Museums

Ben Stiller, star of the recent "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" movie, has the lead in a new video playing at the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall in Washington. The 12-minute overview of the Smithsonian's 19 museums is meant to get visitors on their way to spending a day, or several days, exploring some of the 136 million objects in the institution's holdings. Stiller injects a dose of his goofball humor into the presentation. In fact, it's probably the silliest orientation video you'll find at a place as storied and august as the Smithsonian.

Art collector and philanthropist Eli Broad has nearly doubled the size of the museum he intends to build on the Westside for his 2,000-piece collection of contemporary art, and the cities of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are vying to be its home. He will also create a $200-million endowment that would generate $12 million a year to operate the privately run, nonprofit institution. The only bigger single cash donation to the arts in Southern California history would be J.

Laura Spitzer sat at a children's table while her 3-year-old daughter, Jessica, pretended to prepare Shabbat--a Jewish family dinner traditionally served on Fridays, consisting of fish and challah, or egg bread--for her. "I'm usually the one fixing the meals at home for our dinner," Spitzer said Tuesday. "This is great because it puts her in my role so she's learning the significance of the different parts of the dinner. Kids love this stuff."

For all its makeshift venues, the Long Beach Heritage Museum was never meant to be a roadshow. Owner and curator Ken Larkey hoped he had found a permanent home for his accumulation of Long Beach memorabilia when he opened the museum in a downtown storefront in 1971. Paying only $50 a month rent, it came as no surprise a year and a half later when he was forced out to make room for a boutique. Another storefront nearby at 3rd Street and Elm Avenue looked like a good home, too.

After two decades of seeking a permanent home, the Yorba Linda Heritage Museum and Historical Society may finally get a place of its own. The city's Planning Commission has approved a proposal to build 48 new homes near Camino De Bryant and La Palma Avenue. Pacific Heritage Development, the Mission Viejo-based company building the tract, agreed to donate the last remaining building of the historic Bryant Ranch to the group as part of the development deal.

Add this to your never-thought-I'd-see-the-day list: a museum dedicated to preserving the history of a certain recliner. About 10 years ago, the La-Z-Boy Chair Co. turned two floors of its original plant, built in 1927, into a museum complete with archives and plenty of used chairs. Recliners dating from the one that started it all, a wooden slat porch chair created in 1928, are housed at the Monroe, Mich., company museum that's open to the public by appointment.

They called themselves Stentorians, a Greek term for one who speaks out. And speak out the group of African American firefighters did, against racism and segregation in the Los Angeles Fire Department. But what they did most notably was fight fires. Working out of Old Fire Station 30 at 1401 S. Central Ave. in South Los Angeles, the Stentorians were among the best at their job in the city. This week, the Los Angeles City Council moved to honor the Stentorians by requesting $1.

The robbers struck at midafternoon, using hammers to smash the unguarded wooden door of the small museum near the Ishtar Gate into Babylon, once the most magnificent city in the ancient world and now among archeology's most famous sites. They worked undetected. The vast site, circled by 11 miles of walls rebuilt in "the time of Saddam Hussein"--the bricks are stamped with a reminder--has been practically unvisited in the six years since Iraq became an international outcast.

In the year now concluding, the art world was in the process of figuring out some pretty thorny issues. Like ways to fund cultural institutions, how to loosen the deathly grip of the academy, the future of multiculturalism, whether the art market will revive--little things like that. Confusion reigns, as usual. Still, a variety of notable exhibitions and events took place in Southern California--some notable because they were good, some because they were not.

Peru, Botswana, Norway and Minneapolis. Ships, skeletons and tepees. These are but a few of the destinations and topics targeted by our top 10 museum-sponsored tours of 1996. As she has yearly since 1993, Ann H. Waigand, publisher of the Educated Traveler newsletter, selected those trips from more than 300 being offered this year by American museums and other nonprofit institutions. The tours here are in chronological order.