Just as no academic course stood alone in my Scripps years, no art world event can be isolated from the larger cultural sphere.

As a reporter, Muchnic took Los Angeles Times readers to all corners of the world to give art its proper context.

She also accompanied a Getty Conservation Institute project to China to report on the restoration of the world’s richest trove of ancient Buddhist wall paintings and sculptures in a complex of art-filled caves along a riverbed in the Gobi Desert.

"[9] Her art journalism earned her a Distinguished Alumna Award from Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University.

Her book, Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture, won the 2002 Donald Pflueger Local History Award of the Historical Society of Southern California.