Los Angeles keeps its art in freeway-separated pockets: Gehry steel and Isozaki pyramids downtown, a museum row on Wilshire, screenprint studios and mariachi corners east of the LA River. Three days of driving between them, arranged so nothing doubles back.
Eli Broad's 2,000-work postwar collection behind Diller Scofidio + Renfro's 'veil and vault' honeycomb facade. General admission is free with timed tickets, released on the first of each month; Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room needs a separate same-day sign-up.
Frank Gehry's billowing stainless-steel hall, home of the LA Phil since 2003. The free self-guided audio tour, narrated by John Lithgow, covers the lobby and the rooftop Blue Ribbon Garden with its Delft-tile Lillian rose fountain.
Arata Isozaki's red sandstone pyramids hold the city's deepest postwar holdings — Rothko, Rauschenberg, Basquiat, Barbara Kruger. Admission has been free since 2020 through a Carolyn Powers endowment. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
The 1893 lobby by novice draughtsman George Wyman — wrought iron, open cage lifts and Belgian marble under a glazed roof — filmed in Blade Runner and 500 Days of Summer. Visitors may climb as far as the first landing.
Renzo Piano's rebuild of the 1939 May Company department store, with a concrete-and-glass sphere bolted to its back. Seven floors on how films are made, from Dorothy's ruby slippers and the Bruce shark to the Hayao Miyazaki galleries.
A small yellow-brick museum facing LACMA that has shown craft, folk art and clay since 1965, with a strong bias toward Southern Californian and Latin American makers. Two or three exhibitions run at a time and it is done inside an hour.
The largest art museum in the western United States — Islamic metalwork, Japanese screens in the Pavilion, and the German Expressionist rooms. Chris Burden's Urban Light and Michael Heizer's 340-tonne Levitated Mass stand outside, free to walk through.
The 1922 amphitheatre wedged into a Cahuenga Pass ravine, where the LA Phil takes up summer residence from June to September. It is the rare major American venue that lets ticket holders bring their own picnic and wine into the boxes.
An Italian tile-setter spent 33 years, finishing in 1954, raising 17 steel-and-mortar spires up to 30m high and encrusting them with bottle glass, broken tile and seashells. The base is reachable by guided tour only, Thursday to Sunday.
The 1930 market stalls on the city's oldest block, beside the 1818 Avila Adobe — the oldest standing house in Los Angeles — and the Siqueiros mural América Tropical, whitewashed for censorship in 1932 and now viewable from a rooftop platform.
The Boyle Heights studio that has produced Chicano screenprint editions since 1970 and stages the city's oldest Día de los Muertos celebration. Gallery shows rotate every few weeks and the working print shop sits behind glass.
Musicians have waited for hire on this corner of First and Boyle since the 1930s, instruments in hand, under a kiosk of Cantera stone donated by the state of Jalisco in 1998. Groups are still booked by the hour, cash, on the spot.