Experience LA's Culture from the Comfort of Home
Virtual visits to LA museums and cultural experiences
This page will continue to be updated as more virtual museum tours are announced. If you represent a cultural institution and would like to be added, feel free to reach out to us on our social channels: @discoverLA
We are all doing our part to #flattenthecurve and #stayhome. We are grateful to these cultural institutions that are keeping us entertained and educated.
Experience LA's world-class museums and cultural attractions at home. From virtual tours to livestreams and digital archives, museums and attractions have come up with innovative ways to explore collections and enjoy experiences while staying Safer at Home.
You can also browse our dineL.A. To Go list and support local restaurants while you watch! Takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery are available now.
ART + PRACTICE
Art + Practice has launched a virtual tour of the current exhibition celebrating women artists of color, Collective Constellation: Selections from The Eileen Harris Norton Collection. In addition to the tour, their education materials for grades K-12 available online to download. The materials include Teacher Resource Guides (context about the exhibition, the collector and the curator and instructions for how to assist students with exercises) and Student Handouts (grade-appropriate exercises that deepen understanding of themes and artistic techniques). Many of the themes in the exhibition circulate around the need for perseverance and imagination, apt for current circumstances.
Coming soon, A+P is introducing remote programming and will be offering virtual educational tours after April 10th. Programs will include a Virtual K-2 Educators' Walkthrough, an exploration of Ruth Waddy's legacy with Dr. Kellie Jones and Dr. Bridget Cooks, and introducing Bookmarked!, a new series for Los Angeles writers to read from and discuss texts that impact and inspire them.
Autry Museum of the American West
Masters of the American West is the signature exhibition of the Autry Museum, featuring 64 of the top contemporary artists working in the Western genre. Virtual visitors can browse this year's artists and their work, including nationally recognized artists such as George Carlson, G. Russell Case, Tammy Garcia, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Mark Maggiori, Billy Schenck, and Mian Situ. You can also tour the gallery by following the Autry on Instagram.
Copies of the exhibition catalogue are available for $42. You can buy your own by contacting Jasmine Aslanyan at jaslanyan@theautry.org.
You can even buy a favorite piece and bring the American West into your home - artworks will be available online through March 22. To inquire about artworks for sale, contact Janet Reilly at jreilly@theautry.org or (323) 495-4317.
Hear from Masters artists themselves with videos of talks by Billy Schenck and Kim Wiggins, from opening weekend:
Aquarium of the Pacific
The Aquarium of the Pacific is offering the Aquarium Online Academy to bring educational programming as well as fun and entertaining activities to the community. Find both on-demand videos and activities for all ages and a schedule of interactive live programs with educators, from grade-specific virtual classroom sessions to engaging segments with the Pacific Pals puppets.
The Broad
Experience The Broad from home by browsing the museum's incredible online collection and viewing the various YouTube playlists, including The Un-Private Collection, Summer Happenings, Gallery Talks, and Special Exhibitions.
California African American Museum
Opened during the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, the California African American Museum (CAAM) houses a permanent collection of 4,000 objects of art, historical artifacts and memorabilia. CAAM invites you to #MuseumFromHome on their social channels (@caaminla) and via their YouTube channel.
California Science Center
The California Science Center has launched Stuck at Home Science, a family-friendly space to fight boredom and continue your child's science learning with easy to follow activities.
Stuck at Home Science is designed for families to explore, investigate, and learn together without leaving the house. All activities use common household supplies, and are appropriate for a variety of ages.
Beginning March 23, the California Science Center will post a new activity and/or video every weekday. Each week will focus on a new theme.
Fowler Museum at UCLA
A hidden gem on the UCLA campus, the Fowler Museum houses collections that feature hundreds of thousands of cultural objects from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas - past and present. Browse the Fowler's Digital Collection of more than 2,000 objects by geographic region, culture, date/era and medium.
Getty Center & Getty Villa
“How to Explore Art While the Getty Galleries Are Closed” compiles art books, online exhibitions, podcasts, and videos from the vast collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Online exhibitions:
- Michelangelo: Mind of the Master
- Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq
- Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics
Art History resources:
- Online Art History lessons such as Bauhaus: Building the New Artist
- Virtual libraries with 350+ Getty Publications and a massive archive of 100,000+ digitized art books dating back to the Renaissance
- Getty Art Podcasts: Art & Ideas & Recording Artists
Instagram @gettymuseum
Something to add to your homeschool curriculum: Is it theater, is it art? It's definitely worth a laugh. The Getty's innovative social media team challenges us all to recreate a work of art with materials at home. To find artworks, check out their online collection: getty.edu/art/collection.
Give it a try:
Choose your favorite artwork
Find three things lying around your house
Recreate the artwork with those items
Tag #betweenartandquarantine and #tussenkunstenquarantaine in your creations!
GRAMMY Museum
The GRAMMY Museum is debuting never-before-released digital Public Programs from their archive. The Museum’s Public Programs digital series features intimate sit-down interviews with artists and musicians in its 200-seat Clive Davis Theater. A new program will be released every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 11:00 am PST.
Hammer Museum
Explore the museum's Watch + Listen online archive, featuring hundreds of videos from past public programs, from post-screening Q&As to lectures such as:
- A lecture series on Vincent van Gogh's career with art historian John Walsh
- Q&As with the actors and filmmakers behind 2019's top films, from Parasite to The Farewell
- Readings with renowned writers like Jamaica Kincaid and US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo
- Conversations with artists and Hammer curators
The Digital Archive includes online exhibitions such as:
- Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 - Explore the work of 120 women artists and collectives active in Latin America and the United States.
- UCLA Artists in the Hammer Museum Collections - Over 1,100 works by more than 100 artists who taught or studied at UCLA.
- Loss and Restitution: The Story of the Grunwald Family Collection - The evolution of a collection that includes more than 1,500 works that are housed at the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.
The museum's on-site restaurant, Audrey at the Hammer is offering lunch and dinner takeout, as well as Audrey Provisions with stews, soups, and bulk items. Temporary hours are Tuesday - Sunday from 11am to 8pm.
Hollyhock House
Built 1919-21, the iconic Hollyhock House was Frank Lloyd Wright's first architectural project in Los Angeles. In July 2019, the Hollyhock House became the first LA landmark designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
To increase access, the Virtual Tour allows users to experience all of Wright's masterpiece, including first and second-floor spaces that are mobility inaccessible. Selected objects throughout the house have pop-up descriptions with optional audio, indicated on screen by a + sign.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
The Huntington Library has launched its new podcast, The Collections. In this first season, inaugurated during the institution’s Centennial, Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence talks with the heads of the library, art museum, and botanical gardens about why they do what they do and what makes their work at The Huntington so deeply rewarding.
Other virtual experiences include:
- Botanical Collections Tours - Take a virtual stroll through more than 120 acres of The Huntington's renowned gardens.
- The Huntington Digital Library - The Huntington Library houses more than nine million items - a fraction of which is available in digitized form, including manuscripts, maps, photos, printed books, prints & ephemera, architectural projects, the Civil War and more.
ICA LA
Founded in 1984 as the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) moved to a 12,700 square-foot facility in Downtown LA that opened in 2017 and features 7,500 square feet of exhibition space.
ICA LA invites virtual visitors to explore their #MuseumfromHome online exhibitions - Ree Morton: The Plant That Heals May Also Poison and Ann Greene Kelly.
Japanese American National Museum
JANM’s Collections Online features selected highlights from the permanent collection of over 60,000 unique artifacts, documents, and photographs. Of special interest is their online Home Movie Collection, that includes rare footage (over 330 film clips) depicting the daily lives of Japanese Americans from the 1920s through the 1960s including poignant footage from America’s World War II concentration camps. Drawn from the National Museum’s permanent collection, these films have been preserved, digitized, and published with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), and in collaboration with Denshō, the Japanese American Legacy Project.
LACMA
The largest art museum in the western United States, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) houses a collection that includes nearly 130,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present.
LACMA has revamped their homepage with a nearly endless archive of digital media:
L.A. Theatre Works
L.A. Theatre Works (LATW) was founded in 1974 to give voice to underrepresented groups, bring attention to new plays and playwrights, and produce plays that address critical historical, cultural and social issues. Today, LATW is the nation's leading producer of audio theatre. Whether it's classics or the latest hits from New York and London, the LATW audio library has something for everyone.
New shows launch every week - stream online or listen to the National Broadcast Series on KPFK in L.A. and on affiliates in more than 50 U.S. markets.
LAX: Art at Home
LAX is used to connecting you to people, places and cultures, but right now things are different. Did you know they have a world-class public art program?
Now that you're not rushing through the terminals, you can catch up a bit via LAX's new video programming, LAX: Art at Home. In the first episode, artist Luciana Abait talks about her stunning mixed-media exhibit, "A Letter to the Future," which is on view in Terminal 7 until fall of 2020.
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
Named “America’s finest chamber orchestra” by Public Radio International, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) is a preeminent interpreter of historical masterworks as well as a champion of contemporary composers.
LACO AT HOME allows people everywhere to engage and listen to spellbinding performances — no subscription, sign-up, or payment required. All broadcasts can be livestreamed at laco.org/broadcasts and streamed on-demand at laco.org/on-demand. The streaming lineup launches on March 28-29 with music by Stravinsky and Prokofiev alongside works by Ravel and a West Coast premiere from composer and artist-in-residence Missy Mazzoli.
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
On Sunday, April 19 at 2:00 pm, LAMOTH will host an online Zoom Webinar titled Yom HaShoah Commemoration, 75 Years After Liberation: Turning Memory Into Action. The annual event will remember those who perished, honor those who survived, and mark the 75th anniversary of liberation and the end of the Holocaust. This year's virtual event will feature dynamic speakers, music, and opportunities for everyone to participate in a virtual dialogue. Keynote speaker: David Estrin, founder and CEO of Together We Remember. Other participants include:
Hillel Newman, Consul General of Israel, Rabbi Jocee Hudson, Temple Israel of Hollywood, Ron Galperin, Los Angeles City Controller, Michele Gold, Board Chair, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and others to be announced. Register to attend.
MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is launching Virtual MOCA on Monday, March 23. This new daily series will be available on the museum's website and across its social channels. Each day will have a different theme:
- Monday: Back to School - MOCA educators lead family friendly interactive workshops, virtual Talking Tours, and classroom curriculum discussions.
- Tuesday: Giving Tuesday - MOCA will share ways that we can come together to support our communities in need.
- Wednesday: Past, Present, & Future - MOCA's curators look back and reflect on the museum's history, past exhibitions, initiatives, programs, and permanent collection.
- Thursday: Movie Night - A #TBT look at MOCAtv videos and previously produced video footage.
- Friday: Feel Good Friday - Meditation, visual thinking exercises, thoughtful and serene education chats, and works from the permanent collection that bring peace and joy.
- Saturday: Artists at Home - A different artist will take over MOCA's Instagram feed each week.
- Sunday: Book Club - Led by Assistant Curator and Manager of Publications Bryan Barcena, MOCA’s Virtual Book Club will provide readings and essays with discussion prompts.
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA)
From the Edible Garden to exciting special events, the official NHMLA YouTube channel is filled with bingeable content for you to enjoy the museum from afar, including:
- Full Discussion Sessions, such as "The Past, Present, and Future of Horror Movies" with Roger Corman and Andy Muschietti
- Topical Sit Downs with Museum Scientists and Specialists
- Special Features from Previous Events and Exhibitions
- And of course, the Critter Cam for all your adorable animal needs!
Petersen Automotive Museum
For car buffs, The Vault at the Petersen Automotive Museum is a bucket list experience - an extraordinary collection of 250 iconic and rare cars from around the world exhibited in a renovated 60,000 square-foot underground space.
During the extended hiatus, The Vault is offering Livestreaming Tours led by Collection Manager, Dana Williamson. The 60-minute live tour will take viewers closer than any tour has before, including under the hood and even inside some of the vehicles!
Beginning March 25, Livestreamed Tours will be suggested donation. Themes include Full Vault, Hollywood, Performance/Hot Rods, and Presidential/Post War.
The Petersen is also featuring Online Education, including Coloring Activities and Build Your Own Racecar. All activities are downloadable to print at home.
Google Arts & Culture
More than 1,200 leading museums around the world have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to create the Google Arts & Culture website and app.
Google Arts & Culture features more than a dozen LA area cultural institutions, with everything from 360˚ virtual tours to online exhibits and photo archives.
- Columbia Memorial Space Center - Online exhibits, photo archive
- FIDM Museum & Galleries - "ManMode" & "Art of Television Costume Design" virtual tours, online exhibits, photo archive
- GRAMMY Museum - Online exhibit: History of the GRAMMY Award
- J Paul Getty Museum - Virtual tour, online exhibits, photo archive
- LACMA - Virtual tour and online exhibit of "Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015," photo archive
- LA Phil - Online exhibits and photo archive
- Museum of African American Art - Online exhibits, photo archive
- UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center - Online exhibits, photo archive
- USC Fisher Museum of Art - Online exhibits, photo archive
- Wende Museum - Online exhibits, photo archive
- Pomona College Museum of Art - Online exhibits, photo archive
- Museum of Latin American Art - Virtual tour, online exhibits, photo archive
