I suddenly realize that the atrium’s staircase used to open up on the south side. Now it’s on the east side and takes over the entire width of the interior perimeter wall.

For the display of the entire collection to have been pretty much limited to the Ahmanson building, before it had even been expanded in the 1980s, makes the original museum seem quite petite compared with what it has since become.

The models posed throughout the galleries in evening wear show just how different a part of the culture was in the first half of the 1960s. The tail end of a bit of graciousness left in society, yet at the same time also humorously pretentious. Similarly, the LA Times magazine for LACMA’s premiere exemplified the somewhat unsophisticated nature of the era (or at least the city’s main newspaper back then), hinted at by the merely semi-professional look of the publication’s layouts (great cover font).

All in all, 2010 is better than 1965!