While on Catalina Island, I stayed two nights at the Avalon Hotel, a centrally located boutique hotel just half a block off Crescent Avenue. Rooms have private balconies, some facing the ocean and harbor, while the views of the harbor and surrounding hills from the outside rooftop lounge and bar are particularly stunning. A continental breakfast is served outside in the shaded courtyard. The ferry ride from Long Beach departs along Queensway Bay, passing the city’s scenic waterfront with the retail shops and restaurants of Shoreline Village, and with splendid views of the Queen Mary ocean liner on the other side. The 1930s vessel with its signature black hull and red smokestacks recently reopened after being closed for more than two years due to the pandemic and needed repairs. Visitors can tour the Ship Model Gallery, Winston Churchill- themed exhibition, boiler rooms and even take a ghost tour. The onboard hotel includes 347 original first class staterooms and suites, restaurants, and venues for meetings and weddings. About 25 miles east of Long Beach, the city of Santa Ana has one of Orange County’s and Southern California’s most noted museums. With a permanent collection of more than 90,000 objects, the world-class Bowers Museum showcases art and artifacts from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Native American cultures, African and Oceanic art, including from Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. While visiting, the
macabre Spirits and Headhunters exhibition catches my eye with its three actual human heads, reminding me of scenes from movies where jungle explorers encounter savage tribesmen. They’re skulls remodeled with clay, pigments, and human hair, recreated to look like the deceased person and used in ceremonies. “Headhunting was a way of terrorizing tribal communities, to define land, or gain territory or power of some sort,” explains Bower Museum docent Martha Morrison. “Their belief system was that the head was the center of the person, the content of the wisdom and their soul. So the heads were really important not only as a way of headhunting and defining territory, but also to pay homage to an ancestor.” Another museum highlight includes the art and artifacts of the area’s history, from the baskets and pottery of Southern California Coastal Indians, and that from the subsequent 18th- through early 20th-century incursion of missionaries and ranchers bringing their religious icons, wagons and even a brandy still. Artists’ eyes captured images from this period as seen in the museum’s many paintings.
Bowers Museum macabre Spirits and Headhunters exhibition with three actual human heads.
Bowers Museum permanent exhibits of African and Oceanic art.
Bowers Museum includes objects from Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.
THE MAGIC ISLE
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE SUMMER 2023 | 18
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