“Let’s throw some coins in a fountain!” I did this in Rome, with the intention of going back there one day. It’s not about making a wish; it’s a practice that connects you to a place. They say that a coin, no matter how small, will ensure that you go back to that city in the future. I haven’t gone back to Rome: that dream is almost forgotten. I might go back to Venice later this year: no coins were spent on those fountains. The link to a city must be established in a different way: I haven’t seen any coins in any of the fountains in LA — maybe I didn’t look close enough.
It should be clear by now that Alex and I love LACMA — short for “The Los Angeles County Museum”. We try to support its endeavours. Some of its buildings are shabby; parts of its collection speak to us in our native language (they have several sculptures by Brancusi on display). They seem to thrive on contemporary art shows: the latest trend is to build them around one of the more artistically inclined film directors. Last year, some of the monsters Guillermo del Toro spends his life among were on display. This year, it’s Alejandro Innaritu’s turn. Both of these shows connect LA-living (it is the place where the stars walk among the regulars) to a fantasy world: not always meant to lift one’s spirit up, but always managing to give free reign to the imagination.
There’s always something worth seeing at the LACMA! So, we chose this museum to be our fountain: we threw an anchor, not a coin. Luca has become a member.
It’s a big deal: this wonderful museum offers free membership to children 0-18 years old. This allows the child and one parent to come visit most of the stuff they have, for free. To gain access to the special exhibitions, one must pay extra; but general admission will be free for Luca and Alex. Mommy will continue to keep her AICA membership live. What a wonderful gift LACMA gave our daughter, on her 4 month anniversary!
How many times are we going to make use of this membership? Will we come back to LA every summer? Probably not. As Luca grows, we will like to expose her to other places, cultures, scents. It’s true that LA gives, by default, access to an abundance of cosmopolitanism, but cultures must be explored from the inside, to be best sampled. It’s wonderful to have access to so many transplants here; it’s amazing to get to know a culture via its food! This is something that LA does best and anyone who is gently rocked by the rhythms of Jonathan Gold’s writing knows what I’m talking about. So, we’ll try to give Luca the gift of home, as much as possible, while also attempting to make her feel at home on other continents.
I’ve been thinking about home a lot these past months: home is where your heart is, the cliche goes. But my heart is in many places: Bucharest smells of lilac in Springtime and holds a piece of my heart as the place of origin. Los Angeles kept us warm for many years: this is where I developed my love of philosophy; this is the place where my life became professional. Columbia is the city where we profess our love of philosophy and people. It’s also the place where our daughter came to be. These three places, “so different, so appealing” are all part of the puzzle we get to call “home”.
Home is a difficult concept to grapple with: I’m not the first one to understand this. Mondongo, the Argentine artist collective, constituted by Juliana Laffitte and Manuel Mendanha express the puzzle-like character that I was alluding to above a lot better in the visual medium. Layers upon layers, made visible in bas-relief, the shantytowns of Buenos Aires take shape in this overwhelmingly sized polyptych. Mondongo’ appropriation of an art historical masterpiece — Ian and Hubert van Eyck’s fifteenth century polyptych “The Ghent Altarpiece” — expresses the reverence they have for the place some call “home”. It is reverence laced with irony and criticism: here, they depict Villa 31, a vast and continually expanding shantytown that surrounds Buenos Aires. The haphazard character of expansion is portrayed very well by Berni, who shows Juanito going to the city (the image on the right, in the above collage). Materials, colors, shapes, and forms are not minimalistically curated: they come together without thought; they smell together without order. This process is a bit scary, just as inhabiting many places at once usually is.