Monica Museum of Art where we saw the most mind-boggling 3D tableau video montage of Hollywood film clips embedded in a scrolling landscape creating a surreal world of gladiators, astronauts, army platoons, rockets, flying cars, you name it, all planted in a 3D underworld.  It was like a hallucination in the safest of environments! 

The evening was capped by a trip to Hollywood landmark, The Magic Castle, which is located in an enormous Victorian mansion.  Guests must say "Open Sesame" at a book case to gain entrance to the inner sanctum where a collection of theaters are hidden behind ornately carved walls interspersed with bars with a turn of the century flair (19th century that is).

On day three, our final day, we went to the Annenberg Photography Space in a modernist office complex in Century City.  While Mom and Susan were fascinated with the exhibit on beauty and culture, I was floored by the sleek architecture.

Don't know if we can top this trip next year.  We missed the boys, but sometimes

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!