Exhibitions

The women are lined up in a row--straight backs, dark starched dresses, sober faces. They clutch long-handled brooms to their sides, bristles up, as if they were rifles. The black-and-white photo is dated 1886. A cleaning crew? Unlikely. For one thing, the women are too well dressed. For another, they look ready to march into battle or, at least, a parade. "Isn't it neat?" asked Laura Verlaque, collection manager at the Pasadena Museum of History, which counts the photograph of the Pasadena Broom Brigade in its archives.

A change is in store for the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens’ main display of its rare books, manuscripts, drawings, photography and other literary and historical  holdings -- including a Gutenberg Bible from the 1450s, a 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays and a gigantic first edition copy of John James Audubon’s “Birds of America.

Former Volkswagen salesman Sam Sands can remember when it really was the people's car. "They cost $1,895, or $300 down and $65 a month for two years. And everybody could qualify," Sands, 52, said of 1960s-era VWs. Today, the Laguna Hills resident wouldn't take $14,000 for his vintage 1967 red convertible displayed proudly Sunday at the 10th annual California Volkswagen Jamboree at the Orange County Fairgrounds. "I'm too close to it," Sands said. "It would be kind of like selling your wife."

With a last round of roster cuts looming ahead of this summer's London Olympics, U.S. Water Polo Coach Terry Schroeder will get one final look at his team in action when it plays a series of exhibitions in Southern California against Croatia and Hungary, the defending Olympic champion, beginning Saturday at Newport Harbor High School. Schroeder needs to trim three players from a 16-man roster that includes 11 former Olympians, among them three-time Olympians Tony Azevedo, the team captain, and Ryan Bailey.

IT'S the tuft of hair on the chin, the relief of a goatee on the smooth aluminum surface of the face, that gives the character's identity away. Otherwise, the 17-foot-high statue of a big-eyed "Oval Buddha" could be just another of Takashi Murakami's cute creations: a wandering space alien, perhaps, or a member of a tribe of ghosts. The character sits like Humpty Dumpty on the lip of a flower vase, his oversized head far too big for his tiny torso. He has a potbelly. His spine sags.

A circa 1850s stagecoach, turned black from layers of varnish and embedded dirt, has been returned to its original light green brilliance after two years of painstaking work. Operated by California Stage Co. during Gold Rush days, the coach will be on permanent display beginning today in the Spirit of Conquest Gallery at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. "It was quite shocking to see it, since when it left, it was black.

A Tokyo exhibition featuring an 8th century Buddhist shrine was the world's best attended museum show last year, according to a survey by Art Newspaper. A New York show of 16th century Spanish artist El Greco was second. Tokyo National Museum's "Treasures of a Sacred Mountain," showing texts and artifacts from mountain temples, drew 7,638 visitors a day during its run from April 6 to May 16, the monthly paper said.

Given the eagerness with which collectors pursue everything connected to film, from posters to props to press books, the feeble state of film museums around the world comes as a disconcerting surprise. Berlin has a modest facility, and New York has something similar exiled out in Queens, but London's Museum of the Moving Image, and the magical Paris space created by Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise, have both been closed.

The exhibition "Jamestown at 400: Natives and Newcomers in Early Virginia," scheduled to open Saturday at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, has been postponed for two weeks because staff and resources were stretched too thin by a related exhibit. The problem, Huntington spokeswoman Susan Turner-Lowe said Tuesday, was that both shows highlight the same period of history and therefore demanded the services of the same library staff, curators and conservators.

The Library of Congress opened an exhibit Thursday on 350 years of Jewish life in America. "From Haven to Home," which runs through Dec. 18, features a letter in which George Washington told the Newport (R.I.) Hebrew Congregation that the new republic gave "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." The exhibit features photographs of composer Leonard Bernstein and Bess Myerson, Miss America of 1945 and later New York City's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - A third day of jury deliberations in the campaign finance trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards passed without a verdict Tuesday, with the jurors due back in federal court Wednesday morning. The jury of eight men and four women requested two more prosecution exhibits, bringing to more than a dozen the number of exhibits sought by jurors since deliberations began Friday. The documents requested Tuesday were letters to or about Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, now 101, a billionaire heiress and Edwards supporter who gave $725,000 that was used to help hide the candidate's mistress during his failed campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Re "Court takes up bid of illegal immigrant to be attorney," May 17 Sergio Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who passed the State Bar of California exams to practice law, is a perfect example of someone who would benefit from a federal Dream Act. Not only is he a model citizen, he's a smart one too. Why should this young man wait up to 15 years to become legal and then a lawyer? He should be admitted to the bar now, and a certificate of citizenship should be attached.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - The jurors who will decide the fate of former presidential candidate John Edwards deliberated for more than four hours Friday before breaking for the weekend in a trial focused on complex campaign finance laws and lurid details of Edwards' extramarital affair. The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether Edwards knowingly conspired to violate federal election laws as part of a scheme to cover up his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter during his campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Culture Monster will occasionally visit museum exhibits dealing with history, anthropology, science or sociology. The show : "Visions of Empire: The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840-1880" at theHuntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The goods : The Huntington archives supply 98% of the exhibits, from the resolutions of eight Eastern states to build it, to a railway worker's letter home to his mother and the ledgers workers signed (one with Chinese characters)

As its 75th birthday fast approaches, the Golden Gate Bridge is getting a little birthday present. Even though about 40 million vehicles cross it each year and visitors come in droves daily to admire and photograph it, the spectacular span has never had a visitor center. That is, until this month. "The bridge experience up to this point has just really been self-guided and a photo opportunity," said David Shaw, vice president of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. "Now there's this bridge pavilion, which is a really nice welcome center.

The signs of penguins in love were unmistakable at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Monday: puffing their chests, standing on tiptoes while clicking their beaks together, belting out donkey-like brays. The colony of 13 Magellanic penguins, which recently moved from holding pens to a new $1.5-million exhibit that opens to the public Thursday, has seethed with courting rituals since the arrival of breeding season. One pair is already tending to a newly hatched chick.

A marina in Thailand, a South County church and a high school in Diamond Bar can all be seen at MainPlace/Santa Ana during an exhibit of works by local architects. The dozens of drawings and photographs are of projects submitted by Southern California architects for a design competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects of Orange County. To qualify for the competition, architects must either be based in Orange County or have works in the county.

The life story of William Tyndale (1494-1536) and his persistence in creating the first printed English translation of the New Testament are told in an exhibit on display at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., through Sept. 6. "By integrating history, theology and literature, this exhibition tells the history of English-language Bibles and the remarkable story of the life and work of English priest William Tyndale," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

"What's the difference between Jewish and Chinese mah jong?" the protagonist of Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" asks her mother about the quintessential Chinese game. Her mother replies, "Entirely different kind of playing.... Jewish mah jong, they watch only for their own tile, play only with their eyes. " "Project Mah Jongg," a colorful exhibition opening Thursday (through Sept. 2) at the Skirball Cultural Center, tells the Jewish side of the story. With vintage photographs, souvenirs, playing guides and other ephemera, and of course examples of the tiles themselves, the exhibition traces how the game was enthusiastically adopted and integrated into the social life of Jewish women in the 20th century.

NEW YORK - "A snake swallowing an elephant" is how the Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong described himself. The snake was the Chinese artist in him, and the elephant was Western art. The stylistic fusion that made him one of China'sleading modern artists is on view at the Asia Society Museum here in "Revolutionary Ink: The Paintings of Wu Guanzhong," which also reflects the artist's long life amid the turmoil of China's 20th century. Wu died in 2010 at 90, and these works from his last decades - depicting nature and architecture, some more naturalistic, others mostly abstract - show his easy cohabitation of two cultural hemispheres.