Not everybody is a fan of pop art. When it first emerged in the 1950s, and as it gained popularity over the next decade, any number of critics took their shots at both the type of art it is and the artists who pursued it.

“Pop art,” Susan Sontag wrote, is “only possible in an affluent society, where one can be free to enjoy ironic consumption.” Ouch.

The Australian critic Robert Hughes famously said that Andy Warhol, perhaps the best known pop artist, was “one of the stupidest people I’d ever met in my life. Because he had nothing to say.” Double ouch.

Yet some of the most intriguing art exhibits I’ve ever taken the trouble to attend have featured pop art. The first one I experienced was particularly impressive. Set up at what was then the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (long before the expansion into its current form), it was fronted by an outdoor installation of Claes Oldenberg’s giant recreation of an ice pack.

Inside, as I recall, amid works by everyone from Roy Lichtenstein to Robert Rauschenberg, I expected to find prints of Warhol’s famous Campbell soup cans. Instead I witnessed a Warhol creation composed of fake grass, plastic flowers and actual running water. And, yeah, I laughed. I had no idea what he was trying to say, if he was trying to say anything. But such audaciousness did, and still does, amuse me.

Which is why I still seek out pop art whenever I can. I did most recently during the Palm Springs vacation that I’ve already written about. The Palm Springs Art Museum – yes, the one that is fronted by the controversial 26-feet-tall statue of Marilyn Monroe – was presenting a special exhibit of work by the British artist David Hockney.

Titled “David Hockney: Perspective Should Be Reversed,” the exhibit features prints from the private collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation.

One benefit the city’s museum offer is free entrance for everybody on Thursday nights, which made our $18-per-head tickets (senior price) to the special Hockney show more palatable. The exhibit consists of some 180 of Hockney’s works, all of them created over the past 60 years.

In an article for the city’s art magazine Palm Springs Life, writer David Pagel observed this about Hockney’s work: “To walk into a roomful of  his works – even better, several galleries full of them – is to witness Hockney’s curiosity in action, while, at the same time, feeling your own curiosity rising to the occasion, coming to life, stimulating attentiveness, exciting the imagination, and getting you to see more than you ordinarily do.”

That was a pretty good introduction to what we ended up seeing, including the various 20 different depictions of flowers that are captured in the photos at the top of this post. The works, which were set along one wall, were created by Hockney on an iPad and then printed on paper. All were late creations, most dating from 2021.

As impressive as the Hockney exhibit – and the museum as a whole – are, they weren’t the only arts-educational moments that we experienced during our 10-day Palm Springs star. One that was equally enjoyable was our visit to the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum.

Founded in 1991 at another location, the museum is now part of the sprawling facility that includes the Spa at Séc-he and the outdoor Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza (the latter of which was completed only in 2023).

A 2024 Time magazine article listed the museum as one of the “World’s Greatest Places.” As the article declared, “Set upon a sacred site, the 5.8-acre complex – one of the country’s largest Indigenous cultural centers – immerses visitors in the history and traditions of the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians.”

One of the most distinctive facts about the 48,000-square-foot museum, which consists of two gallery spaces, is its shape that, according to the Time article, is a “distinct curved shape inspired by the tribal nation’s famed basketmaking.”

Another, of course, is its depiction of history, which hasn’t always been kind to any of the indigenous groups that predated even the Spanish incursion into early California.

“This is our story, in our own voice,” Cahuilla tribal chairman Reid Milanovich told Time. “We are here today, just like we have been since time immemorial.”

Such contrasts – an exhibit of the works of a noted pop artist on display just a few blocks from a museum that honors the original people who lived in the region – stand as a good symbol for modern Palm Springs.

And aside from the winter weather, which features sunny days and moderate temperatures, they’re just a couple of extra reasons why we love to visit.