Museums and Libraries in L.A.

( The J. Paul Getty Museum )

The Los Angeles region has numerous major art museums.
The J. Paul Getty Museum has two locations:

1. The main museum, featuring collections of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts, is in the massive Getty Center west of Beverly Hills


2. The ancient art collections are housed in a replica of a Roman villa in Malibu.

The Getty Center is also home to the Getty Research Institute. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in midtown Los Angeles houses the largest and most wide-ranging art collection in the region, with notable collections of American, European, and Asian art.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) has an important collection of works produced since 1940. It has two locations downtown and one in West Hollywood. The Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach has a significant collection of California art.

Three very important smaller museums in Los Angeles were founded by private collectors. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has a highly renowned collection of European art.

The UCLA Hammer Museum houses some of the renowned collections of the global industrialist Armand Hammer and hosts major exhibits.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino house collections of 18th- and 19th-century British and French paintings and an important collection of books and manuscripts in the fields of British and American history and literature.

Los Angeles has many fine museums dedicated to ethnic and cultural themes. El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument contains several museums preserving the earliest Spanish and Mexican heritage of the city.

The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana contains collections of East Asian, African, and Native American materials, and the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History mounts major anthropological exhibits.

The California African American Museum preserves and interprets the art, history, and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on California and the Western United States.

Other cultural museums include the Japanese American National Museum, the Korean American Museum, the Latino Museum of History, Art, and Culture, the Pacific Asia Museum, and the Southwest Museum, a museum of Native American artifacts.

The Los Angeles Jewish community founded two major institutions dedicated to intercultural education: the Skirball Cultural Center near the Getty Center and the Museum of Tolerance in West Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is also home to many institutions dedicated to various industries, sciences, and human endeavors.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences maintains a film archive and a library of film-related publications, as does the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Science Center include many interactive exhibits.

The Griffith Observatory houses a planetarium and a hall of science, and mounts exhibitions as well.

The Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries displays the skeletons of animals found in the neighboring Rancho La Brea Tar Pits, where Ice Age animals were trapped in asphalt deposits.

Other museums on specific themes include the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum, the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, the Museum of Flying, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the Museum of Television and Radio, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the UC Riverside California Museum of Photography.

The Los Angeles Public Library system consists of a large central library and dozens of branch libraries. The city’s many university and other institutional libraries house millions of books and rare and archival materials as well.