If you've asked a foodie friend about where to find the best spaghetti in the Miracle Mile area in recent years, you might have received a surprising suggestion in response: LACMA's main plaza.
Of course, the "spaghetti" that hangs like so much sunshine-hued drapery in the central court of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art isn't so much edible as walk-through-able, a fact that's found in the name of the piece: "Penetrable."
If "Penetrable" has been your go-to stop while visiting the art museum over the last five or so years — Jesús Rafael Soto's striking sculpture arrived at the institution in 2011 — then you should make a date to visit it again, one more time, in the very near future.
For all of that surreal-sweet "spaghetti," the step-inside-and-snap-a-pic "pasta" that's been a popular part of the museum for several years now, will be departing the campus on Sunday, Feb. 12.
The interact-ready artwork has been on loan, in fact, and will return to the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.
How beloved is this stunning square of hanging pasta-thin hoses? Check it out: LACMA has scheduled "a special photo-op" for fans to bid "Penetrable" farewell.
The date? Sunday, Jan. 8, and a pro photographer will be on hand, no less, to snap the perfect art-cool, spaghetti-sweet snapshot of you and your crew.
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The time is noon to 4 p.m., and LACMA advises this is a "(l)imited availability" event. In short: Arrive early. There's a form to sign, and you'll get your pic by email, so best read all.
It's a bittersweet moment for a creative city that likes its art with some unusual panache. Which asks this question: How many Southern California kids have walked into that wall of unsauced spaghetti over the last decade? For that matter, how many gleeful adults?
It was a rare sight to see the enterable sculpture completely devoid of wonder-filled visitors. And it will be a stranger sight, at least for a bit, to see the LACMA plaza without its pasta.
But we are glad it was here, for a considerable amount of time, and that some of the most interesting spaghetti to be found, in all of SoCal, was at a museum just off Wilshire Boulevard.
Image: Jesús Rafael Soto, "Pentrable," 1990 Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
