The Getty Center Museum {Los Angeles}

This is definitely one of my favorite places. Richard Meier's attention to detail in the design gives me goosebumps. I love everything about it- the tram you take to the museum, the collections, the layout of the museum and gardens, the seamless overlap of natural and man-made elements, and the stunning views of LA. I especially love the play of light and shadow on the warm travertine throughout the entire complex, the way the entire design is based on a square shapes of varying sizes, the variety in stone finishes both smooth and rough, and the fountains.

If you ever have a chance to go at night, it's magical. Yes, I will border on cheesy because I mean it. Magical.

An aside for art museum enthusiasts: I feel at home in museums. Seeing familiar works are like seeing old friends. I saw this painting for the first time and without much hesitation or consideration I thought "Picasso." Something about the eye and the coloring. Nope. It was a Cezanne, which pleasantly surprised me and made a whole lot more sense considering the treatment of the textile. I'm always happy to be wrong, and it's especially fun for me to see artists overlap in styles. I wonder whether and how much their art was influenced by the other. That's one aspect of the Modern era that I love- you see artists go from realism to impressionism to fauvism to cubism and beyond, trying their hand at every avant-garde art movement. It's like a game I play when I go into a museum- I try to guess who the works of art were created by, and it makes being there even more fun when you see an early or late work by a prominent artist that throws you off. Try it sometime! The image on the right is rough-cut travertine on the interior of the West Pavillion of the Getty... I love how warm and lovely the natural light makes it look.