Museum Night That Caters to Kids : LACMA Winter Holiday Festival Is a Real Family Affair

You could overhear a knock-knock joke in one end of the buffet line and a rather spirited discussion about Frank Stella’s aluminum constructions in the other.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art officials were calling it a first: the unusual opportunity for its supporters to attend a party, leave the tux at home and bring along the kids, including babies in Aprica strollers.

There may be good reason these days for anyone connected to the art scene to feel socially out of steam, with the flurry of parties connected to the opening of the county museum’s Robert O. Anderson Building and the unveiling of the Museum of Contemporary Art. But there were no signs of fatigue from the spirited crowd once again marching up the steps of the new grand staircase leading inside the county museum Sunday night.

Actually, to be precise, some of the guests were skipping and hopping.

“Yes, we are quote partied out,” allowed Jim Young, a museum trustee and chairman of the Director’s Roundtable, the support group that hosted the event. “But the idea was that the museum caters to the supposedly sophisticated art group, but nothing’s oriented to the family.”

Arrived in Force

So families came in force to the Winter Holiday Festival, which was made to feel all the more atmospheric because it took place in the open-air Times Mirror Central Court, wind-chill factor included, and was decorated with winter scenes, evergreens and tiny twinkling lights. (There had been talk of sprinkling plastic snow on the ground, but in deference to the new floors, the idea was dropped.)

There were grandmothers, teen-agers, babies bundled up in mothers’ mink-wrapped arms. And, according to plan, there was something going on to keep every generation interested.

Remarkably, what seemed to keep the children occupied weren’t the roaming magicians, puppets, Dickensian carolers and walking, talking stuffed animals, but the finds inside the Anderson wing.

An early clue was the pile of Mary Janes and penny loafers outside Lucas Samaras’ walk-through mirrored “Corridor” on the second floor. Not surprisingly, museum director Rusty Powell’s kids led the beeline there.

“It’s incredible,” said Russell Brown, 10, after emerging from the glass structure. “It’s like all your nightmares come true, like you’re falling and falling. I feel like I’m in ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Take your shoes off and come in,” he instructed others.

Director Powell did admit that “if that’s not a kids’ work of art, nothing is.

“Children, you’d be surprised, are far more interested in going to palaces of culture than most people think,” Powell added. “Mine were talking about this for the last two days.”

“The children really wanted to see the museum very, very badly,” Annette O’Malley confirmed as she rode one of the cavernous Anderson elevators with family in tow.

‘Big Man Pounding’

Some children were transfixed by “the big man pounding,” which is Jonathan Borofsky’s “Hammering Man.” Others gravitated to Frank Stella’s three-dimensional constructions (“Weird,” commented one young man), Ed Kienholz’s realistic “Back Seat Dodge” and Bruce Nauman’s neons.

“If children grow accustomed to coming to the museum,” said Nelly Llanos, there with her children and grandchildren, “well, that’s what we’re looking forward to in the future.”

“We come here so often for these glitzy parties, but to bring our kids is a different experience,” concluded Jim Young, obviously satisfied with the evening, which is expected to become an annual event.

Never mind that by 9 o’clock the party started thining out, and some of the guests headed home fast asleep in their parents’ arms.