Museum Exhibits

Where did the inspiration for "the Christmas spirit" and good will toward men and women come from? A) The three wise men. B) Passed down through the ages. C) A Charles Dickens book. If you chose C, you have a pretty good idea why Southern Californians celebrate the Christmas holiday the way they do. A California Christmas, like the state, is a melting pot of traditions--an intertwining of things Victorian, Mexican and make-believe.

With a small drum clamped between his knees, a giggling Jose Urias, 13, beat the Native American instrument with his hands as he was accompanied by an entourage of other novice musicians. Amid the wild rhythms of the drum, rattling maracas and crescendos of children's laughter, Urias, of Santa Ana, was one of hundreds of kids Sunday sampling the activities and attractions at the Bowers Museum's first cultural exhibit especially for children.

When the folks at the California Museum of Science and Industry set out to create their new "Our Urban Environment" exhibit, they knew they had a lot of ground to cover. Their goal was to show museum visitors how their daily decisions affect Southern California's water supply, air quality and landfills. But for that message to hit home, exhibit planners believed that they needed to remind visitors that talking about saving Earth is meaningless without action.

There are many wonders on display at the "Images in Time & Space" holography exhibit, which is entering its final stretch at the California Museum of Science and Industry. One of the most startling sights is the lab-coated, bespectacled, eminently cheerful scientist who, hanky in hand, appears to wander after visitors, chatting with them and cleaning up any smudge-marks they leave on holographic plates.

There were Dr. Seuss' Sneetches, who got into a frightful mess because the Star-Belly Sneetches snubbed the Plain-Belly Sneetches, the Star-Bellies declaring themselves "the best kind of Sneetches on the beaches." And there were the Holocaust artifacts--the striped concentration camp uniforms, the gas canisters, a little card on which was written a chilling camp saying: "You came in through the gates, you go out through the chimney."

Though commonplace in the city's urban landscape, the images resonate with warmth and familiarity: a smiling cop, a woman carefully arranging her daughter's hair before the girl goes off to school, a young family out walking the dog. Other images paint the city's darker half. Street scenes pockmarked by graffiti, a man standing on a trash-littered sidewalk below a slashed billboard that reads "Commitment to Excellence," the smoldering remains of a fire-ravaged building.

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, already beset by protests among artists over his handling of the agency's political troubles, has stirred a new controversy--this one over a remark Jewish groups have interpreted as questioning the legitimacy of federal support of museum exhibits that include Holocaust photographs. NEA Chairman John E.

From the folks who brought you Viagra, here's something else that will raise your excitement level: Pfizer Inc., the global pharmaceutical company, is behind a new high-tech, high-energy exhibit on germs--some nasty, some not so bad--at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Called "Microbes: Invisible Invaders . . . Amazing Allies," it's loaded with enough special effects and video games for kids to forget for a moment they're in a museum.

Who doesn't love a little bad art from time to time? The pop music-attuned Fullerton Museum Center has a fresh take on that notion in a new exhibition, "The 100 Worst Album Covers," which revels in gloriously wretched imagery and graphics of the LP era. It's been assembled by longtime Orange County music journalist, musician and kitsch collector Jim Washburn, who is quick to point out that there were so many worthy contenders that this collection extends...

There isn't room for everyone who wants to see. The gallery can't hold more than a dozen people at a time, so the crowds who come each day to see the exhibit must wait. Today, one of the coldest days of the year, the wait is three hours, and still the line stretches down the block. The exhibit features 68 vivid photos of American lynchings. There is a photo of Frank Embree, a black man whipped across his legs and back and chest, then hanged.