Have you ever wondered how city leaders decide what names to give the streets, roads and avenues we travel on day in and day out?
I live near Titletown, U.S.A., home of the world famous Green Bay Packers, so it’s no surprise that the streets I frequent have names such as Brett Favre Pass, Bart Starr Drive and Reggie White Way. But in one of the country’s most populated cities, the art of naming streets has become the subject of a new museum exhibit.
If you are looking for a family friendly summer travel destination that will provide more than just a few thrills for your school aged children you might consider heading to Los Angeles and checking out the “All the Saints of the City of the Angels” exhibit at the Autry National Center. The new display looks at L.A. streets named for various saints and how life on those streets relates to the saints’ legends.
According to museum curators, the artist behind the exhibit, J. Michael Walker, researched the topic for eight years and created 50 paintings of saints, incorporating “stylistic aspects of Spanish religious art but using for his models contemporary city-dwellers — workers, indigents and other ordinary people.”
According to Walker, several of the streets featured in the exhibit were influenced by the Spanish-Mexican era, like San Pedro Street in Little Tokyo, which was originally the road to San Pedro Bay; San Fernando Road, which starts in Lincoln Heights and runs northwest to the San Fernando Mission; and Santa Monica Boulevard, which starts in Silver Lake and goes to the ocean in Santa Monica.
The exhibit, which is open now through September 7th, examines local history, neighborhood life and religious traditions through video clips, text panels, and Walker’s eclectic paintings. The show also features an altar where visitors can reflect and a host of 18th- and 19th-century devotional objects from the Autry collection, including artifacts from the Museum of the American West and the Southwest Museum of the American Indian.
Other Educational Vacation Destinations:
Journey to the Center of… Your Intestines
Even More Kid-Friendly Vacation Destinations with Meaning
More Kid-Friendly Vacation Destinations with Meaning
Kid-Friendly Vacation Destinations with Meaning
More Educational Vacation Destinations
Educational Vacation Destinations
Atlanta-Where To Go Outside Of The City
Visiting Pearl Harbor’s Newest Attraction
Pearl Harbor: An Unforgettable Trip
Hawaii’s “Not So Famous” Military Memorials
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl