Larry Hosken: New: Michael C. McMillen: Aristotle's Cage

I'm taking art notes for my own benefit and you're stuck along for the ride; sorry about that.

Years ago, on a Los Angeles vacation, I saw a piece of art at LACMA. It wasn't a painting, a photograph, a sculpture. It was a garage. It was a old wood-smelling garage transplanted into a museum, a garage from an alternate universe in which we still believed in Egyptian mortuary ritual. That was Michael C. McMillen's "Central Meridian The Garage". I don't think it's still there. I was glad to see it when I did. I was sorry I couldn't see it the next time I made it to LACMA.

Today, my parents and I went to the Oakland Museum. In the art section, there was another Michael C. McMillen piece. This one's called Aristotle's Cage. When you first approach it, it's a screen door with a sign above it saying "Elsewhere." (Don't get all excited now, nonchalant Jejune Institute people, I'm sure it's a coincidence.) Step through the screen door, and you look at a diorama of a nighttime desert junkyard scene. In the foreground, a trailer. And there is noise. Above that skeletons and/or spirits make their way across the night sky. I saw it and was transported.

Tags: art los angeles

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