The Broad Museum and Arts District, Los Angeles, California

After waiting for a long long time, I finally made it to see the Inifinity Room at the Broad! Here’s a short trip report from our little adventure visiting the Broad Museum, little Tokyo and the Arts District in Los Angeles.   

The Broad Museum

The Broad opened up a few years ago and it’s always been quite popular since.

One of the more famous exhibits is the Infinity Room.

A dark room illuminated by lights with mirrors everywhere that make it seem like you are looking at infinity.

It’s one of those things you have to see in person.

But isn’t that the way most things are?

I think so.

Anyway, this infinity room has always sounded interesting since the first time I heard about it.

Much more so than the Rain Room at LACMA.

I mean really? Rain?

I’ve been caught in major tropical downpours before and that really doesn’t sound appealing to me.

But that’s just me! I know a lot of people enjoyed it (not sure if it’s possible to see still so check the site if you’re interested)

Ok! So back to the infinity room!

I’d heard good things and had always wanted to go see it, but timing just didn’t work out. (I didn’t want to wait in line)

Emi actually ended up going to see it with some friends before and wanted to see it again.

She thought there was a different version (there wasn’t) from what she initially saw and so that’s how we ended up going!

We made reservations about a month prior so off we went!

The pictures below are chronological – as we walked toward the museum, waited in line, and explored the other art while we waited our turn.

Of all the works that we saw I liked Takashi Murakami’s long wall the most!

It spanned 3 walls and was quite large, colorful and dramatic.

The Infinity Room

Below are the pictures of the Infinty Room by Yayoi Kusama.

Have you seen any of her works?

I’d seen some of them when I visited Naoshima, a tiny island off Japan.

Naoshima is famous for it’s art galleries and I’d highly recommend visiting if you’re into art.  

However, the infinity room was nothing like what I saw previously.

A good thing!

The Infinity Room pics are chronological so you have an idea of how dark and light it gets.

The lights dim and get brighter every few seconds. I just set my camera on manual and left the settings the same, so that’s why some pictures are darker than others.

You’re only able to be in the room for about a minute I think.

After that the ‘gate keeper’ opens the door to let you out and the next group in.

A lot cooler than I thought!

And surprise!

It really does look like infinity. (….I was surprised!)

The Downtown Arts district

After we were done with the museum we decided to walk to Japantown for lunch.

This was about a 20 minute walk from the Broad museum.

Since the restaurant (Pasta e Pasta Allergro) we wanted to go to wasn’t open yet, we went to explore the Arts district.

The Arts district is about a 10 minute walk from the Honda Center in Japantown.

The Arts district has some galleries as well as restaurants and bars etc all spread within a few blocks of each other.

If you’ve never been I’d say it could be worth 30 minutes to an hour of your time.

Or, if you time it with the downtown art walk you could spend all night walking around.

Especially since there’s more galleries to explore within the downtown area.

I used to go all the time before it got shut down and have been meaning to go again to see how it’s changed.

Here’s some more pics from the walk to the Arts District and Japantown!

So …

What do you think? See anything like the Infinity Room before?

Will you be going to check it out?

And if you’re not from LA and curious what things you could use to make your next trip more comfortable, check out this list–