If you're into contemporary art (and that means artists who are still alive), come here for an informed point of reference.  Come here for the architecture.  Come here if you're into the "textile arts" - that is, art made up of plastic, wool, buttons, T-shirts, safety pins, high gloss paint, beeswax, and other non-traditional media such as "dried plant".  Some of it seems kitschy, some of it, conceptually innovative. 

The collection includes cutting edge pieces by artists such as Rachel Harrison, who combines cement, wood, acrylic, various black handbags, rocks, stones, brick, with bicycle parts to create displays of pop culture.  One piece, with a rotary phone, bejeweled barettes, and a Hallmark greeting card rack complete with a framed inkjet print is titled "Nice Rack," 2006.

Another standout piece that the Times wrote about was one by Marc André Robinson, that looked to me like a tidal wave of chairs glued together.  Other artists include Gabriel Kuri, from Mexico City, whose 3-D work is featured in the LA County Museum of Art, that consist of emergency blankets wrapped around wooden sticks.

Other memorable pieces include a mattress sewed full of buttons, and a pole of sequins.  

They're not pieces you can pin on your wall, but as someone who gets out and sees a lot of contemporary art galleries, there is definitely a new wave of  "textile artistry" at work.  The technical skill and unconventional media is thought-provoking, but I prefer paintings.