LA's Museums and Art Galleries
When you stay in Los Angeles, you'll be close to the city's many cultural venues. Go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which showcases thousands of 20th-century paintings, and the Getty Villa, a vast museum displaying European paintings, sculptures, and decorative art dating back to the 15th century. For concerts, check out the open-air Greek Theatre and the Hollywood Bowl.
San Francisco's Museums and Art Galleries
San Francisco's cultural attractions are a close match for LA's. US art museums don’t come much bigger than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which displays a vast collection of contemporary paintings, sculpture, photography, and media arts. Meanwhile, the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, one of the country's largest, stages opera, theatre, symphony, and classical music productions.
California's Free Spirit
There is wide acceptance of diversity in California and a love of innovative ideas. This is, after all, the birthplace of the 60s hippie movement, home to Hollywood, as well as some of the greatest artists in the world. So if art is what you're looking for, base yourself in Southern California where you'll find all sorts of wonderful outdoor art.
Located in the middle of the desert, Salvation Mountain is an art oasis by local resident Leonard Knight. Made entirely of adobe, straw, clay, and half a million gallons of paint, its combines religious scriptures with colourful flowers, trees, the sun, and birds.
Or check out the Integratron, a dome built in the 50s by George Van Tassel, a self-proclaimed UFO abductee who claims that the planet Venus's inhabitants gave him the instructions to build the structure. Supposedly capable of rejuvenation due to its magnetic fields, it proves that nothing is too eccentric for California.