Los Angeles County Museum Of Art

With the film series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art heading into the sunset, this weekend and the next provide a chance to do three good things at once: (1) experience the soon-to-be-empty Leo S. Bing Theater, one of this city's great movie venues, (2) see some wonderful films -- "Being Jewish in France," a compelling documentary, from Friday to Sunday, and "Leon Morin, Priest," a rare Jean-Pierre Melville classic on Aug.

The South Korean people have had the chance to see exhibitions of some well-known American artists - Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, among others - in recent years, but until "Art Across America" came to Seoul, they hadn't seen a comprehensive exhibition showing the history of American art. The exhibition, 168 artworks including portraits, landscape paintings, decorative artifacts and Native American art, opened earlier this month at the National Museum...

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art saw its investment portfolio lose nearly a quarter of its value during its 2008-09 fiscal year, which coincided with the worst worldwide financial debacle since the Great Depression. The $254.7-million pile of cash and investments shrank to $196 million, a 23% drop, according to figures in the audited financial statements that LACMA recently posted on its website. The most worrisome development for LACMA -- as for many nonprofits -- has been the recession's effect on fundraising.

Not quite an example of winning through intimidation, the exhibition "Drawing Surrealism" partly persuades through the sheer volume of its offerings - distinctive, once wildly avant-garde and now orthodox drawings. Five galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art feature 206 works by nearly 100 artists from 15 countries around the globe - plus 14 more collaborations; a slew of prints, books and fliers laid out in a 40-foot vitrine; and, finally, new commissioned pieces by Alexandra Grant, Mark Licari and Stas Orlovski that create links between current art and the Surrealist efflorescence more than 60 years ago. The show's focus is the movement's heyday between the mid-1920s and 1950, but the new works underscore how Surrealist devices became as much a part of art's standard repertoire as one-point perspective or abstraction did. PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times That's a lot to take on. Spend a scant 30 seconds with each art object, and already a commitment of more than 2 1/2 hours is made to giving just a once-over to "Drawing Surrealism.

Never underestimate the dedication of volunteers supporting a worthy cause. They are invincible. And when a group of volunteers is made up of talented cooks and art lovers, it isn't surprising that their endeavors revolve around a cookbook that looks luscious enough to eat. One such book is "California Cooking, Parties, Picnics & Celebrations" (Clarkson N. Potter Inc., $24.95), produced by the Art Museum Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Amid a financial crunch that has forced painful cutbacks at arts institutions across the country, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is forging ahead on many fronts. The board of trustees continues to grow. Construction of a new building for temporary exhibitions, funded by Stewart and Lynda Resnick and scheduled to open next year, is on track. LACMA visitors currently have a choice of three large special exhibitions as well as permanent collection galleries.

The last time the County Museum of Art's trustees went looking for a director, it took 18 months to find a qualified candidate who was willing to come to Los Angeles. After being turned down repeatedly, the trustees finally snagged Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III, a 36-year-old executive curator from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The board took a chance in hiring an unknown and largely unproven quantity back in 1980.

IT'S no small feat, teasing out historical significance from two of fashion's most maligned decades, especially when they happened, what, two seconds ago? Yet, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new costume exhibition lines up proof that the trashy '80s and the brooding '90s also had some radical moments that still influence how we think about clothes. We just couldn't see them under all those acid-washed jeans and black pantsuits.

It's hard to say what painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner might have said had he glimpsed it. If he were a man of good humor, he surely would have been a bit bemused. Standing before his canvas "Two Women," which elegantly details two stately women in broad black chapeaus, cowgirl poets Gail (Calamity) Wronsky and Molly (Belle) Bendall--in suede boots, denim and vests, all topped off, of course, with broad-brimmed hats--put the finishing touches on their own evocative tableau.

The little-known Egyptian city of Amarna is brought to life in "Pharaohs of the Sun," a new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The price of behind-the-scenes access at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is going up. And some donors in the museum's oldest support groups are talking about dropping out. The changes affect the long-standing art councils at LACMA, groups of art enthusiasts and professionals who currently pay a minimum of $400 a year in dues and organize projects to raise money for a favorite department, such as photography or decorative arts. The perks include access to private events featuring artists, curators or collectors.

EXHIBITION Explore the fascinating, cinematic world of the legendary late director Stanley Kubrick. After the success of its recent Tim Burton exhibition, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is once again hosting a large-scale retrospective on the work of a popular filmmaker. The Kubrick exhibition features more than 1,000 items, including Kubrick's personal chess set, camera lenses and scrapbooks as well as art objects that influenced the director during the making of some of his films including "The Shining" and "2001: A Space Odyssey.

If dentistry has been a big subject in the history of European painting, I've missed it. Religious feeling, the rhythms of domestic life, displays of political power - yes. Tooth pulling? Not so much. Yet there it is in the final room of a wonderfully absorbing new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gathered around a meticulous, carpet-covered table that is something like a secular altar, four men, an old woman and a small child watch in rapt attention as a rough-faced man reaches around into another man's mouth with a pair of pliers and, as blood streams, yanks at a rotten tooth.

MUSIC The fifth annual Angel City Jazz Festival begins Friday with a free show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art featuring Phil Ranelin, a remarkable meeting between guitarist Anthony Wilson and session drum-deity Jim Keltner on Saturday at REDCAT and a multi-act festival featuring young trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and fiery saxophonist Archie Shepp on Sunday at Ford Amphitheater. The festival continues into next weekend. Venues around Los Angeles; admission and times vary.

British pop-rockers Florence and the Machine will be the musical attraction this fall for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's second annual Art + Film Gala. The band, whose booking LACMA announced Tuesday, provides both typographical consistency and a musical and generational contrast to last year's inaugural Art + Film Gala headliner, Stevie Wonder. Big-voiced, red-haired Florence Welch debuted in 2009 as an heiress to the Kate Bush-led lineage of gothically dramatic British art-pop divas, while displaying soul music influences as well.

Now that "Levitated Mass," the much-publicized megalith poised atop a steel-reinforced concrete channel, has opened on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, an earlier work also by artist Michael Heizer has been temporarily installed in the adjacent Resnick Pavilion. "Actual Size: Munich Rotary" (1971) is in some respects a cleaner, more precise embodiment of the same artistic principles that support the giant rock outdoors. Simply put: Advanced technology meets primal nature.

Anderson obituary: The obituary of Arco founder Robert O. Anderson in Wednesday's California section said a building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is named after him. The building was originally named for him, but the name was changed this year to the Art of the Americas Building.

The saga of writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's nearly lost film "Margaret" had yet another chapter written in Los Angeles this week. Shot in 2005, the movie starring Anna Paquin was beset by post-production delays and legal disputes and finally opened in near-empty movie houses last fall. Following a year-end critical caucus around the film, including much online championing of its underdog status, it had a moderately more successful second-go at theaters early this year. Recently released on home video, "Margaret" was shown Tuesday in a 3-hour, 6-minute extended version to a full house at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (That cut is available only as part of a new 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD set along with the 2-hour, 29-minute theatrical version.)

Will the famously reclusive artist Michael Heizer show up for the grand opening of his "Levitated Mass" sculpture at the L.A. County Museum of Art on Sunday? LACMA officials will say only that they "anticipate his presence. " Then there's the larger question: whether the unveiling of Heizer's monumental artwork, featuring a 340-ton boulder suspended over a 456-foot-long concrete channel, will stir up anything like the public excitement the rock's 11-night journey through city streets did. "Levitated Mass" is scheduled to open with a dedication ceremony at 11 a.m. When the ceremony ends around 11:30, visitors may begin entering the channel.