This post details my experiences at two separate museums; The Los Angeles Police Department Museum in Highland Park and the Forest Lawn Museum in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale.
I spent an hour at the LAPD Museum in Highland Park on 2/13. On checking in at the desk, I learned that museum charges a $9 fee for entry but then offers a free audio tour if you elect to use it. The audio tour device was about a pound in weight and looked a lot like a TV remote control. It had a cord attached presumably so it could be placed around the neck of the visitor. Wall-mounted plaques throughout the facility offered numerical markers. At each new area of the exhibit, you could input the number on the plaque and receive audio information about where you were and the significance of individual artifacts. I went through various photo galleries, an area dedicated to a police magazine no longer in print, the regular jail cells, the solitary confinement area and the upper floor exhibit dedicated to telling the story of the 1997 North Hollywood shoot-out. This particular exhibit was accompanied by a narrative of the events on a large screen monitor in the corner of the room. There were no other visitors to the museum during the time that I was there save a lone man who was paying the price of admission as I was returning my audio set. The scripted material that accompanied each exhibit on the audio tour wasn’t what I expected. I suppose I had hoped that the museum would function as a sort of outreach station to help bridge the gap between local police and citizens. Instead it seemed as it it had been designed as a sort of propaganda learning center. The tone of the narratives in the audio tour and on the screen upstairs was overly-dramatic as if someone had watched too many episodes of Dragnet. The constant sound of police audio tapes, screams, gunshots and patriotic music confused the senses in a place that lacked sunlight, warmth or any sense of perspective. The audio tour unit was heavy and hung around the neck with too much drag to be comfortable. The whole thing was an unpleasant experience.
So I left and went to another museum a few miles away.
My next stop was the Forest Lawn Museum on the grounds of the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. I wasn’t sure what to expect but my research informed me that the current exhibit was entitled “David Bowie and the Mexican Muralists”. It was free so I thought it was worth a try and I desperately needed to cheer up.
The museum is a series of connected galleries in a railroad style. The first two galleries featured sculpture and paintings by U.S. artists from the 19th century. There followed a religious art gallery and after that, a gift shop. As I passed through the gift shop I began to hear the voice of David Bowie speaking interspersed with selections from his music catalogue. Entering the last gallery I was surrounded by photographs of David Bowie studying the artwork of Mexico City in 1997. *On a large screen suspended 12 or so feet above the floor video of David Bowie talking about art was interspersed with wide and 360 lens footage of the artwork he was studying, over which played his musical works. There were benches set up in front of the video display upon which you could sit and watch the program.
There were only a few other visitors during the time that I was there. Guests tended toward middle age and older. Some engaged with the video content and sat down to watch the entire presentation. Others (myself included) roamed the extended gallery while the audio of the presentation played in the background. Almost everyone sang, which was cool, because we all knew the words to “Starman” and why not? The wall text was minimal save a larger essay published in English and Spanish which detailed how the work had come to be, which every person I saw read in one language or the other. The space was beautiful and the technology had been built into the exhibit as a living and breathing illustration of the artist’s work.
*click the BowieVid link above to see the video
The LAPD Museum experiences sounds awful, but I’m so glad you told me about the Forest Lawn museum! Who would have thought to go to a graveyard to learn about Bowie?
I find your experience at the LAPD Museum very interesting, possibly because I’d never heard of such a thing or maybe because I always liked Dragnet. I think with it being empty, there is clearly a problem reaching the community, perhaps based on where it’s located or if they tell the public about it. I really appreciated your insights. Your thorough descriptions of the exhibits made it all come alive.