8 Days Around L.A. (with kids): Day 1 - Skirball Cultural Center

From the Skirball Cultural Center website: "Hailed by The New York Times as 'a lesson on how to connect the eye to heart and mind,' the Skirball Cultural Center has established itself as one of the world's most dynamic Jewish cultural institutions, and among the most prominent cultural venues in the United States. Its mission is to explore the connections between four thousand years of Jewish heritage and the vitality of American democratic ideals. It seeks to welcome and inspire people of every ethnic and cultural identity in American life. Guided by our respective memories and experiences, together we aim to build a society in which all of us can feel at home."

We're not Jewish but they let us in anyway. This is our second time there. This exhibit:

never gets old. It's a hands on interactive Noah's Ark where all the animals are composed of found objects and recycled materials. I could stare at these creatures for hours.

Notice the purse body, thread spools neck, and comb feathers.

That elephant's trunk is made of a bamboo rice steamer; his ears are the floor mats from a car.

That alligator is a violin case, his eye is a leather glove, his teeth are turkey baster tips, and his tongue is the neck of the violin.

Did you see Sage? He's in there.

Note to self: Make some gigantic patchwork snakes. They're awesome.

. . . the animals, they went on, they went on by twosies twosies. . . ELEPHANTS! and kangaroosies roosies. . .

and owlsies owlsies.

McKenna did not line up all those animals like that. She did, however, knock a lot of them over.

The food storage area is pretty fascinating.

The kids work together to gather the food and cook it and feed it to the animals.

There's a roped in walkway with all sorts of pulleys and levers to play with.

My camera was starting to die at this point, but I got one last picture of the dove (it's wings are made of guitar picks.)

That's just one section of the museum, there are a bunch more exhibits. Next, we went to see ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938–1950. I switched to my camera phone for this part.

I can't show you the displays or artwork because photography was restricted in this area. It was interesting to see comic books from the 1930's (10¢!) and learn about the history and evolution of an American cultural phenomenon. They also had and area for kids to play dress up where we were allowed to take non-flash pictures:

And here's the section where they could draw comic book characters:

After that we browsed the gift shop. Sage wanted these:

Awww, such cute and cuddly little plagues. We didn't buy anything though.

Here ends our trip to the

You can see more pictures in my Flickr album. Next up, Huntington Gardens.