I took the day yesterday to get caught up on some of the new exhibits in LA’s multi-cultural quilt. When I woke up today, I realized I was “tangled up in keys.”

Noted as the second weirdest shout-out in music history, per Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan’s exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center had me thinking about the lyrics from his 2006 Modern Times track, “Thunder on the Mountain”:

“I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying. When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line. I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be. I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee…”

Slate.com ran an article in 2007 titled Tangled Up in Keys. The author points out several notable links that suggest Dylan was really talking about Alicia Keys (the 27-year-old performer). For example, Keys was raised in Hell’s Kitchen and Dylan used to live down the subway line. The author then went on to point out that Dylan has long been smitten with black female singers:

“Dylan has long worshiped at the shrine of the black female voice, a source of musical inspiration, erotic obsession, and even religious conversion.”

This desire led me to think about another exhibit I saw yesterday in LA: Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love at the Hammer Museum.

Through silhouettes, Walker comments on race, slavery and liberation, sexual attraction and exploitation, discrimination and modernity. She uses the scissors with such eloquence and purpose that the line between passion and anger is blurred for the viewer to interpret.

Both exhibits may be entirely different, but there are connections (or Intersections, if you will) that allow the mind to wander and wonder about the cultural framework and moral sensitivities of our nation’s past, present and future.

And there’s only one place in the world that offers such a diverse stage for the mind to cut through a deluge of thought-provoking exhibitions — Los Angeles.

Thanks to the acquiring minds of Los Angeles-based tycoons such as Eli Broad, J. Paul Getty, Armand Hammer, Henry Huntington and Norton Simon, many of history’s great masterpieces are located right here in LA.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) houses 150,000 artworks spanning five continents from the prehistoric to the present day. LACMA boasts one of the most comprehensive Korean art collections and a stunning Japanese art pavilion filled with screens, scrolls and a remarkable collection of netsuke. Among LACMA’s many famous paintings are Rivera’s Flower Day and Magritte’s Treachery of Images.

The Hammer Museum in Westwood is best known for its cutting-edge exhibitions of provocative works by leading and emerging living artists. Equally impressive, however, is its small but world-class permanent collection, containing works by Rembrandt, Gauguin, Monet, van Gogh and Wyeth, among others.

No tour of the world’s greatest paintings in LA’s permanent collections would be complete without a visit to the Getty Center. In addition to stunning architecture and gardens, the Getty Center is distinguished by a far-reaching collection of exceptional paintings by European and American masters from the 14th to the 20th century. Although the collection contains many famous works by the Old Masters, the most popular painting at the Getty is van Gogh’s Irises.

The Huntington Library, Art Galleries, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino is a required destination for anyone who admires artists’ ability to bring canvas, pigment and oil to life. Perhaps the most famous paintings in the collection are the masterpieces The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough and Pinkie by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

In addition to the famous masterpieces contained in LA’s permanent collections, many important works are on view in the ever-changing major exhibitions curated and presented by LA’s leading museums.