Moca

It was not your usual audition process, not even by modern dance standards. There were no age or gender restrictions. There were no particular body types sought. And instead of taking turns on a stage, the assorted dancers, actors, artists, yogis and athletes trying out for a role in performance artist Marina Abramovic's new project — taking place Saturday at the MOCA gala — were each asked to kneel under a cramped dinner table set for eight. The audition? Poke your head up through a hole in the center of the table and spin around extremely slowly on a Lazy Susan and quietly gaze with intention but no particular emotion at the seated dinner guests — a strangely zen version of Linda Blair's famous head-turning performance in " The Exorcist.

James Franco is an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera "General Hospital" — who has made a movie, "Francophrenia," that documents the experience. He's about as "meta" as it gets. Now Franco has brought his knack for melding pop culture and fine art in unorthodox ways to a new exhibition for Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. "Rebel," which opens Tuesday, is a high-concept group show that is a loose, interpretive ode to the 1955 James Dean film "Rebel Without a Cause.

Though the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger operates well outside the mainstream, his cult films such as "Fireworks" and "Scorpio Rising" have influenced scores of filmmakers, musicians and other artists. Anger's work is the focus of the new exhibition "Kenneth Anger: Icons," opening Sunday, which explores his Magick Lantern film cycle and includes archival material and memorabilia. MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun. (213) 626-6222. http://www.moca.org.

While revelers shuffle into every Mexican restaurant and bar in town to shoot Patron and shovel in enchiladas this Saturday, the following alternatives - all happening May 5 - promise to be just as festive and maybe even more feliz ! Beastie Boy Mike D's Transmission LA: AV exhibition and festival at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary has been getting tons of buzz both for its vibrant art and for its music offerings (opening night with Santigold, last week's DJ set by Thom Yorke)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles is celebrating graffiti, but not on its own property. MOCA's pyramid-topped headquarters on Grand Avenue is conspicuously tag-free. In Little Tokyo, the museum has always painted over the graffiti that appears occasionally on the outside walls of the Geffen Contemporary, its satellite warehouse exhibition space. And now that its latest show — proudly billed as the first major American museum survey of street art — has triggered a predictable upsurge of vandalism in the area, MOCA is even cleaning up graffiti on neighboring businesses.

ART The Museum of Contemporary Art will present "A Tribute to Mike Kelley," an exhibition dedicated to the work and legacy of the contemporary artist who died earlier this month. The show, on display through April 2, will include 23 of Kelley's works, plus others by John Altoon, Cody Choi, Douglas Huebler, William Leavitt, Marnie Weber and Johanna Went, donated to MOCA by Kelley. MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. $10. Moca.org.

The British street artist known as Banksy will sponsor free Monday admission for all visitors to the Museum of Contemporary Art for the duration of the exhibition "Art in the Streets," which highlights the history of street and graffiti art and features works by Banksy, Shepard Fairey and other genre notables. The museum said Thursday that admission to its Geffen Contemporary space in Little Tokyo will be free on Mondays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., June 13 through Aug. 8. Banksy likes to stay under the radar in terms of public exposure, eluding the press and generally shunning the spotlight.

ART The pioneering Armenian American Abstract Expressionist Arshile Gorky's career is the focus of a multimedia exhibition, which includes more than 120 works, spanning 25 years of artistic output. This show will feature Gorky's most significant paintings, sculptures and works on paper, including two masterworks from MOCA's permanent collection, "Study for the Liver Is the Cock's Comb" (1943) and "Betrothal I" (1947). MOCA. 250 S. Grand Ave. 11a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. $10 (213) 626-6222.

Paul Schimmel doesn't need much encouragement to squire a guest around the Museum of Contemporary Art's galleries, which he does with the zest of a house-proud homeowner. And why shouldn't he? Next month, MOCA's chief curator celebrates 20 years with the museum, which has just put up a big, gorgeous show of its collections for its own "First Thirty Years" celebration. Neither anniversary might have happened. Money troubles threw a sincere scare about MOCA's survivability into the art world and the city.

MOCA's can of worms Re "Tagging MOCA," Opinion, May 1 Heather Mac Donald was right on the mark. Like some others, the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles chooses to glorify vandalism instead of condemning the urban and suburban blight it has brought to the L.A. area. Now we are all paying the price for the proliferation of graffiti vandalism. Mac Donald also singled out the parents and their apparent and appalling lack of control as a major contributor to this plague.

Is a strain of recent abstract painting obsessed with revitalizing the celebrated tradition of the 1950s New York School? A peculiar new show at the Museum of Contemporary Art says yes, proposing that a vigorous revival of Jackson Pollock's drips, Mark Rothko's luminous clouds of color, Franz Kline's muscularity of forms and other painterly concerns from a half-century ago is underway - albeit with a notable twist. The old abstraction recorded the singular hand of the artist at work in the studio.

Tight money and an investment in pop culture - two factors shaping Jeffrey Deitch's leadership of the Museum of Contemporary Art - have come together in a decision this month to delay a scholarly exhibition and substitute a revenue-generating, corporate-funded festival curated by rapper Mike D of the Beastie Boys. The delayed show, "Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974," is one of the sweeping examinations of movements and themes in contemporary art that have given MOCA a reputation as one of the world's leading museums of post-World War II art. By pushing back its long-planned opening from April 8 to May 27, MOCA freed its Geffen Contemporary building for "Transmission LA: AV Club," an 18-day festival beginning April 19 that's a confluence of art, commerce and pop culture.

Three Museum of Contemporary Art officials with key financial roles -- the chief operating officer, fundraising director and a trustee who chaired the board's finance committee -- have left MOCA in the last three months. They had been at their posts less than a year. Meanwhile, since Jeffrey Deitch became MOCA's director in mid-2010, efforts have stalled to pay down large deficits the museum incurred from 2000 to 2008 by illegally raiding its endowment. A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of MOCA's finances, said it has projected a deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The spate of recent departures and two others in mid-2011 is "a turnover that begins to look like turmoil," MOCA's former chief executive, Charles E. Young, said this week.

ART The Museum of Contemporary Art will present "A Tribute to Mike Kelley," an exhibition dedicated to the work and legacy of the contemporary artist who died earlier this month. The show, on display through April 2, will include 23 of Kelley's works, plus others by John Altoon, Cody Choi, Douglas Huebler, William Leavitt, Marnie Weber and Johanna Went, donated to MOCA by Kelley. MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. $10. Moca.org.

The early SoCal punk scene wasn't all guitars, mosh pits and visions of chaos — although there was a good dose of that, thanks to bands such as the Germs and Black Flag. Rather, the music was experimental, arty and all over the map. "Everything from hard-core punk, electro-punk and new wave music all fit together; there weren't those genre distinctions," says Adam Hyman, executive director of the Los Angeles Filmforum, who curated "Strange Notes and Nervous Breakdowns: Punk and Media Art, 1974-1981," a program of rarely shown films from the early scene premiering Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The shorts, part of Filmforum's Alternative Projections exploration of experimental film in Los Angeles and MOCA's ongoing show "Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981," look back at L.A.'s punk roots with a 100-minute collection of rarely and never-screened performances.

It was not your usual audition process, not even by modern dance standards. There were no age or gender restrictions. There were no particular body types sought. And instead of taking turns on a stage, the assorted dancers, actors, artists, yogis and athletes trying out for a role in performance artist Marina Abramovic's new project — taking place Saturday at the MOCA gala — were each asked to kneel under a cramped dinner table set for eight. The audition? Poke your head up through a hole in the center of the table and spin around extremely slowly on a Lazy Susan and quietly gaze with intention but no particular emotion at the seated dinner guests — a strangely zen version of Linda Blair's famous head-turning performance in " The Exorcist.

The California Attorney General's office determined that the Museum of Contemporary Art skirted state law for years enroute to financial meltdown in late 2008 and ordered the museum to hire a consultant to help improve its financial management. The attorney general also required MOCA board members to receive special training in their fiduciary duties. The findings and "required corrective actions" were included in a two-page letter to MOCA last November. The attorney general's office provided it to The Times this week after repeated inquiries.

How disgraceful that MOCA sees fit to spend $1 million on an advertising campaign by the agency TBWA/Chiat/Day instead of supporting living artists and challenging them to evince interest in MOCA ("In So Many Words," Jan. 4). How oblivious of the museum's new director, Jeremy Strick. This move casts a pall on MOCA's image as a cutting-edge museum--and shows a distinct lack of faith in living artists. One wonders if MOCA is now beholden only to corporate interests and the bottom line instead of being a vibrant, risk-taking institution.

Though the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger operates well outside the mainstream, his cult films such as "Fireworks" and "Scorpio Rising" have influenced scores of filmmakers, musicians and other artists. Anger's work is the focus of the new exhibition "Kenneth Anger: Icons," opening Sunday, which explores his Magick Lantern film cycle and includes archival material and memorabilia. MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun. (213) 626-6222. http://www.moca.org.

Beatrice Gersh, a distinguished art collector and patron of the arts in Los Angeles for more than half a century who played a significant role in the founding of the Museum of Contemporary Art, has died. She was 87. Gersh, the widow of Hollywood talent agent Phil Gersh, died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, said a family spokeswoman. Gersh and her husband, who died in 2004, began collecting art in the 1950s and were among the first collectors of modern and contemporary art in Los Angeles.