Issue link: http://globelitetravelmarketing.uberflip.com/i/444404
2 0 1 5 T R A V E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A 31 tainly be the opening of the architecturally dazzling Broad Museum, featuring more than 2,000 works of contemporary art. One highlight of a California visit is often the renowned Getty Museum— which includes both the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu. The Villa's 2015 offerings will include an exhibition of Roman silver treasure, while the more contemporary Center (which spans the Medieval period to the present) will celebrate Flemish painter Paul Rubens, gift giving in the Middle Ages, and—not to be missed—a century of animal photography. Pasadena's wonderful Norton Simon showcases a spectrum of European and Modern artists, and includes two of this writer's favorite paintings: Picasso's Woman with a Book (1932), and Diego Rivera's The Flower Vendor (1941). The sculpture garden is beautiful and serene. In nearby San Marino, the impressive Beaux-Arts mansion and grounds of finan- cier Henry E. Huntington are now The Huntington Library, with its 120 acres of botanical gardens. Here you can admire Audubon's bird drawings, view an actual Gutenberg Bible, and wander through one of the West Coast's most surreal displays of flowering cacti and succulents. Ninety miles north of LA, the Santa Bar- bara Museum of Art is renowned for its ambitious and imaginative exhibitions. An equal distance to the south, San Diego's Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park is California's only museum dedi- cated exclusively to photography, film and video. MoPA's 2015 exhibitions will include the groundbreaking 7 billion Others: video portraits filmed in 84 countries by 20 directors. San Francisco's two most important art museums are as architecturally different as two buildings can be. The Legion of Honor—set in Lincoln Park, on a hill over- looking the Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Ocean—is a ¾-scale recreation of Paris' Palais de la Légion d'Honneur, and holds an extraordinary collection of drawings as well as changing exhibitions from around the world. At the entrance, surrounded by Beaux-Arts columns, sits The Thinker—one of 70 Rodins in the museum's permanent collection. In nearby Golden Gate Park, meanwhile, the reimagined de Young is lit- erally a pillar of modern architecture. Featuring a 10-story observation tower, the de Young is Northern California's premier metropolitan art museum, showcasing the arts of Africa, Oceania and the New World. Special exhibits in 2015 will include Keith Haring, J. M. W. Turner, and a dazzling dis- play of "Royal Hawaiian Featherwork." The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is in the midst of renova- tions, and will remain closed until 2016. Their motto is, "We've temporarily moved... everywhere." Check their website (see sidebar) for their satellite exhibitions at various locations around the Bay Area. A short BART ride (or drive across the Bay Bridge) from San Francisco, the Oak- land Museum of California is dedicated to the arts, history and ecology of California. This handsome gem is one of the state's finest museums, offering temporary exhibits on themes ranging from the Day of the Dead to "A Cinematic Study of Fog." The museum's beautiful new wing on Cal- ifornia's Natural History opened in 2013 and includes displays of life and work from the Gold Rush to Hollywood, from the Beats to the Tech Boom. And while you're in the East Bay, check out the Berkeley Art Museum—on the campus of UC Berkeley—with its often odd mix of super-contemporary, Abstract Expres- sionist and traditional Asian art. Science The marvelous California Science Center in Los Angeles' Exposition Park claims to be the largest hands-on science museum on the West Coast, with ongoing exhibits on invention, space travel and life sciences. Visitors can get up close and personal with the Space Shuttle Endeavor or explore some of the Earth's harshest ecosystems, from boiling sea vents to the polar zones. The most amazing thing of all? It's free! Ten years and half a billion dollars in the making, the California Academy of Sci- ences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park ZEISS TELESCOPE at Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, right; details of the GeXy Center, Los Angeles, below.