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Art / LACMA garage RIP

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Soon, the garage out­side the LA Coun­ty Muse­um of Art is get­ting torn down to make way for some big new build­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it's got some real­ly excel­lent murals by Bar­ry McGee and Mar­garet Kil­gallen that I checked out when I was there a cou­ple of sum­mers ago.The LA Week­ly says:

Now's the time to check out the cel­e­bra­tion of street art it has become since Octo­ber 2000, when hus­band and wife team Bar­ry McGee and Mar­garet Kil­gallen were com­mis­sioned to bomb the sec­ond floor of the struc­ture in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the show "Made in California."Over the last five years, Kilgallen's smok­ing, trudg­ing, scowl­ing women and McGee's sig­na­ture sad-sack faces and metic­u­lous­ly drawn mes­sages have inspired unco­erced homages from sev­er­al local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly known artists: N.Y.-based graf­fi­ti trio FAILE's col­lage sten­cils; Span­ish tag­ger PEZ's bub­bly alien fig­ures, and Obey Giant guru Shep­ard Fairey's loom­ing wheat-paste policeman.

It wouldn't be as sad if Mar­garet K. was still around to bomb anoth­er garage, but the fact that she's not makes the dis­ap­pear­ance of this free and pub­lic place even hard­er to take. Sucks.The whole sto­ry: "Oil on Con­crete".UPDATE: An excel­lent cri­tique of LACMA's deci­sion to tear down the garage, writ­ten by art crit­ic and blog­ger Tyler Green.