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Visible from the entry hallway: A detail from Smoke, by Tony Smith. (Photos by C-M, unless otherwise noted.)

I finally got to wander around the newly renovated LACMA and it’s flashy new sister museum, BCAM, which still has that new-car smell. (Or is that formaldehyde?) Anyhow, I spent some quality time checking out the spaces and the art, though I was unable to photograph much of what I saw because, as usual, no photography was allowed inside the galleries. (Not that this matters, because far-flung correspondent San Suzie already got all the illegal flicks we needed back in February.) All of this was fine with me, because it allowed me to roam around and soak up the offerings. Herewith, a short, highly-annotated tour of some of what I saw.

Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.

Admiring Tony Smith’s Smoke. The way this atrium opens up from the entry hallway that leads to it is quite remarkable. I’m not always a fan of Renzo Piano’s, but I have to say that this really worked.

A sculpture by El Anatsui. Kick ass, as always.

Detail: sculpture by El Anatsui.

Family Car, by Gilbert “Magu” Luján, at the entrance to the museum, part of the Chicano Visions exhibit, Cheech Marin’s personal collection. I saw the exhibit in Fort Lauderdale last year and was bummed to see that the LACMA version of the show does not include the John Valadez painting Car Show (a massive canvas which the tiny size of this linked image can’t begin to do capture). It was one of my favorites. The show, however, does include some incredible canvases, including Carlos Almaraz’s Sunset Crash and Frank Romero’s Arrest of the Paleteros. For those two pieces alone, it’s worth checking out.

Undocumented interventions, by Julio Cesar Morales. See it large. (Photo by Marshall Astor.) Also in the museum was a separate Chicano art exhibit that was curated by the museum’s staff. It included classic pieces by the group Asco, as well as artists such as Christina Fernandez and Margarita Cabrera. The highlight of the exhibit, however, were the elegant-but-wrenching watercolors by Julio Cesar Morales, above, which showed the creative and often desperate ways in which immigrants are smuggled into the country. This show is up until September 1st. Do not miss it.

Also kick-ass: The paintings by Shizu Saldamando in the Phantom Sightings show. (Photo by Marshall Astor.)

Because every story that references BCAM has to have a shot of Chris Burden’s light installation.

The museum’s Japanese pavilion, built by architect Bruce Goff in the ’80s. I kinda love how out-of-control this building is architecturally. It’s as if someone had asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design a Benihana in Palm Springs in the ’70s and then, for good measure, painted it mint green.

Another view of LACMA’s Japanese Pavilion, which now houses the Price Collection of Edo-era prints.

Concrete sculptures by Donald Judd.

The best part about going to LACMA is that it’s right next to the La Brea tar pits, which, as far as I’m concerned, are far freakier than anything cooked up by Paul McCarthy.

The other good thing about the museum is that they have this really nice park in the back, where you can go watch fake-breasted women walk a variety of small, fluffy dogs. If the curators at LACMA were really forward-thinking, however, they’d do something about that crap-ass iPod ad in the background. Someone needs to shake down the donors for a bit more cash so that they can buy that billboard out and use it to showcase art. I mean, how cool would it look if it featured a piece by Retna?

Posted by C-Monster.