MUSEUMS & ART

State of the Art

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

The first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20thcentury art, SFMOMA, above, underwent a major expansion in 2014-2016 that more than doubled the gallery space to 170,000 square feet, making it one of the largest museums in the country and one of the world’s biggest museums dedicated to modern and contemporary art.

Whether you prefer

to ogle modern art or antiquities, Ice Age fossils or space shuttles, the Golden State’s wealth of world-class museums awaits. With more than 1,000 museums of all sizes across the state, there’s a lifetime of fine art, science, history and culture to explore, as well as weird and wonderful collections for every imaginable niche-interest, from Star Wars memorabilia to the legends of Bigfoot. While it’s impossible to do them all justice here, we’ve attempted to highlight the best of the best.

The Arts

Visiting LA? It’s easy to spend hours in the West’s largest art museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Downtown, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and Geffen Contemporary showcase the best in 20th- and 21st-century painting, sculpture and conceptual art. The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA LA), formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art, has recently reopened downtown to great acclaim. The renowned Getty Museum includes both the modern Getty Center in the Brentwood district and the Getty Villa in Malibu, which focuses on Greek and Roman classical art. Pasadena’s Norton Simon displays European and Modern artists amid a serene sculpture garden. In nearby San Marino, The Huntington