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.

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.

Art circles buzzed with last month's news that private art collectors Janice and Henri Lazarof had notably enriched the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Modern art holdings with their donation of 130 works by major artists. With last week's opening of LACMA's three-plaza-level Modern art galleries, much of the collection is now on display.

WHEN the Los Angeles County Museum of Art set out seven years ago to expand and remodel, it definitely was not looking for an extreme makeover. It nearly got one anyway. Museum leaders were taken by an innovative architectural design that promised a Cinderella-like transformation in a one-of-a-kind new building.

Last April, the Los Angeles Planning Commission endorsed a list of 14 aggressive principles to help make the city more livable. The first sentence of the plan was blunt: "Demand a walkable city." But demanding and creating are two very different things. Too often in Los Angeles, city officials still give cars and the free flow of traffic almost automatic planning priority over pedestrians.

You know that well-worn architectural saying: A great building requires a great client. In the case of Renzo Piano's extension of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which opens Feb. 16, the equation isn't quite so straightforward. To begin with, LACMA has added substantially more than a single building.

LACMA director Michael Govan squinted into the sun and watched a weathered forklift cradle a Charles Ray sculpture -- a toy firetruck blown up to the size of a real one and intended to be confused for the real thing. As the sculpture settled into position on the plaza, a Los Angeles firetruck pulled up behind it and a fire marshal climbed out for an inspection. "I love it that the first visitor was the fire marshal," Govan said. "It was like some kind of apparition." So was LACMA.

The "spider" escalator of the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum was red, the fire escapes were red, Charles Ray's 46 1/2-foot "Firetruck" was red. And for one star-studded night, even the carpet was red. BCAM, as Italian architect Renzo Piano's travertine-clad creation is known, was all the buzz. After years of operating in undeserved anonymity, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had its big moment in the sun -- or starlight -- Saturday night.

If you've got the time, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has the movie. The museum will screen the seven-hour 1968 Oscar-winning Russian film, "War and Peace," in two parts Friday and Saturday evenings this month.